Pa. attorney general warns of shopping scam

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett says there’s a scam going on in which people are duped into thinking they’ll be “mystery shoppers.”

Corbett says consumers are getting official-looking notices saying they’ve been selected for a program in which they’ll get paid to shop at major retailers and evaluate the service. He says they get mailed realistic-looking bad checks. They’re told to deposit the checks into their bank accounts, then use a wire transfer to send the money to the scam artist — purportedly as part of a “training assignment.”

Corbett says the typical scam instructs someone to wire $3,000 to $4,000, often to an address in Canada.