Laura Garcia John Winyard Mystery shopping scam, claims to be from MSPA Dallas, Texas

I received a letter claiming to be associated with MSPA; the letter included a cashier's check for $3000+.



My letter informed me that I had been selected, via www.monster.com, to become a mystery shopper.  I was to deposit the check, set aside $400 as my pay, spend $100 at a local retailer and fill out a survey, and wire the remaining $2000+ through Western Union, to an account based in London.



While the check was real, and the signatures on the letter and the check were real, the letter itself was riddled with typos and formatting oddities.  The contact information was bogus: the phone number was to a telephone company in Toronto, the addresses were non-existant places in Texas, New York, and London.



When I visited the MSPA website, I found that they do not make direct hires, and all mystery shopping jobs would have come through one of their listed member companies.  Further research indicates many others have been scammed by mystery shopping assignements asking people to wire large sums of money to foreign based account.