Wichita woman warns of mystery shopping scam she nearly fell for

Karin Linenberger said she knew pretty quickly that the two packages that arrived on her doorstep last week were connected to a scam.

It had been roughly two months since she had replied to an online advertisement looking for mystery shoppers. As a self-employed professional gardener in the Wichita area, she is always looking to make extra money to help carry her through the winter, she said.

“I thought mystery shopping sounds like a fun deal.”

And, she said, “It’s always nice to have supplemental income.”

The letters inside the boxes told her to deposit two enclosed checks – one for $2,500 and one for $2,750 – into her bank account, then use most of it buying money orders at a handful of local retail stores to send back to the company. The rest, about $350, would be hers to keep after she rated her shopping experiences.

Linenberger said she was suspicious but decided to endorse the checks and take them to her bank anyway.

It was there her concerns were validated: The checks, a teller told her, were fake.

This particular scam, while not new, is one of the latest being reported to authorities, said Avery Elofsson, senior assistant district attorney for Sedgwick County, who is responsible for litigation in the Consumer Protection Division.

It follows a recipe similar to other well-known deceptions: A victim is asked to pay a fee or to send some of their own cash to a seemingly reputable source with the promise of making easy money.

“You send us little money, we send you big money,” Elofsson said. “The gimmick is the same.”

But, he warned, “Once you hit send, once you’ve gone to MoneyGram or Western Union, your money is gone.”

Elofsson said the perpetrators of these types of scams are hard to trace, making prosecuting them difficult. It also means it’s unlikely any cash turned over to them will be recovered.

Anyone who is deceived by one of these operations should make a report with the Federal Trade Commission, Elofsson said. For information on how to do that, go to www.consumer.ftc.gov.

Linenberger said she didn’t lose any of her own money to this particular mystery shopping scam. But, she said, she wants others to be aware of it so they don’t fall victim.

“I think I’m very trusting because I live in Wichita and I know good people here,” she said. “There are legitimate places that do mystery shopping. But you have to know what you’re doing.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2016 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Wichita woman warns of mystery shopping scam she nearly fell for."