Walmart Moneygrams Scams
It has been several years now that the scammers have been exploiting and baiting victims through the use of Walmart Moneygrams or , if you prefer, money orders. They are used in a number of ways always with the one intent of fleecing honest people out of their savings.
What places these scams apart from the others is the devious and pure criminal nature of these scams. These bottom feeders don’t usually spam emails out to “undisclosed-recipients” and hope to bait a few uninformed victims.
In many instances the scammers will offer a Mystery Shopper mission where you are required to deposit moneygrams at a Walmarts outlet and transfer them to a foreign address. For your efforts you get to keep a certain percentage of the total amount for your efforts. Once the transaction is completed, a survey will be sent to you to complete evaluating the service provided by the employees at the outlet. Problem is , the moneygrams you rushed to deposit were bogus and you’re on the hook for the total amount of the deposits. You could even be charged with a criminal offence..Fraud.
Numerous cases have been reported where the scammers send bogus Moneygrams directly to individuals homes via UPS. Problem is the unsuspecting recipients have no idea why they received them in the first place but will go along with the scam and actually deposit these bogus certificates. Take the Kern family for example, they got duped for a couple thousand.
If you would like to hear more about the workings of these Moneygram scams check-out the forum at topix.com. and remember if it smells scammy it probably is.
Filed under: Employment scams, Uncategorized | Tagged: bogus money orders, employment scam, fraud, moneygram fraud, mystery shopper fraud, scam, walmart moneygram scam
I almost fell for a granny scam. “Hi ,,,this is your favorite grandson”. I said …which favorite…John, Andrew, or Michael?… You were right with the first one!
…John, how are you and where are you?… Well I’m in Vancouver, Canada…. You are ? What are you doing there?.. Well it’s a long story and the family doesn’t know so I’m calling you because I got in some trouble…a car accident..I was driving…but I’m okay…but I’m being held here until I pay $5400 right away or they’ll hold me overnight. please don’t call Dad but I’ll explain it to them as soon as I get home.. trust me…….blablabla. Well, this wise old granny almost fell for the Wal-Mart Money-gram scam and was about to head for the bank, get the cash to take to Wal-Mart when visions of the Nigerian Bank Scam danced in my head….but I was sure it was John’s voice…it was ..wasn’t it?…..maybe I better call his Dad even if he’ll wind up angry with me…too bad. So call his Dad I did….John was at Baylor where he was supposed to be…not in Vancouver,,,not in trouble… It was just some scam artist dialing for dollars until he hit a granny-sucker who would do anything for her favorite grandson.
Grannies Beware! Wal-Mart should be ashamed it facilitates this kind of fraud. I’ll shop anywhere but there from now on.
Evelyn,
Great post thanks for sharing. Nothing is sacred for these scammers. As far as Walmarts goes well, not really their fault, he could have just as well used Western Union. Glad you caught on before loosing any money.
Cheers
I was very gratified today to receive a response from someone in WalMart’s corporate office who had received an e-mail from me in which I detailed how I almost became a victim of the above granny scam.
WalMart knows that this is going on and they are working with the Attorney General to raise public awareness and perhaps even apprehend the culprits.
There was an article in the Arizona Republic (which I had not seen) the Sunday before, telling that 3 women in Paradise Valley had lost $14,000 this same way. These scam-artists are targeting elderly people living in affluent retirement areas in Arizona and Florida. I suggested they also post a notice in all Walmart MoneyGram centers to alert the public before they actually transfer money to someone they think is a relative in trouble in Canada or elsewhere. He assured me that this is also in the works. A friend told me this is the case with a Western Union facility she recently used to wire money to a legitimate
relative. Whenever someone gets this kind of call, they should always ask the caller a question that only the real person (grandson etc.) would know the answer to. In this case, I should have asked “when was the last time you heard from your sister?”….If the answer was “not for awhile”…it would have been a dead giveaway…because the real grandson doesn’t have a sister. Hindsight is always great….but this granny will know how to detect a scam in progress next time…should there be a next time. Meanwhile I’ll keep shopping at WalMart because they promptly responded to my e-mail with a phone call from Corporate….and I’ll keep looking for them to post a
warning notice on their MailGram premises.
I don’t know how to do this, but I hope this particular
blog can be forwarded to Wal-Mart Corporate office Attention: Eric VanDyke, who investigates this kind of fraud.
Evelyn,
We report all scams to the appropriate concerns, unfortunately the success rate is under 10% at best. As we have said in the past, education,education.
Let’s just not respond to these bottom feeders and they will be out of a “job.”
Consumer Media Agency AND Atlantic Worldwide Sweepstakes and Lotteries sent out checks all over the country issued on the Bank of New York dtd Feb 22, 2008 in the amount of $3,860 under the Macmillan company names. THESE ARE COUNTERFEIT.
Macmillan,
It is unfortunate that the scammers chose the good name of Macmillan to front their scheme. Thanks for your post .