M&Ms Imposter Car Wrap Scam

A reader recently received a text regarding an opportunity promoting M&Ms:

Would you drive your car with a tiny M&M Advert for 500 every week? Visit https://mmswrappromotion.weebly.com

We clicked the link and could soon tell the page wasn’t created by Mars, the multibillion-dollar company that owns M&Ms, among dozens of other global brands.

It was a combination of things that tipped us off – from the requirement that those who apply have “a physical bank,” to curious affirmations such as “this is what you deserve” and “give yourself a thumbs up in the mirror for making great decisions,” to punctuation mistakes and random capitalization. Take, for example, this sentence:

We are currently seeking to employ individual’s [sic] Nationwide, Regular citizens, Professional drivers to go about their normal routine as they usually do, only with a big advert for “M&M” plastered on your Bike/Car/Truck.

But the sloppiest part came further down the page:

Starbucks shall provide a specialist that will handle the advert placing and removal on your vehicle. You will receive an upfront payment in form of a check via courier service for accepting to carry this advert on your car.

Starbucks? It looks like someone forgot to swap Starbucks out for M&Ms. Which is to say, this is a scam – a car wrap scam, to be precise. And it appears M&Ms isn’t the only brand caught up in the scam.

How the car wrap scam works

The goal is to get you to withdraw money from your checking account after you deposit the check but before it bounces (because it’s a fake check), leaving you with a hole in your bank account. Hence the need for “a physical bank.” That “specialist” in charge of installing the decal on your car? They aren’t coming because they don’t exist.

Some companies have legitimate car wrap programs that pay consumers to shrink-wrap their car in the brand’s advertising. So some offers may be legit but proceed with caution, such as confirming with the brand that they actually have a car wrap program.

Find more of our coverage on car wrap scams here.