Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Secret Shopper Scam

Posted on by The Old Wolf

An ad recently appeared on the KSL.com jobs page for a “Mystery Shopper” opportunity. I’m sorry I didn’t copy the original posting right away, because apparently they keep an eye out for such things and it was deleted immediately. But here’s what happens when you respond. Note: “Critique International, LLC” is a legitmate shopper evaluation company, and they are well aware of the scams being perpetrated using their name.

Hello [Name],
Thank you for your swift e-mail response , Your information has been accepted and input into our database.
FIRSTLY:
Your information has been submitted and a payment will be issued out to you for your First Assignment. Your information submitted is as follows:

[Name]
[Address]
[Phone]

I’ll need you to confirm that the above name and address is correct.
A payment will be issued to you as soon as your details have been reconfirmed. Information about the payment and instructions will be sent to you later. Please do check the above information and re-confirm to me that its your correct information .
Kindly be consistent with your email,because all updates shall be send to you via email.I await your reply.
 
Regards,
David Schlotthauer
Critique International, LLC
Note: This is already sounding Nigerian. One gets used to their peculiar grammar and spelling.

To: mysteryshopper008@hotmail.com
From: {me}
Subject: Re: RECONFIRMATION OF DETAILS FOR YOUR SECRET SHOPPER

This information is correct, as is my email address.

I’ve received your reconfirmation. Kindly be consistent with your email because all updates and instructions shall be send via email.

Regards
David Schlotthauer
Critique International, LLC

Note: “shall be send by email”

Good Morning ! You must take note that your mystery shopper payment delivers tomorrow, as soon as you have received it, confirmed on email for more details about your assignment.
Regards
David Schlotthauer
Critique International, LLC
Note: “You must take note…” – stilted, Nigerian English

A check arrives in the mail. Certified, no less.

Secret Shopper Envelope
Secret Shopper Bogus Check
Phony as a $3.00 bill…
I respond,
I have received a check in the mail. It is significantly larger than any possible payment for a Secret Shopper job. What is this about?
-C
Hello,
 
The Evaluation Team invites you to run a survey on two prominent Western Union Locations in your area.
Note: Bingo. There’s the proof of the pudding. Any time Western Union crops up in a transaction, you know someone is trying to steal your money.
 
Your First Task is to Evaluate two different Western Union Locations outlets around your City,since you have received your first official assignment payment. Kindly find a list of Western Union outlets around your location online at http://www.westernunion.com/ { HERE PROVIDE A LIST OF Western Union AGENTS IN YOUR LOCALITY. PUT DOWN AT LEAST 4 LOCATIONS }
 
Moreover,the management and staff of United oods & Deliveries, many other individuals and companies has reported lapses in the services of Western Union in some locations around the United States. Their complaints were based on reports their customers forwarded anonymously and Phone calls were also made to their head offices.
 
Western Union Agent location was reported for evaluation on the following reasons:
 
* Slow and Poor Customer services..
* Rudeness and agents inefficiency to customers.
* High Transfer charge.
* Late opening and closing Hours.
 
Your Customer Service Evaluation Requirement would be:
 
*You will go into a “Western Union” as a potential customer. Remember your status as a Detective Shopper, you are advise to act as a normal or average customer who wants to send money to your relative.
 
NOTE:- It is with this pretense act you can have a full statutory evaluation report in the lapses or negligence of their customer services relations. While you are being attended to when sending the money, you will secretly evaluate things like customer service, store
 
*cleanliness and quality of service rendered.
*You are Required to make use of Money Transfer in a minute Collect services to make Western Union Money Transfer.
*You are Required to send in a detail report of the Time it took you to get the Money Transfer made from the time of arrival at any of the Agent Location listed to you.
* A Confirmation of the Western Union Money Transfer fee.
* You are required to forward back to us a detailed copy of the Western Union Money Transfer Detail as soon as the assignment completed at any of the Agent Location assigned to you.
* A scanned copy of the Western Union Receipt is required to be Email back to us for confirmation.
 
However,since you have recieved the payment,proceed with the deposit of the check at your bank to have it processed and make a withdrawal funds for your 1st assignment deducting your commission($400) from the total amount received by using the first part for the first outlet and the other part for the second outlet for the evaluation. (Western Union charges should be deducted from the money you are sending NOT FROM YOUR JOB COMMISSION)
 
Get back to me ASAP because your results will be reviewed and collated for the upcoming 2013 Analyst/Investor Conference coming up in Montreal.
 
Kindly use the below info for the Westernunion in a minute evaluation transfer.
 
WESTERN UNION details.
 
NAME: Candee Martin
CITY: Huntington Beach
STATE: CA
ZIP CODE: 92649
 
 Get back to me with this details below alongside with your full evaluation summary reports.
 
1) Senders Name And Address :
2) 10 digits Western Union Control Number :
3) Actual Amount Sent :
 
NOTE: Remember not to act like you’re evaluating them but act like you’re sending fund to one of your relatives.
David Schlotthauer
Critique International, LLC

What saddens me is that there are people who will fall for this ploy. The only reason I spend time with these drones (other than to waste their time and annoy them) is to try to get the word out as far and wide as possible so that someone else won’t be taken in. I send him this back:

I have evaluated two locations:

Location No. 1
1) Senders Name And Address: Johnson X. Johnson, 258 Mayberry Circle, Payson, UT 84651
2) 10 digits Western Union Control Number: 22935-17764
3) Actual Amount Sent: $1,000

Location No. 2
1) Senders Name And Address: Johnson X. Johnson, 258 Mayberry Circle, Payson, UT 84651
2) 10 digits Western Union Control Number: 22935-17787
3) Actual Amount Sent: $800

Let’s see what happens when the douchebag cheerily goes scurrying to his Western Union in Lagos with phony MTCN’s.

So here’s what I got back:

We’ve received your report but it is convincing. I will advise you send the receipt together with your email including how the services was and how you were been attended to..

Regards

David Schlotthauer
Critique International, LLC

My report was “convincing.” Whatever the hqiz that’s supposed to mean.

Well, at this point I decide to pull the plug on the escapade and send him a

GameOver

message, accompanied by implications that he is a descendant of camels, and report his hotmail address as an originator of fraudulent emails.

Ooh, he’s mad.

From: Critique LLC <mysteryshopper008@hotmail.com>

Subject: RE: SECRET SHOPPER PAYMENT IN PROGRESS
YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER IS CURSED FOREVER, WHO IS OLUMBA OLUMBA, YOU BETTER FIND GOD INSTEAD OF GOING GOR OLUMBA OLUMBA. YOU FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER SHOULD BE PORTRAIT AS A CAMEL. FOOL!

David Schlotthauer
Critique International, LLC
Notice that he’s admonishing me to find God. Anyone else in the room find that a bit… well… ironic?

I will keep repeating this for as long as it makes a difference in a single person’s life:

Never pay to play. Never pay to get a job. Never send money by Western Union to a total stranger. If you do, you’re being scammed.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Bubble Hypercube

Posted on by The Old Wolf

PointLineSquareCube

A tesseract, or a 4th-dimensional hypercube.

cube bubble

Just as the cube above is a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional object, this frame with its cubical central bubble is a 3-dimensional “shadow” of its 4th-dimensional counterpart. And it’s awesome.

Science gives me a hadron.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Russian Business Network strikes again.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

For about 13 years, I owned a small business. I had a strict no-spamming policy. So it was extra-annoying to find that Russian Businesss Network had hacked my email account (even though I use strong passwords, this one was obviously not strong enough – a case in point!) and sent spamvertising to my entire customer database. Raspberry Ultra Drops indeed – worthless snake-oil sold by soulless, immoral camel-rapers.

My password should now take these filth-eaters about 367 quintillion years to crack.

Someone needs to make a film that shows worthless drones like this being ripped a new one by Chuck Norris for two solid hours. I’d pay to go see that.

Shell’s Mr. President Game, inter alia.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Back in the 60’s, gas stations did interesting things to get your business. One such promotion was the Shell Mr. President’s game. A playing card is shown below:

Preview_Image_1

Naturally, some coin were extremely rare – the ones required to finish a winning set – as illustrated by the blank spots above, and those coins also sometimes bore the motto “instant winner”.

Mr President

These two samples are, of course, neither rare nor instant winners, but still an interesting little bit of cultural history.

Another incentive was this token, given out as a collector’s item:

086_001

Then there was Sunoco’s presidential collection:

 

presidents

And their Antique Car collection:

In 1967, Union 76 in California begam the antenna topper craze with their orange balls:

Nowadays, it’s a rare thing for a gas station to offer any sort of incentive other than reward cards or fleet discounts.

Those were the days.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Nedicks Nickel, 1953

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I posted previously about vanished New York eateries, foremost among them Nedicks, and today while sorting through some things ran across this little gem which I had forgotten I owned.

NedicksNickel

About the size of a dime, these were included in packs of cigarettes purchased from a vending machine. Each token could be redeemed at the counter, giving Nedicks’ customers a discount on cigarettes.  The token bears the image of Walter S. Mack, Jr. president of National Phoenix Industries, Inc., owner of the Nedicks’ chain and inventor of the promotion. The tokens were manufactured by the The Scovill Manufacturing Company.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Zero Tolerance: France vs. the good ol’ USA

Posted on by The Old Wolf

From This Is True:

ZERO TOLERANCE, THE FRENCH WAY: A police officer in Ustaritz, France, was summoned to an elementary school’s cafeteria to remove a 5-year-old girl only identified as “Lea” as classmates watched. Lea’s crime? Her parents had not paid 160 Euros (US$220) in accumulated lunch fees. French officials were outraged when the report hit the news. “All children in France should be eating in their cafeteria, and not be victims of acts which, of this nature, are acts of violence,” fumed French Education Minister Vincent Peillon, who said he was “shocked” that the police were called. France’s human rights organization has started an investigation “to identify the successive dysfunctions that led to this situation,” says its director, Dominique Baudis. The police officer did as she was told: she removed the girl from the lunchroom, and took her home. When she found no one there, she took her to the police station — for lunch — and then took her back to school. (RC/Time) …See? It’s just that easy.

ZERO TOLERANCE, THE AMERICAN WAY: Melody Valentin, a fifth-grader in South Philadelphia, Pa., found an L-shaped piece of paper in her backpack in class; her grandfather had made it. As she went to throw it away, a classmate saw it and told the teacher Melody had a gun. “He yelled at me and said I shouldn’t have brought the gun to school,” Melody said through tears. “I kept telling him it was a paper gun but he wouldn’t listen.” As other students watched, administrators searched the girl and questioned her. Other children started to call her a “murderer,” and her mother had to pull her out of school to stop the bullying. The mother notes that the girl is having nightmares over the incident, and school officials refuse to comment. (RC/WTXF Philadelphia)

Slight correction: the school officials are the nightmare, and the silence is their defense.

Zero Tolerance in American school systems is nothing more than Zero Common Sense, driven by soulless attorneys hungry for billable hours and racked with paranoia.

Don’t put up with things you can’t change; change the things you can’t put up with.

The Old Wolf has spoken.