One of the cool things about running this site is that I get to see the search terms people have used to find their way here. “WA Surveys” has been a surprisingly common search that has led visitors to the FPU, and “mystery shopper scam” has brought in some traffic. I hope I’ve provided some value to those folks.

However, you also get some weird ones.

The other day, the search term that led someone to the Fraud Prevention Unit was “i want to scam the mystery shopper scam.”

This was a little disturbing to me.

I know what some people are thinking; “Well, they’re crooks, so it’s alright to try to rip them off, right?” And I can understand the impulse—vigilante justice, give them a taste of their own medicine, free money in a down economy, etc.

But it’s a really bad idea to even try. For one thing, the crooks perpetrating the scam aren’t going to feel your wrath at all. They just printed up a bunch of fake checks and sent them out to thousands of people. They’re usually not linked to any real accounts at all, and they’re certainly not linked to accounts owned by the criminals themselves.

But wait, there’s more!

At the point you knowingly present a fraudulent instrument (such as a cashier’s check) to a bank or credit union, you are committing fraud on a financial institution. That is a federal offense, and it carries a prison term if you’re found guilty.

This is serious, serious business.

Besides, a lot of these scams are run by organized crime operations. At some level, there are probably some violent people involved. These are not people you want to go messing around with.

Okay, there’s not a huge chance they’ll find out about your little attempted counter-scheme, but why risk it? You’re already not going to get to keep the money, and you might end up in a federal prison. Do you really need goons coming after you, on top of everything else?