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  The Chicago BBB has received correspondence indicating that consumers have received mailings that appear to be from Meier Clinics of Illinois, advertising opportunities to mystery shop. The letter asks consumers to deposit an included check and to forward a portion of those funds onward via wire transfer. Consumers should please be advised that this request is indicative of a check scam, and furthermore that these mailings do not appear to originate from Meier Clinics of Illinois, whose name is only being used by the perpetrators to add legitimacy to the scam.
  
  The check scam attempts to defraud a consumer out of their own funds from a bank account to which they have access. This is accomplished by sending a consumer a check of some sort, which the consumer is asked to deposit in their bank account. There can be any number of justifications for this action. Some examples are:
  
  * Consumers are told that they have won a lottery, and the check is to cover fees of some sort.
  
  * Consumers are asked to "mystery shop" a money wiring service, using the check funds for the process and for payment.
  
  * Often seen at online auction and classified sites, consumers may be sent a check to pay for an item being sold, but for (usually convoluted) various reasons, the buyer needs to send the seller more money than the item actually costs. Also referred to sometimes as an "overpayment scam".
  
  Once the consumer has deposited this check in their bank account, they are asked to wire funds onward to another person, for various reasons related to the above points, such as mystery shopping, payment of taxes or fees, or to pay "shipping" in an online auction/classifieds overpayment scam. The catch here is that due to various banking practices, it is possible for a check to appear to have "cleared" the bank anywhere from immediately to 10 days later, when in reality the bank is still investigating the check. The end result is that when the bank discovers that the check has no funds behind it, or is a fraudulent check, any funds from that check will be removed from the victim's bank account, leaving the victim responsible for any funds spent, including those sent by wire. This is true even if as a result, the victim's account must become overdrawn by hundreds of dollars.
  
  Additionally, pepetrators of this scam often use the names of legitimate entities in order to make themselves look more official.
  
  For more information on this and other similar scams, please visit www.bbb.org