You should always look at work-from-home and mystery shopper offers with heavy skepticism. Take it from a man who fell victim to a scam involving the latter that robbed him of $4,000.

ABC 7 Los Angeles reports the victim responded to an offer to do some mystery shopping at Walmart and received a money order for $2,000 with an assignment to buy some items, keep $200 and wire the rest of the money back.

The man repeated the process until he had spent about $4,000 in money orders, and you can guess what happened next: The bank told the victim that the money orders were fraudulent and he’d have to come up with $4,000. He says the bank is garnishing his retirement and unemployment checks to repay the money. He says that since his “boss” operates from the Philippines, law enforcement was unable to help him recover his money.

If you’ve ever fallen for an employment scam, share your story in the comments.

Scam artists target jobless w/ mystery-shopping gig [ABC 7 Los Angeles]
(Thanks, Jon!)

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