Rachel Stanton, a 20-year-old student from Andover Township, almost found herself with a real lump of coal in her stocking this holiday season — the loss of nearly $900 after almost having fallen victim to a nationwide fraud scheme.
Stanton responded to a classified ad in The New Jersey Herald earlier this month advertising a secret shopper position. Similar ads from the same company have been placed in hundreds of newspapers in more than a dozen states.
After a quick phone interview, a Canada-based organization calling itself Secret Shoppers mailed her a check for $974. As part of a “probational training period,” Stanton was instructed to cash the check, keep $100 as her first payment and transfer the rest to an address in Winnipeg, Canada.
Once the transaction went through, the company said, it would be ready to set her up as a secret shopper.
But when she tried to cash the check at the PNC Bank in Newton, she was told that it was a fake. If it had cleared and Stanton had transferred the money, she would have had to pay the bank back out of her own pocket.
“I guess I was kind of naive. I never would’ve thought someone would do that,” Stanton said. “I can’t believe they would do this to people around the holidays. It’s horrible.”
The ad ran for one week from early November to December in the Classifieds section and on the Web site, as well as the Dec. 3 edition of the Shopper’s Guide. It offered a $100 per hour part-time position as a customer service evaluator, with training provided and no experience necessary.

More at http://www.njherald.com/342198328293426.php

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