Couple owes thousands after money order scam
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BEAR LAKE, mi (WPBN/WGTU) —A Manistee County couple learned the hard way that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
What started as a search for a new job turned out to be a scam that has the couple owing a nearby store close to $5,000.
It started in November when Jennifer xxx was looking for a job using an online job search website.
It was while she was looking for jobs online that she received an email that appeared to be a job offer.
“And I got an email that asked me to take an evaluation test and that I could get paid to participate,” she says. “So I went ahead and I took the evaluation. And I didn’t hear anything from them until I received an envelope in the mail that had a money order for $978 from the U.S. Postal Service.”
Instructions included with the money order said to deposit in bank account and withdraw 24 hours later.
xxx didn’t have a bank account, so she cashed it at a local store.
She was to spend $10 as a secret shopper, send back $800, and keep the rest for herself.
“I don’t know I was so happy,” says xxx. “I was like wow I’ve got a job that I can handle doing because I’ve been on disability for the last 20 years and I’ve been trying to get off disability.”
She did what the instructions said, filed reports from her shopping trips and thought her luck had finally changed.
Then, a phone call from the owner of Saddle-Up Gas & Grocery where the money orders were cashed.
“And then I get the phone call that I owe Saddle-Up now almost $5,000,” she says.
“He called me up and said these money orders were fake,” says Ron xxx. “And we were going to have to figure out a way to pay him back. I told him we’ll try to pay him back. I don’t know what to do because everybody got scammed on this deal.”
After learning the money orders were fakes, they brought two more to the Bear Lake Post Office for Postmaster Jess Henry to see.
“It was just instant,” Henry says. “You could just look at them and see that they were bad money orders. They’re close. They’re getting good at them. But our clerks are pretty well trained on what to look for. Well the big thing on the one I noticed was the watermark on it. The watermark is very vivid on theirs where ours you actually have to hold up to the light and look at it.”
In all, xxx says she cashed four money orders.
She deposited four more in a new bank account, but cancelled those as soon as she learned they were fakes.
She had two more money orders mailed to her that she didn’t cash.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that she didn’t cash all of them.
As for Saddle-Up Gas and Grocery, they no longer cash money orders.
Bear Lake’s Postmaster says if you have any questions about the validity of money orders, you can bring them to any post office to have them checked.
