Hello Everyone:

I'm new to Flyer Talk. I applied for 3 cards at the same time and didn't expect to get approved for all of them. I now have to spend $9000 in 3 months which I am not able to do on my own. One of my best friends just moved from Japan to Manhattan. I thought maybe I could pay his rent, which is $3000, every month and then he just gives me cash or maybe I can get him Visa or AMEX prepaid cards since he doesn't qualify for credit cards here.

My question is: is this illegal? If I did it every month for 12 months, I would get 36,000 miles but since $36,000 would either be coming into my account or going onto my card and my yearly salary is $40,000, does this look shady? Would the IRS start asking questions? Would Chase or Citi care? What about if I only did it for 3 months?