Site to Avoid: Franklin Allen and Associates & a New Spin on the Cashier’s Check Scam

While we work on getting this site taken down, we wanted to alert you of a website we came across that has essentially phished our site and they appear to be a mystery shopping company based in Texas. They go under the name Franklin Allen & Associates – thankfully, there are no obvious links that take people anywhere, which is good because we certainly don’t want others to think they are on our site logging into anything.

You can see they’ve taken most, if not all, of our site’s content:

This is a link to their page: http://mysteryevaluations.com/Service.htm

This is a link to our page: http://www.ishopforyou.com/Services.html

Now, the question remains: how could the average person, especially one not familiar with our company, know that it is a fictitious site? It is actually difficult to do, but we can offer some pointers to help you out:

1. None of the links are working. I am actually thankful for this – if the new shopper registration link was working, for example, who knows where it would take people.

2. Do a company search online. Better yet, go to a reputable website for mystery shoppers – such as the MSPA site or Volition’s message board. You can do a search on the company in Volition, and if it doesn’t yield results, you can start a thread to see what people know. Mystery shoppers are VERY knowledgable about mystery shopping companies and can certainly help you stay away from sites that may not be legitimate.

Another thing that we’ve gotten wind of in the last few days (not related to this website) was a new spin on the Western Union scam. In this case, I had someone call asking about the “Western Union evaluation” she received in the mail. Sigh…here we go again!

I asked her for details so we could file a complaint, and it seems that she was given a money order for $900. She was instructed to keep $200 and send the remainder via Western Union to the “next shopper in line.” Definitely an interesting twist, but this person was smart enough to call us to check it out. She was given our name, but when she asked the gentleman she spoke with for a website to look them up, he said that the recent tornado in Joplin “wiped out their website.” I know that tornado was powerful, but I’ve never heard of one knocking out a website!

It’s been an interesting week for fraud, and we wanted to be sure to share what we know with you to keep you safe. Please stay away from anything that doesn’t sound quite right or sounds too good to be true – it usually is!

Until next time…happy shopping!