I answered a Mystery Shopper ad in the WSJ placed by SIFY LLC. They are sending a certified check/money order for $3,000. I'm to keep $300 and send the rest to a location by Western Union. How can I verify the legitimacy of the check when it arrives?
Don't even bother trying to verify the legitimacy of the check you receive. You've described a classic scam. The check will be drawn on a bank that will not respond to a request to verify the authenticity of the check, the instructions from the advertiser will require you to deposit the check, withdraw funds as quickly as possible (a day or two before your bank is notified that the check is fraudulent), and pay for the Western Union transfer with cash. That would leave you high and dry, accountable to your bank for the amount of the bogus check.
Just out of curiousity, we googled "SIFY LLC" and we didn't like what we saw. One of the results led to what appeared to be job ads from the Wall Street Journal, but the web page address (URL) was clearly not anything that would be associated with that newspaper. We are even more convinced now that the Mystery Shopper ad is a complete scam.
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Don't even bother trying to verify the legitimacy of the check you receive. You've described a classic scam. The check will be drawn on a bank that will not respond to a request to verify the authenticity of the check, the instructions from the advertiser will require you to 