A few months ago, I was answering dozens of Craigslist ads a day to try and find any work I could including paid surveys and research settings. In the fury of it all, I accidentally involved myself in a mail fraud scheme by responding to a spam message I mistook as a real response to one of my inquiries to a paid survey. Everything looked very convincing and authentic to the point I almost unknowingly committed a crime by trying to cash counterfeit postal money orders. Luckily, I caught on in time, called my local FBI field office, and filed a complaint to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

One of the problems I found in getting replies after inquiring about a Craigslist listing is that you don’t get a response from the Craigslist generated email address (i.e. gigs-yvmsq-1541740782@craigslist.org) you originally emailed. I also found that most people didn’t keep the same subject line and didn’t include what I originally wrote which is what made this scam so hard to spot. If I hadn’t been answering so many different ads and hadn’t actually been looking for Craigslist paid surveys, I would have immediately marked this as spam. Here’s what the email said:

Craigslist Paid Survey

Dear Applicant

Thank you for your recent online application on Craigslist dated 3rd November, 2009. We appreciate your quick response as we believe it portrays good sense of responsibility and efficiency.

We are a dynamic Organization Development and Management Consulting firm involved in helping Companies achieve market leadership and Improve connections between professional services firms and their client organization. Our company is currently conducting a survey on Money Gram Outlets to help measure and improve effectiveness of the services they provide to the general public. This is as a result of complaints from some of Money Gram reliable customers about the behavior and orderliness of most Money Gram outlets.

The survey involves you visiting a Money Gram Outlet in your area to patronize their business services as a customer and give us feedback on your overall customer experience by filling a simple online questionnaire. Each survey takes a maximum of 20 Minutes to complete and you’ll be paid $85 for every survey completed, No Sales Involved and this will not inconvenience your present occupation.

If you are interested in participating, please send us a reply with your Full Name & Email Address, we’ll get back to you after receiving this information to confirm your participation in the survey.

Your faithfully,

Terry Schultz

Research Analyst

RSM Research

14621 Firethorne Path

Fort Wayne IN 46814

260-494-3832

It’s a pretty legit sounding email and they end it with only needing my email address and full name (nothing too personal and come to think of it they should already have it if I responded in the first place). I willingly responded and a few days later got this very real looking email:

Survey Date

Good Morning,

This is to confirm you have been selected as our Survey / Evaluation agent in your area. You will be evaluating Money Gram outlets in your neighborhood and the survey date is November 13, 2009.

Please note that you will be required to visit one Money Gram outlet within your neighborhood to patronize their business services as a customer and give us feedback on your overall customer experience with them by completing a questionnaire.

Funds to cover all expenses needed to conduct this survey will be delivered to you on the surveydate by USPS. Deduct your compensation of $85 after receiving the funds and proceed to the nearest Money Gram with the remainder of the funds to complete the actual survey evaluation, further information on how to proceed will be emailed to you on the survey date.

Respond ASAP to this email on your acceptance and willingness to carry out the survey with your Full Name, Mailing Address, Phone Number where the funds and guideline to completing the surveyshould be mailed to.

Thank you and hope to hear from you today.

Your faithfully,

Terry Schultz
Research Analyst

RSM Research
14621 Firethorne Path
Fort Wayne IN 46814
260-494-3832

I gave out my address and my Google Voice number. (I don’t consider my apartment that I don’t have long term plans of staying at very sensitive information and my Google Voice number isn’t real either since it just forwards to a number of my choosing.) Now a flag should have started to go up when I didn’t hear anything after a few emails, but then an update came a week later.

Money Gram Survey Update

Good Morning,

We apologize for the postponement in the survey date, it was due to a logistic arrangements error by our courier. The survey funds will  be delivered today or tomorrow by USPS. Follow the below instructions to complete the Evaluation as soon as you receive the funds.

Attached below is the Money Gram form, study the questions carefully before conducting the actualsurvey on Money Gram and have the form filled out and emailed back to me after completion of thesurvey.

1.1 Write your Name & Address on the pay to Column of the Money Orders and fill in the return name and address on the package on the Sender Column before cashing them at your bank.

1.2 Deduct your pay of $85 after cashing the Money Orders.
1.3 Deduct another $65 for transfer fees.

Locate a Money Gram Outlet near you to conduct the survey by patronizing their business services, you are to appear as a potential customer making a Money Gram transfer to a relative outside the country. Below is the transfer information you need for the wire.

Transfer Amount : $1650
Receivers Last Name: Adams
Receivers First Name: Jonathan
Destination: Pretoria, South Africa 0180

Be sure to observe how long it took you to get services, Smartness of the attendant and Customer service professionalism during the transfer process and Under no circumstances should the Money Gram Agents know this evaluation is being carried out on them.

Email me as soon as you make the transfer with the following information;
Reference #, Amount Sent, Name And Address Of Sender.

Thank you and get back to me as soon as the survey is completed today.

Your faithfully,

Terry Schultz

This is about the point where all my flags went up that this had all been a scam when I saw they wanted me to send money to South Africa. I have nothing against South Africa, but when you’re on the same continent as Nigeria you become scammers by association. It also didn’t add up why a company in Fort Wayne, Indiana would have me send funds to a different continent. I marked this email as spam and moved on with my life.

That is until I received an overnighted USPS envelope the next day with two postal money orders inside totaling $1925. The scam plot continued to thicken as both  money orders were from a Cary Ross in New York City but the envelope was sent from Carla Killeen in Joshua, Texas.

I initially thought, “Oh no, some poor woman has been scammed! But maybe I can get her her money back…” I did some googling to see if I could find any information about either sender. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much. The NY address was for an apartment building and the TX address was out in the middle of nowhere. Neither name returned anything in either city or state either so I was stuck.

In my frustration, I started examining the postal money orders and noticed how cheap they looked. I had never seen or used one in my life, but have seen some counterfeit money and fake IDs in my time. I quickly brought up the postal money order security features and saw the Ben Franklin watermarks were missing and that the vertical thread looked more stamped on than weaved. To confirm my suspicions, I called the US Postal Money Orders hotline (1-866-459- 7822) and entered the serial numbers, amounts, and ID to verify they were fake.

This is the point where I could have just walked away, but I figured that these scammers had wasted enough of my time that I could try to turn them in somehow so I called my local FBI field office. A few seconds into my story, they cut me off and knew exactly what I was about to tell them. In true government fashion, I was told to visit http://www.ic3.gov and file a complaint and to keep the fake money orders as evidence.

Like I already said, if I hadn’t been answering so many craigslist posts this would have never happened. I wanted to post their emails verbatim so search engines could index them incase other people get them. When I was searching for information about the NY and TX residences, I found out that the first email I received was a scam but it didn’t look like anyone had become as involved as I did.

Nothing ever came of my complaint (not a big surprise). I’m glad someone didn’t get scammed out of any real money. I’m REALLY glad I didn’t try to cash those fake money orders. I hope someone finds this post before they get involved in a dumb scam or can at least get out of it if they are already involved. In closing, here’s some tips from the United States Postal Service for protecting yourself against money order fraud.