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Mystery Shopping Scammers Convicted
In the US, three companies and five people who operated a mystery shopping scam have paid $850,000 to the FTC to settle charges of deceptive marketing and contempt.
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) said the defendants ran ads in various media on- and offline for one of the companies, MysteryShopLink.com, and told those responding that the company had large numbers of unfilled mystery shopping jobs available. In exchange for a $99 fee, consumers were promised enough work to earn a steady full-time or part-time income as mystery shoppers, the FTC said. Instead they received a 'worthless' certification and access to generally low-paying jobs for which they competed on the same terms as everyone else, in most cases getting no jobs and earning no money.
The companies, originally charged by the FTC in March 2007, were Mystery Shop Link and Tangent Group, both based in Portland, MA, and telemarketer Harp Marketing Services, based in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The FTC also charged two companies and three individuals with contempt, related to a violation of the terms of an earlier telemarketing fraud judgement by one of them, Robin Larry Murphy; and fined them $100,000.
Harp Marketing, the main telemarketing firm handling consumer calls and sales for Mystery Shop Link, was not included in the contempt charge but was ordered to pay $750,000 in redress. Both settlements also include suspended judgements for multi-million dollar sums which will be imposed if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition, ie if they are able to pay.
Web site: www.ftc.gov .
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