Cape Coral- Ericka Cortina says the mystery shopper offer she received in the mail last week sounded too good to be true.

"I was optimistic at first," said Cortina, "They told me I could make $400 to $1,000 a week just for shopping."

The company, claiming to be the Consumer Research Group, sent her a $4,000 check and a survey of different stores and services she was to shop incognito.

All she had to do was deposit the check and spend some of that cashed money at Burger King and Wal-Mart.

And then, test the services of Money Gram and Western Union by wiring thousands from that four thousand dollar check to another mystery shopper.

Cortina says that raised red flags, so she called the phone number left on her letter. "They had an answer for everything. I asked why am I wiring such a large sum of money and they told me that this way it would go through all the checks," said Cortina.

She says they made her feel like it was for her own protection, that the large amounts would require her using an ID.

The company even referred her to it's web-site when she questioned whether the deal was legit.

Call For Action called the same number and got someone on the phone. However, once we started asking questions, the person hung up and did not answer the calls the next time we called.

It turns out the check the company sent her was a phony and had she cashed the check, she would end up having to pay all of the money back to the bank.

"It just looks so real, it's really scary," explained Cortina, looking over the check.

Cortina says she feels blessed for having the instinct to research the company and the check. She later reported it to the Florida Attorney Generals office where she was referred to "Phone Busters" in Canada, another consumer protection agency.

The company in question sent the letter to Cortina from Canada, using a yellow stamp that matched the red flag on several other letters just like it sent throughout the USA and Canada.

WINK News spoke with Phone Busters about the offer and it confirmed the "Consumer Research Group" deal is a scam.

Cortina says wants other people to know about the tempting deal the scam artists are trying to put before you just to rip you off, "Hopefully nobody else has this happen to them and hopefully nobody goes along with the scam."

Phone Busters tells WINK News at least five people have fallen victim to the Consumer Research Group scam, one person in Florida.

To learn more about taking action before a scam artist tries to fool you, you can go to these web-sites:

http://fakecheck.org/

http://phonebusters.com/english/index.html

http://myfloridalegal.com/consumer