9 ms·

A fake job offer gone wrong

367 points by jestarray 4y ago

milek27 4y ago
There's only the archaic financial system in the US to blame that creates more opportunities for scam.
f2000 4y ago
The bad grammar was a tell for me - did not even come close to being plausibly from a native English speaker. That said, I can understand how someone who very much needs/wants a job could could fall prey. I hope things work out for this guy.
752963e64 4y ago
update8887 4y ago
Maybe if all company data was in git(hub) it could help check who adds a company, and from which source come the jobs https://github.com/joblisttoday/data https://github.com/joblisttoday/data
- kube-system 4y ago
  Why in the world would GitHub be a good solution for that? Most jobs are not software jobs. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  - update8887 4y ago
    That is a transparent place to store data, where all edits history are publicly visible. Does not have to be software jobs.
qwertyuiop_ 4y ago
The Indian scammers have unseated Nigerian princes with oil fields.
troon-lover 4y ago
windowshopping 4y ago
Could anyone be so kind as to comment a tl;dr of this one? I am curious but it was very long and I haven't the time at this moment.
- bagels 4y ago
  Classic fake check, send us the money before it clears scam. The premise this time is that the check is for office equipment for a fake job offer.
  - zerr 4y ago
    When you receive the check, shouldn't you go to the bank and withdraw the cash with that? And bank lets you know that it is a fake check, thus denying the withdrawal. At what stage and why are you required to send your cash to someone else?
    - lozenge 4y ago
      No, the bank doesn't know if it's a fake check straight away. They find out weeks later during a reconciliation process with the bank that printed the check.
      - sgerenser 4y ago
        To add more context: the check is usually not completely fake. It has a legit bank routing and account number on it, typically a business that is also being scammed. So the money will likely actually get withdrawn from some random business’s account and only discovered weeks or even months later.
      - smeej 4y ago
        And if you've attempted to withdraw it, they immediately become very suspicious that you knew it was fake and were trying to steal from them. Good luck convincing them otherwise!
- VonGuard 4y ago
sharkjacobs 4y ago
Are cheques even used for anything except for fraud anymore? Open call: Anyone out there paying or receiving payment with cheque in the last ten years?
- Gh0stRAT 4y ago
  I just paid the US State Department via check for passport renewal. Also, I expect to use my checkbook later this year to buy a car. Overall, I probably average 2 checks per year. (though I do expect that to decrease to 0 in the next 5-10 years)
- pg5 4y ago
  In the last couple years, I used to use checks pretty frequently to transfer between my personal and business bank accounts with different banks. It was the easiest way to do it without fees and was reasonably quick (used mobile deposit).
- swsieber 4y ago
  Yes
- furyofantares 4y ago
  I still pay landscapers, cleaning folks, and a nanny that way
  - trollied 4y ago
    But the butler prefers a bank transfer? :)
    - furyofantares 4y ago
      The butler and the chef prefer cash
- upon_drumhead 4y ago
  Yes, we pay for a yard service a few times a year to do some bigger projects and they only accept checks. Sadly, not everyone has moved digitally
nigamanth 4y ago
To be honest, one can easily realize that this "Marc Cannon" is a fake with the amount of spelling and grammatical errors he makes. Real professionals do not make spelling and grammar errors such as: "Do you have any other question ?" "Good morning how are you this morning." "I will send you later" "Good morning, How are you doing today ?" "This is very disrespectful and all director are to meet you for training on monday and you're 'suppose' to have all your materials before then" It was practically a dead giveaway when the guy used "autonation.com@proton.me", because the guy doesn't have access to the domain's email, he probably didn't even understand what you were saying.
- treve 4y ago
  Why are you shaming the victim? Of course some people will fall through the cracks. It's not their fault
- bagels 4y ago
  Definitely a cause for alarm for someone that supposedly works in software in Florida, but there are professionals who don't have English as their first language.
  - nigamanth 4y ago
    Well, yeah there are professionals who don't have English as their first language, but I mean making a mistake in the most basic punctuation marks? Sure if he doesn't know the difference between "it's" and "its" then it's fine, but if he doesn't know how to properly use commas in a sentence then one must question his professionality. Additionally, there was no way he doesn't have the office email ID.
  - nigamanth 4y ago
    Well, yeah there are professionals who don't have English as their first language, but I mean making a mistake in the most basic punctuation marks? Sure if he doesn't know the difference between "it's" and "its" then it's fine, but if he doesn't know how to properly use commas in a sentence then one must question his professionality. Additionally, there was no way he couldn't have had access to automation.com
csours 4y ago
As someone who has worked a corporate job for a while, this is all red flags _BUT_ if you have not worked for a corporation, and you really need a job, you may be motivated to dismiss those little warning signs so you can get paid. Scams don't work because scammers are smart; scams work because scammers exploit our motivations. Beware of charity scams this holiday season.
- maccard 4y ago
  I've worked at corporate jobs and smaller companies, and frankly if a large company said "here's a list of our authorised resellers, and a signing bonus paid by cheque, please use it to buy equipment as it's faster than going through procurement" I would 100% believe them as at every job I've ever had (before I got a company card) it was faster and easier to just buy and expense. I genuinely wouldn't bat an eyelid until it was too late.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    I would certainly expect it to be faster than procurement, but not living in the US the concept of receiving a Cheque in the 21st century would raise all forms of red flags. If they deposited the cash directly into my account via a BACS payment, same as my salary, that would be far more believable. That said, $10k in office expenses for someone starting on $40k a year ($20/hr training) would also raise a flag. Edit: Do people really get paid by checks in the US?
    - ghaff 4y ago
      A personal check in this case I guess would be... odd. And there are certainly other red flags. But I receive checks from various organizations I don't have direct deposit set up with on a semi-regular basis, e.g. from my healthcare flexible spending account. Checks are definitely still used in the US even if much less frequently than they used to be. (If you count the ones my bank sends out on my behalf I write a few checks a month myself.)
    - abrylov 4y ago
      We do. Small companies don’t want to deal with setting direct deposits through an ACH and it’s much easier to write a check. The latest number from the Federal Reserve was that in 2018 they processed 18 billion checks issued by companies and individuals.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
baron816 4y ago
Not losing anything but coming this close to getting scammed can feel very embarrassing. Thank you for putting this up to warn others. I can tell from the intro that you still feel duped. Yeah, it seems obvious in retrospect, but it really is very understandable. We want to believe it’s true so badly that we’re willing to look past all the red flags.
shmde 4y ago
Do you trust any work related email sent to you using a gmail account? Cause I absolutely don't. I work in a very very tiny startup and even this guy sent me the acceptance mail through his company site.
- itgoon 4y ago
  That was the biggest flag to me. Nobody in any kind of business uses @gmail.com. Maybe some Etsy person selling out of their extra bedroom, but that's it. Domain names and email hosting is too cheap to use gmail for business. Even if it was a legit business, I'd stay away if they couldn't be bothered to do that minimum.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Not true in UK, small businesses that are not working in tech will use free email with the suppliers domain.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      That's true in the US as well. Lots of small businesses just use gmail.
  - minimaul 4y ago
    It's not just the use of @gmail.com, it's the fact that it's clearly an autogenerated address with random chars that tripped me. If it was claiming to be a small business from companyname@gmail.com, I'd be less suspicious - but a large corporate not using their own domain for mail, the email address itself, and the then switching to a second email address are all giant red flags for me.
    - bitcharmer 4y ago
      Exactly this. How these email addresses didn't raise any red flags is beyond me. Looks like many people are much more gullible than I ever imagined.
  - 4y ago
ryandrake 4y ago
Great job figuring out it was a scam but honestly, it’s crazy that these things still work on anyone all the way in 2022. You would think that by now every human being that walks the earth would know that whenever someone you don’t know sends you “money” and then requests you send it back (or to another party) in a different form, it’s always a scam. There should be some ceremony whenever someone turns 16 or something, where you just get taught this and that’s the end of this scam. Insane that people still fall for this! Same for the gift card scams. No legit business or government on earth in any industry asks for gift cards as payment! This is like an absolute ironclad fact of the universe. But so many people still fall for it!
- kortilla 4y ago
  Delta airlines gives gift cards as payment for volunteering on oversold flights. Really doesn’t help dissuade people from “$50 Panera Bread” gift cards from being involved in transactions not involving Panera Bread.
  - ketzo 4y ago
    Yeah, but approximately no business or government agency in the world ACCEPTS gift cards as payment.
    - j33zusjuice 4y ago
      The companies that issue them accept them.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - freetanga 4y ago
        Redeem them. Which is a narrower definition than “accepts as payment”
- SanjayMehta 4y ago
tasty_freeze 4y ago
Sadly, my daughter got scammed earlier this year. She is a recent college grad from a liberal arts school, and had been working six months doing retail work after graduation. Looking to make use of her degree, she was excited to get a job offer doing remote work as an office coordinator. She has a dog so working from home was a plus, and $25/hr instead of $16/hr doing retail was a big raise. She not only lost $3000 from the scam check, she also lost her old job, having given two weeks notice and didn't realize it was a scam until she was gone. The thing that pained her the most was the shame of having been scammed. Although some red flags were there, her main blind spot was the disbelief that scammers would go to so much effort to (a) set up an entire website for the fake company, (b) were willing to spend hours in the fake interview, and (c) having her do two weeks of "training" courses while they waited for the laptop and other things she bought made it it cross country into their hands.
- silisili 4y ago
  Sorry that happened to her. There's also some mental concept where people already got started or went so far, and subconsciously don't want to believe they've been had, so keep going. I'm sure there's a name for it, I can't be bothered to look up. It's why romance scams are so common, and also why that McDonald's manager undressed that employee, for example. Fascinating, but sad.
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    The McDonalds manager story in question: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3688563&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3688563&page=1 Which would be completely unbelievable if there wasn't security footage of the whole thing!
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Meanwhile if an actual police officer directs a private citizen to perform this kind of search, it's not only apparently legal but approved by the medical and nursing board. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985537/gov.uscourts.azd.985537.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
electrondood 4y ago
> How much do you want for this position? "What's the range?" Scam or no scam, you shouldn't be telling them your desired rate/salary; you should be asking them what the range is for the position they're hiring for. It's like a cop asking you "do you know why I pulled you over?" Don't volunteer information, just ask "Why did you pull me over?"
- maccard 4y ago
  The information on rates for many people is freely available. I'm more than happy to share my expected salary in the first interview, as the worst case scenario for both of us is if it comes out after an onsite that there's a disparity. Levels.fyi, salary ranges on a large number of employer websites, even glassdoor, will give you a reasonable indication of rates.
archb 4y ago
Two of my friends got the same email upon applying: offer to interview, PDF interview, offered job position, asked to sign offer letter, and offer to send a check. It easily stood out as a scam, as I have read tons of similar stories on reddit. What stood out to me is that they had applied on Indeed via LinkedIn, yet gotten into this scam loop. As Indeed a reputable place, curious, I applied to the same position but was rejected in a day, and my rejection letter came from official AutoNation address.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Indeed sell access to candidate information uploaded to their platform (including contacts). Can't remember whether it's clearly communicated to candidates or opted out by default or not, but there's a use case for that service and I've helped make legitimate hires using it before. But for the scammer it's easy enough to quietly use an Indeed business account completely unrelated to their scam, buy a bunch of resumes from people who have actually applied for jobs in a certain field on Indeed, and contact those candidates, pretending to be a different business that posted real job ad for that job on Indeed. It also helps that Indeed users tend to one-click apply to large numbers of jobs so might believe they actually applied to that specific job, or otherwise trust some clever job-matching stuff is happening with their resume. Especially since most of the time it'll be their actual resume the "employer" responds with, not just their LinkedIn profile info
pfoof 4y ago
Same things happen in Germany with fake home rental offers. They even use stolen IDs to prove themselves.
- foepys 4y ago
  To elaborate: The scammer rents an Airbnb (or similar) and makes an excuse why they aren't present for a tour but gives you a pin/code for a key box. Then they tell you that all furniture (it's an Airbnb after all) can be put into storage on the "landlord's" dime and you don't have to pay anything. In the end after you signed they take your deposit and ghost you. This can be done multiple times with the same apartment, even on the same day. Some Airbnb owners reported that they had multiple families with trucks full of their stuff arrive on the same day to move in.
mdturnerphys 4y ago
They have my drivers license which contains a lot personal information but eh... proably somewhere based in india or something, I dunno. Freeze your credit reports with all 3 credit reporting companies. Last year someone flew into Seattle from out of state with a driver license with their photo but my info, including an old driver license number. They got a bunch of cell phones and attempted to open a number of store credit cards with it. They bought a car with a fake of someone else's https://bellevuebeatblog.com/2021/04/28/64000-dodge-challenger-recovered-in-id-theft-bust/ https://bellevuebeatblog.com/2021/04/28/64000-dodge-challeng...
- cmckn 4y ago
  I’m mostly shocked that you can spend $64,000 on a Dodge Challenger. Sorry you had to deal with that, sounds like a nightmare.
  - mdturnerphys 4y ago
    The credit card applications got blocked, but I found out about them because the thieves used my email address on the applications. The most frustrating part was trying to get in contact with the right people at T-Mobile and Verizon to report and shut down the fraudulent accounts. I found out about those because of soft credit pulls on my credit report. I'm not sure if a credit freeze would have prevented them since they were just soft pulls.
  - vba616 4y ago
    Pikers! You can configure a new Challenger to slightly over $108,000.
ipaddr 4y ago
You know it's fake because the company hasn't made you sit through 6 interviews with random panel guests then ghosted you for 3 month then low balled you and put a 24 hour expiry on the offer. Bonus credibility points for only giving half of the question during the whiteboard session only to casually remember remember at the very end while grading harshly for missing that. If the offer hasn't been rescinded at least once it's probably a red flag as well.
- drummer 4y ago
  Lol
- ChoGGi 4y ago
  He asked for 40 they counter-offered 45 :)
  - jacurtis 4y ago
    They offered 12.5% above asking, and never actually did an interview. He filled out a questionnaire and got no feedback from it.
firefoxd 4y ago
There's this magician called Jamy Ian swiss that I often watched. He would do a card trick and fool you. Then he tells you how he does the trick, and still fools you. It doesn't matter how much he tells you, you'll still get fooled because "Nobody thinks that magicians will work this hard to fool you." These scam tricks still work in 2022 because we think scammers are always on the nose. We never think how hard they will work just to fool us.
nking 4y ago
Very revealing how self interest can blind a type of person to an obvious scam. This guy got lucky but they almost had him. I can’t help but think of crypto.
GistNoesis 4y ago
In this holiday season, remember to always check your gift cards for fake barcodes stickers: https://www.pcmag.com/news/new-gift-card-scam-uses-barcode-stickers-to-steal-your-cash https://www.pcmag.com/news/new-gift-card-scam-uses-barcode-s...
Joel_Mckay 4y ago
In general, a commercial entity will rarely use a free email service like Google mail. And the ones that do, are too small to keep you employed very long. And yes, these scams show up anywhere there is no traceable financial history to the advertiser. Also, did you know using a staffing agent is pretty much a guaranteed %15 to %30 pay cut from if you applied directly to a company hr contact. Note too, that once you use a staffing agent, that often your CV can no longer be considered when directly submitted to a firm that also recently posted on the agents service. Asking employees for money sounds like a ridiculous premise, and rather cheeky if it is normal in your area.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
What would be useful is a clear explanation of the workings of these scams - I mean it took me halfway through this thread to work out he was pressured to repay an uncleared cheque. And the "sex in your area" scam someone mentioned - I simply assumed that sort of thing is real (some kind of scuzzy meetup thing) as opposed to a scam (not sure how it works - presumably pay up before getting the number of the gorgeous woman who wants sex now! Admittedly cannot see a big difference between that and reputable dating agencies :-) So yeah a public safety website for scams might be useful. How do they all work?
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > So yeah a public safety website for scams might be useful. https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca... It's useless because people getting scammed aren't gonna check those websites anyway.
ttoinou 4y ago
11. I saw a ton of red flags in regards to grammar and spelling but brushed it off, maybe it was just some foreign recruiter, whatever, I make typos all the time That's part of the scam though, it's made on purpose
anonymous344 4y ago
jtagen 4y ago
What would you have job posting sites do differently to validate employers? This is an extremely difficult problem.
aabajian 4y ago
For everyone who is commenting on the grammar/spelling mistakes, this is on-purpose. It dramatically increases the positive predictive value of their scam (i.e. the probability that the victim they have messaged on day 1 will go through with the wire transfer on day 5). It does this by pre-filtering the general population for gullible individuals.
- jacurtis 4y ago
  Yes, because it is worth noting that there is a tangible investment being made by the scammer here. They have to know that there's a decent chance that the victim follows-through on the scam. At a minimum there is the cost of the fake check itself (which looks pretty good to be honest) and the cost of the overnight UPS envelope. At a minimum I'd imagine this is a $25 investment on the scammer. If the victim gets cold feet (like OP) and doesn't go through with it, then the scammer actually does lose money here. They are making a real tangible gamble when they send the check that the victim will fall for it. I realize $25 isn't a lot, but they wouldn't want to just send this out to everyone. So there needs to be some level of filtering to give the scammer the confidence that the victim will follow-through. The bad grammar is intentional. This is often cited as a way to think that the victim is "stupid", but thats actually not true. The scammer is assuming that the victim will know the grammar is bad and actually notice the mistakes. The scammer isn't looking for someone who doesn't notice the bad grammar, they are looking for someone who is willing to overlook the red flag that the bad grammar represents. If they are willing to overlook a major red flag like that, then they are more likely to overlook smaller red flags later on, making them more likely to follow through. OP is a great example of this as they state at the beginning that they noticed the bad grammar from the start, but were excited about the opportunity and overlooked it. Even someone with only high school education would read this and naturally notice the bad grammar. But overlooking it is what the scammers want to see. I also think it's important the line where the scammer asks OP if he has ever done a wire transfer before. When OP says they haven't then the response from the scammer was "Ok do it NOW". Again, they want people who don't understand the un-reversible nature of wire transfers. A lot of people naturally assume that all banking transactions are protected like credit cards (and to a lesser degree debit cards) are. Someone who has never made a wire transfer is likely to not understand this, which is great news for the scammer. A natural response from a co-worker if they asked you legitimately (for some reason) to make a wire transfer and you say you didn't know how, would be to offer to explain how it works, not rush them to do something that they just admitted they know nothing about.
martini333 4y ago
Meta: HN should show subdomain for pages.dev
skilled 4y ago
I haven't gone through all the comments, but am I the only one in here who doesn't want to read past 2nd email? If someone sent me some shady email address, then that shady email address sent me a message saying, "Hey it's me that shady email address owner, but I can't get to it, so I am using ANOTHER shady address." Someone convince me this post of his is not a waste of time.
- deepspace 4y ago
  It's a waste of time. The idiot fell for the most obvious of scams. Apart from the fake email addresses, the first line of the first email reads: "Our company AutoNation received your resume and application in respect of our job posting". That weird phrasing just screams scam. Every conversation with the "company" after that gets worse and more scammy.
- evandale 4y ago
  Yeah, I don't know how I would have gone past that point. There's also the weird capitalization of words after commas and "Screening Test/Interview Questions" and if you do bother to make it past email two it changes to "Screening test/Interview Questions" and really bad grammar in general. Those kinds of silly mistakes are nearly intolerable on resumes, why would it be acceptable for a hiring manager or HR to communicate using horrible grammar?
  - skilled 4y ago
    I've been thinking about this more, and I wonder if it could be related to what the "advance fee" or "inheritance" scammers do. Basically, they make the email as ridiculous as possible because it weeds out the smart people and leaves them with those who would genuinely fall for it. (I am not calling the author of this post stupid, btw. I'm just making an observation.)
- chrisbaker98 4y ago
  Yeah, I read the post thinking "how on earth is this guy still falling for it? Everything about this screams scam, scam, scam, scam. Is he stupid or something?" If I'd come this close to falling for such an obvious scam I'd be embarrassed to tell anyone it happened at all, much less publish a full transcript.
trhr 4y ago
I gotta that say by email 2, I'd be like "I don't work for people who send corporate emails from gmail" and ghosted them.
chaostheory 4y ago
These people are the same ones targeting the elderly. Now they’re targeting people in financial distress who have no real work experience in a corporate environment. These scammers are garbage because they specifically target the weak and vulnerable I’m glad that OP didn’t fall for it, and I’m impressed that he would publicly post a detailed account despite the embarrassment. It’s a nice public service
evo_9 4y ago
Your rate of $40 an hour is way off; I hired a jr/mid c# dev @115k (fully remote) recently.
throwoutway 4y ago
> If you have any advice please send it to me. I would submit this to law enforcement. Wire fraud is a crime that is often investigated, and the more examples of these scams they have the better.
tlogan 4y ago
One thing what does not help is that legit companies and businesses act as scammers. I receive also a valid calls from companies and email which look 100% as scam. Just recently I got call from hospital about upcoming my procedure (I did not answer — all unverified calls go to vmail) and when I called back the hospital and they had no clue. But it was a valid call: they outsourced all these things to company x which outsourced that to company y. All they cared is that company which does this have HIPPA compliance - all other things (unverified phone numbers, central system, etc.) whatever.
- simne 4y ago
  Sorry, but Your case with hospital, is very similar to typical corporative chaos, when because of CAP theorem (corporations are distributed systems by definition), information delays unavoidable, and one department already know information, and others have no clue. Sure, CAP theorem, is not reason to pardon chaos.
rob-alarcon 4y ago
Yeah I've encountered at least a couple of recruiter companies who were really weird and gave me bad vibes and decided not to continue with them, trust your gut, what made me think twice about these recruiters: 1- Unusually bad English (Not talking about normal immigrant English like mine, but like really bad, no way someone hired this person to recruit for these kind of positions). 2- These `recruiters` talk in very low volume, I had to tell them to speak louder, my guess is that they are in an office with a lot of people doing the same. 3- They ask you about weird stuff in their e-mail communication, like sign something in early phases of interviewing. 4- When tell you when they will call you and the number is flagged as 'SCAM LIKELY' then they tell you to save the number, super red flag After that I googled the companies / job postings and were super generic with bad reviews in glassdoor.
WesleyJohnson 4y ago
My wife almost got taken by a similar scam very recently, but for a remote content editor position. She was applying for various jobs, but one she didn't apply reached out to her. As she had been looking for a little while, but only finding opportunities that didn't quite fit what she needed in terms of pay, hours and schedule flexibility - when she was offered a position that checked all the boxes she was ecstatic. I'll spare the full back and forth, but the scam was somewhat similar in the setup. The send you a check, but instead of you wiring it back to them, you use the funds to purchase your remote equipment from THEIR online store. They have specific requirements on what kind of setup you need and claim it's easier for you to buy it from them in a bundle. I hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the correspondence between her and the "employer", but once she told me that I knew it wasn't legit. Why wouldn't they just send you equipment instead of check to buy it from them? We played along for a little bit longer, mostly because she wanted to believe it was legitimate and her pride was hurt. When they asked her to print a check from an email and then deposit that with her mobile app, she saw the writing on the wall. She was very, very hurt and felt silly having to go back to friends and family and let them know she wasn't gainfully employed, after all. But thankfully we figured it out before we were out any money.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  Content producer/editor here. Had a similar experience but they wanted me to sign up for all this stuff to begin the application process, as well as asked for a LOT of personal info. We are definitely being targeted unfortunately.
andix 4y ago
I think it's quite simple: If you are starting a job, the company pays you. Never ever should you spend a significant amount of money before receiving the first pay check.
- mint2 4y ago
  spending personal money after is sketchy too if they “pay” and it’s still only the first few weeks
  - andix 4y ago
    Yeah, but on business trips this is usually the reality in big corporations. Quite often even the company credit card is deducted from the employees bank account. And you need to get the money reimbursed with the receipts. If you do it fast enough you may get reimbursed before your credit card invoice is deducted from the account.
throwaway67743 4y ago
I'm confused - doesn't everyone immediately junk it when they use throwaway gmail addrs?
imwillofficial 4y ago
This was an almost incoherent, very poorly organized, and hard to read story. Needs another pass by the editor before I can recommend anyone waste their time.
jostiniane 4y ago
I got scammed twice in my life by people from the same country (will let you guess the country). What bugs me the most is the people blaming the victims (oh how can you fall for that..) which gives some sense that scammers are "smart", when they actually exploited/abused the most valuable thing in a functioning society: Trust, that would drag the society way back because now you can't have nice things, you have to doubt, distrust everything you deal with.
mint2 4y ago
Oh no! Even after the rude awakening they’re still erring on the side of trusting. At least put a credit freeze on. It’s easy! What’s done is done so no sense beating oneself over it or worrying, but take precaution! >”They have my drivers license which contains a lot personal information but eh... proably somewhere based in india or something, I dunno.” While hopefully not likely the worst case scenario can be a nightmare but doing two new actions now can help. 1. File a police report! 2. Put credit freeze! And a third action that everyone should do, request the free credit report a couple times a year and inspect. But makes sure it’s the legit site and also free. These actions will help prevent this https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2022-10-26/identity-theft-nightmare https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2022-10-26...
jliptzin 4y ago
“Our company AutoNation received your resume and application in respect of our job posting” That’s it for me, once I see language like that I know it is 100% a scam and e-mail goes to trash.
jwmoz 4y ago
Honestly, I don't know how you can fall for this
KabukiOrigin 4y ago
I think you're in the U.S., and if so immediately freeze your credit so that they can't take out new credit in your name. They seem pretty motivated and they have a lot of your identity information. You can learn how to freeze and unfreeze your credit for free at https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-credit https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre.... Then pull all three of your credit reports to check for anomalies. You can do that for free at https://www.annualcreditreport.com https://www.annualcreditreport.com. Right now you can do it for free every week. In non-pandemic times it's once a year. Do NOT agree to any upsells for additional features or protection to get your free report; it's not required to just get your reports.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
I think recently I dodged a scam too, i had an interview with a guy with camera off, website without tax code and all blanked off whois for the domain website
shaman1 4y ago
I don't see what Indeed and Autonation have to do with you being scammed. Autonation looks like a legit company that the scammers impersonated. There are numerous giveaways and red flags in the process, the major one is them using a non-corporate e-mail address. I interviewed with dozens of companies, that never happens. Also there are many spelling and grammatical errors, no serious company will present itself like that. A basic search reveals that Marc Cannon is EVP Chief CX Officer at Autonation. Do you think he is involved is hiring engineers so early in the process? One round of interviews to get hirred? Sorry, that never happens either (unless you work in crypto). Asked to pay for equipement in order to start work? Again, that never happens. Also, you transfered money to Destin Ellis? Why is that not a company? Where is the invoice? Why does the equipement go to them and not to you? Also, the offer letter is signed by Manfred Eissner which is a Brand Designer (on a simple search on LinkedIn) and not the CTO of the company. Not to mention that CTO's are not botherer with these offer letters usually, it's the head of HR who deals with these. Also, an offer letter is much longer and detailed. Some basic reasearch would have stopped you from getting scammed. I'm sorry that this is not what you want to hear, but scammers usually throw the bait and the most desperate buy it. What you show above is that you are not experienced with the workings of a corporation and were quite desperate to get hired. Try to recover the money by contacting the bank and after that maybe it's a good time to reflect why you fell for this trap and how to improve your reasoning in the future.
iamthejuan 4y ago
Time pressure is always a red flag, they will try to give you time pressure to try to switch off your logic and just do it right away.
yellowapple 4y ago
Pretty common scam, and one that I've run into multiple times, including at the very start of my freelance IT work right out of high school. In that case, a "business" wanted some computers fixed, but they needed to be released from some courier. The "business" stated they would send a check for me to deposit, and that I would then pay the courier on my end to release the hardware to be delivered for me to repair and send back. I hadn't seen this scam before, but I knew something was fishy; after all, if they're able to write me a check, why wouldn't they be able to pay this courier themselves? I stood my ground, insisting that delivering the hardware for repair was their responsibility, and theirs alone. The "business" sent the check anyway; I shredded it and ghosted them. I only learned later how common such check-bouncing scams indeed are, and how big of a bullet I had dodged.
diavelguru 4y ago
>> You will receive your duties everyday via email This to me is a dealbreaker. I would rather die than have daily tasks assigned. As a jr dev this may be tolerable for a short while but after umpteen years no way!
Charlie11 4y ago

367 points by jestarray 4y ago

There's only the archaic financial system in the US to blame that creates more opportunities for scam.

f2000 4y ago

The bad grammar was a tell for me - did not even come close to being plausibly from a native English speaker. That said, I can understand how someone who very much needs/wants a job could could fall prey. I hope things work out for this guy.

752963e64 4y ago

update8887 4y ago

Maybe if all company data was in git(hub) it could help check who adds a company, and from which source come the jobs https://github.com/joblisttoday/data https://github.com/joblisttoday/data

kube-system 4y ago
Why in the world would GitHub be a good solution for that? Most jobs are not software jobs. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- update8887 4y ago
  That is a transparent place to store data, where all edits history are publicly visible. Does not have to be software jobs.

qwertyuiop_ 4y ago

The Indian scammers have unseated Nigerian princes with oil fields.

troon-lover 4y ago

windowshopping 4y ago

Could anyone be so kind as to comment a tl;dr of this one? I am curious but it was very long and I haven't the time at this moment.

bagels 4y ago
Classic fake check, send us the money before it clears scam. The premise this time is that the check is for office equipment for a fake job offer.
- zerr 4y ago
  When you receive the check, shouldn't you go to the bank and withdraw the cash with that? And bank lets you know that it is a fake check, thus denying the withdrawal. At what stage and why are you required to send your cash to someone else?
  - lozenge 4y ago
    No, the bank doesn't know if it's a fake check straight away. They find out weeks later during a reconciliation process with the bank that printed the check.
    - sgerenser 4y ago
      To add more context: the check is usually not completely fake. It has a legit bank routing and account number on it, typically a business that is also being scammed. So the money will likely actually get withdrawn from some random business’s account and only discovered weeks or even months later.
    - smeej 4y ago
      And if you've attempted to withdraw it, they immediately become very suspicious that you knew it was fake and were trying to steal from them. Good luck convincing them otherwise!
VonGuard 4y ago

sharkjacobs 4y ago

Are cheques even used for anything except for fraud anymore? Open call: Anyone out there paying or receiving payment with cheque in the last ten years?

Gh0stRAT 4y ago
I just paid the US State Department via check for passport renewal. Also, I expect to use my checkbook later this year to buy a car. Overall, I probably average 2 checks per year. (though I do expect that to decrease to 0 in the next 5-10 years)
pg5 4y ago
In the last couple years, I used to use checks pretty frequently to transfer between my personal and business bank accounts with different banks. It was the easiest way to do it without fees and was reasonably quick (used mobile deposit).
swsieber 4y ago
Yes
furyofantares 4y ago
I still pay landscapers, cleaning folks, and a nanny that way
- trollied 4y ago
  But the butler prefers a bank transfer? :)
  - furyofantares 4y ago
    The butler and the chef prefer cash
upon_drumhead 4y ago
Yes, we pay for a yard service a few times a year to do some bigger projects and they only accept checks. Sadly, not everyone has moved digitally

nigamanth 4y ago

To be honest, one can easily realize that this "Marc Cannon" is a fake with the amount of spelling and grammatical errors he makes. Real professionals do not make spelling and grammar errors such as: "Do you have any other question ?" "Good morning how are you this morning." "I will send you later" "Good morning, How are you doing today ?" "This is very disrespectful and all director are to meet you for training on monday and you're 'suppose' to have all your materials before then" It was practically a dead giveaway when the guy used "autonation.com@proton.me", because the guy doesn't have access to the domain's email, he probably didn't even understand what you were saying.

treve 4y ago
Why are you shaming the victim? Of course some people will fall through the cracks. It's not their fault
bagels 4y ago
Definitely a cause for alarm for someone that supposedly works in software in Florida, but there are professionals who don't have English as their first language.
- nigamanth 4y ago
  Well, yeah there are professionals who don't have English as their first language, but I mean making a mistake in the most basic punctuation marks? Sure if he doesn't know the difference between "it's" and "its" then it's fine, but if he doesn't know how to properly use commas in a sentence then one must question his professionality. Additionally, there was no way he doesn't have the office email ID.
- nigamanth 4y ago
  Well, yeah there are professionals who don't have English as their first language, but I mean making a mistake in the most basic punctuation marks? Sure if he doesn't know the difference between "it's" and "its" then it's fine, but if he doesn't know how to properly use commas in a sentence then one must question his professionality. Additionally, there was no way he couldn't have had access to automation.com

csours 4y ago

As someone who has worked a corporate job for a while, this is all red flags _BUT_ if you have not worked for a corporation, and you really need a job, you may be motivated to dismiss those little warning signs so you can get paid. Scams don't work because scammers are smart; scams work because scammers exploit our motivations. Beware of charity scams this holiday season.

maccard 4y ago
I've worked at corporate jobs and smaller companies, and frankly if a large company said "here's a list of our authorised resellers, and a signing bonus paid by cheque, please use it to buy equipment as it's faster than going through procurement" I would 100% believe them as at every job I've ever had (before I got a company card) it was faster and easier to just buy and expense. I genuinely wouldn't bat an eyelid until it was too late.
- iso1631 4y ago
  I would certainly expect it to be faster than procurement, but not living in the US the concept of receiving a Cheque in the 21st century would raise all forms of red flags. If they deposited the cash directly into my account via a BACS payment, same as my salary, that would be far more believable. That said, $10k in office expenses for someone starting on $40k a year ($20/hr training) would also raise a flag. Edit: Do people really get paid by checks in the US?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    A personal check in this case I guess would be... odd. And there are certainly other red flags. But I receive checks from various organizations I don't have direct deposit set up with on a semi-regular basis, e.g. from my healthcare flexible spending account. Checks are definitely still used in the US even if much less frequently than they used to be. (If you count the ones my bank sends out on my behalf I write a few checks a month myself.)
  - abrylov 4y ago
    We do. Small companies don’t want to deal with setting direct deposits through an ACH and it’s much easier to write a check. The latest number from the Federal Reserve was that in 2018 they processed 18 billion checks issued by companies and individuals.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

baron816 4y ago

Not losing anything but coming this close to getting scammed can feel very embarrassing. Thank you for putting this up to warn others. I can tell from the intro that you still feel duped. Yeah, it seems obvious in retrospect, but it really is very understandable. We want to believe it’s true so badly that we’re willing to look past all the red flags.

shmde 4y ago

Do you trust any work related email sent to you using a gmail account? Cause I absolutely don't. I work in a very very tiny startup and even this guy sent me the acceptance mail through his company site.

itgoon 4y ago
That was the biggest flag to me. Nobody in any kind of business uses @gmail.com. Maybe some Etsy person selling out of their extra bedroom, but that's it. Domain names and email hosting is too cheap to use gmail for business. Even if it was a legit business, I'd stay away if they couldn't be bothered to do that minimum.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Not true in UK, small businesses that are not working in tech will use free email with the suppliers domain.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    That's true in the US as well. Lots of small businesses just use gmail.
- minimaul 4y ago
  It's not just the use of @gmail.com, it's the fact that it's clearly an autogenerated address with random chars that tripped me. If it was claiming to be a small business from companyname@gmail.com, I'd be less suspicious - but a large corporate not using their own domain for mail, the email address itself, and the then switching to a second email address are all giant red flags for me.
  - bitcharmer 4y ago
    Exactly this. How these email addresses didn't raise any red flags is beyond me. Looks like many people are much more gullible than I ever imagined.
- 4y ago

ryandrake 4y ago

Great job figuring out it was a scam but honestly, it’s crazy that these things still work on anyone all the way in 2022. You would think that by now every human being that walks the earth would know that whenever someone you don’t know sends you “money” and then requests you send it back (or to another party) in a different form, it’s always a scam. There should be some ceremony whenever someone turns 16 or something, where you just get taught this and that’s the end of this scam. Insane that people still fall for this! Same for the gift card scams. No legit business or government on earth in any industry asks for gift cards as payment! This is like an absolute ironclad fact of the universe. But so many people still fall for it!

kortilla 4y ago
Delta airlines gives gift cards as payment for volunteering on oversold flights. Really doesn’t help dissuade people from “$50 Panera Bread” gift cards from being involved in transactions not involving Panera Bread.
- ketzo 4y ago
  Yeah, but approximately no business or government agency in the world ACCEPTS gift cards as payment.
  - j33zusjuice 4y ago
    The companies that issue them accept them.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - freetanga 4y ago
      Redeem them. Which is a narrower definition than “accepts as payment”
SanjayMehta 4y ago

tasty_freeze 4y ago

Sadly, my daughter got scammed earlier this year. She is a recent college grad from a liberal arts school, and had been working six months doing retail work after graduation. Looking to make use of her degree, she was excited to get a job offer doing remote work as an office coordinator. She has a dog so working from home was a plus, and $25/hr instead of $16/hr doing retail was a big raise. She not only lost $3000 from the scam check, she also lost her old job, having given two weeks notice and didn't realize it was a scam until she was gone. The thing that pained her the most was the shame of having been scammed. Although some red flags were there, her main blind spot was the disbelief that scammers would go to so much effort to (a) set up an entire website for the fake company, (b) were willing to spend hours in the fake interview, and (c) having her do two weeks of "training" courses while they waited for the laptop and other things she bought made it it cross country into their hands.

silisili 4y ago
Sorry that happened to her. There's also some mental concept where people already got started or went so far, and subconsciously don't want to believe they've been had, so keep going. I'm sure there's a name for it, I can't be bothered to look up. It's why romance scams are so common, and also why that McDonald's manager undressed that employee, for example. Fascinating, but sad.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  The McDonalds manager story in question: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3688563&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3688563&page=1 Which would be completely unbelievable if there wasn't security footage of the whole thing!
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Meanwhile if an actual police officer directs a private citizen to perform this kind of search, it's not only apparently legal but approved by the medical and nursing board. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985537/gov.uscourts.azd.985537.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...

electrondood 4y ago

> How much do you want for this position? "What's the range?" Scam or no scam, you shouldn't be telling them your desired rate/salary; you should be asking them what the range is for the position they're hiring for. It's like a cop asking you "do you know why I pulled you over?" Don't volunteer information, just ask "Why did you pull me over?"

maccard 4y ago
The information on rates for many people is freely available. I'm more than happy to share my expected salary in the first interview, as the worst case scenario for both of us is if it comes out after an onsite that there's a disparity. Levels.fyi, salary ranges on a large number of employer websites, even glassdoor, will give you a reasonable indication of rates.

archb 4y ago

Two of my friends got the same email upon applying: offer to interview, PDF interview, offered job position, asked to sign offer letter, and offer to send a check. It easily stood out as a scam, as I have read tons of similar stories on reddit. What stood out to me is that they had applied on Indeed via LinkedIn, yet gotten into this scam loop. As Indeed a reputable place, curious, I applied to the same position but was rejected in a day, and my rejection letter came from official AutoNation address.

notahacker 4y ago
Indeed sell access to candidate information uploaded to their platform (including contacts). Can't remember whether it's clearly communicated to candidates or opted out by default or not, but there's a use case for that service and I've helped make legitimate hires using it before. But for the scammer it's easy enough to quietly use an Indeed business account completely unrelated to their scam, buy a bunch of resumes from people who have actually applied for jobs in a certain field on Indeed, and contact those candidates, pretending to be a different business that posted real job ad for that job on Indeed. It also helps that Indeed users tend to one-click apply to large numbers of jobs so might believe they actually applied to that specific job, or otherwise trust some clever job-matching stuff is happening with their resume. Especially since most of the time it'll be their actual resume the "employer" responds with, not just their LinkedIn profile info

pfoof 4y ago

Same things happen in Germany with fake home rental offers. They even use stolen IDs to prove themselves.

foepys 4y ago
To elaborate: The scammer rents an Airbnb (or similar) and makes an excuse why they aren't present for a tour but gives you a pin/code for a key box. Then they tell you that all furniture (it's an Airbnb after all) can be put into storage on the "landlord's" dime and you don't have to pay anything. In the end after you signed they take your deposit and ghost you. This can be done multiple times with the same apartment, even on the same day. Some Airbnb owners reported that they had multiple families with trucks full of their stuff arrive on the same day to move in.

mdturnerphys 4y ago

They have my drivers license which contains a lot personal information but eh... proably somewhere based in india or something, I dunno. Freeze your credit reports with all 3 credit reporting companies. Last year someone flew into Seattle from out of state with a driver license with their photo but my info, including an old driver license number. They got a bunch of cell phones and attempted to open a number of store credit cards with it. They bought a car with a fake of someone else's https://bellevuebeatblog.com/2021/04/28/64000-dodge-challenger-recovered-in-id-theft-bust/ https://bellevuebeatblog.com/2021/04/28/64000-dodge-challeng...

cmckn 4y ago
I’m mostly shocked that you can spend $64,000 on a Dodge Challenger. Sorry you had to deal with that, sounds like a nightmare.
- mdturnerphys 4y ago
  The credit card applications got blocked, but I found out about them because the thieves used my email address on the applications. The most frustrating part was trying to get in contact with the right people at T-Mobile and Verizon to report and shut down the fraudulent accounts. I found out about those because of soft credit pulls on my credit report. I'm not sure if a credit freeze would have prevented them since they were just soft pulls.
- vba616 4y ago
  Pikers! You can configure a new Challenger to slightly over $108,000.

ipaddr 4y ago

You know it's fake because the company hasn't made you sit through 6 interviews with random panel guests then ghosted you for 3 month then low balled you and put a 24 hour expiry on the offer. Bonus credibility points for only giving half of the question during the whiteboard session only to casually remember remember at the very end while grading harshly for missing that. If the offer hasn't been rescinded at least once it's probably a red flag as well.

drummer 4y ago
Lol
ChoGGi 4y ago
He asked for 40 they counter-offered 45 :)
- jacurtis 4y ago
  They offered 12.5% above asking, and never actually did an interview. He filled out a questionnaire and got no feedback from it.

firefoxd 4y ago

There's this magician called Jamy Ian swiss that I often watched. He would do a card trick and fool you. Then he tells you how he does the trick, and still fools you. It doesn't matter how much he tells you, you'll still get fooled because "Nobody thinks that magicians will work this hard to fool you." These scam tricks still work in 2022 because we think scammers are always on the nose. We never think how hard they will work just to fool us.

nking 4y ago

Very revealing how self interest can blind a type of person to an obvious scam. This guy got lucky but they almost had him. I can’t help but think of crypto.

GistNoesis 4y ago

In this holiday season, remember to always check your gift cards for fake barcodes stickers: https://www.pcmag.com/news/new-gift-card-scam-uses-barcode-stickers-to-steal-your-cash https://www.pcmag.com/news/new-gift-card-scam-uses-barcode-s...

Joel_Mckay 4y ago

In general, a commercial entity will rarely use a free email service like Google mail. And the ones that do, are too small to keep you employed very long. And yes, these scams show up anywhere there is no traceable financial history to the advertiser. Also, did you know using a staffing agent is pretty much a guaranteed %15 to %30 pay cut from if you applied directly to a company hr contact. Note too, that once you use a staffing agent, that often your CV can no longer be considered when directly submitted to a firm that also recently posted on the agents service. Asking employees for money sounds like a ridiculous premise, and rather cheeky if it is normal in your area.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

What would be useful is a clear explanation of the workings of these scams - I mean it took me halfway through this thread to work out he was pressured to repay an uncleared cheque. And the "sex in your area" scam someone mentioned - I simply assumed that sort of thing is real (some kind of scuzzy meetup thing) as opposed to a scam (not sure how it works - presumably pay up before getting the number of the gorgeous woman who wants sex now! Admittedly cannot see a big difference between that and reputable dating agencies :-) So yeah a public safety website for scams might be useful. How do they all work?

iLoveOncall 4y ago
> So yeah a public safety website for scams might be useful. https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca... It's useless because people getting scammed aren't gonna check those websites anyway.

ttoinou 4y ago

11. I saw a ton of red flags in regards to grammar and spelling but brushed it off, maybe it was just some foreign recruiter, whatever, I make typos all the time That's part of the scam though, it's made on purpose

anonymous344 4y ago

jtagen 4y ago

What would you have job posting sites do differently to validate employers? This is an extremely difficult problem.

aabajian 4y ago

For everyone who is commenting on the grammar/spelling mistakes, this is on-purpose. It dramatically increases the positive predictive value of their scam (i.e. the probability that the victim they have messaged on day 1 will go through with the wire transfer on day 5). It does this by pre-filtering the general population for gullible individuals.

jacurtis 4y ago
Yes, because it is worth noting that there is a tangible investment being made by the scammer here. They have to know that there's a decent chance that the victim follows-through on the scam. At a minimum there is the cost of the fake check itself (which looks pretty good to be honest) and the cost of the overnight UPS envelope. At a minimum I'd imagine this is a $25 investment on the scammer. If the victim gets cold feet (like OP) and doesn't go through with it, then the scammer actually does lose money here. They are making a real tangible gamble when they send the check that the victim will fall for it. I realize $25 isn't a lot, but they wouldn't want to just send this out to everyone. So there needs to be some level of filtering to give the scammer the confidence that the victim will follow-through. The bad grammar is intentional. This is often cited as a way to think that the victim is "stupid", but thats actually not true. The scammer is assuming that the victim will know the grammar is bad and actually notice the mistakes. The scammer isn't looking for someone who doesn't notice the bad grammar, they are looking for someone who is willing to overlook the red flag that the bad grammar represents. If they are willing to overlook a major red flag like that, then they are more likely to overlook smaller red flags later on, making them more likely to follow through. OP is a great example of this as they state at the beginning that they noticed the bad grammar from the start, but were excited about the opportunity and overlooked it. Even someone with only high school education would read this and naturally notice the bad grammar. But overlooking it is what the scammers want to see. I also think it's important the line where the scammer asks OP if he has ever done a wire transfer before. When OP says they haven't then the response from the scammer was "Ok do it NOW". Again, they want people who don't understand the un-reversible nature of wire transfers. A lot of people naturally assume that all banking transactions are protected like credit cards (and to a lesser degree debit cards) are. Someone who has never made a wire transfer is likely to not understand this, which is great news for the scammer. A natural response from a co-worker if they asked you legitimately (for some reason) to make a wire transfer and you say you didn't know how, would be to offer to explain how it works, not rush them to do something that they just admitted they know nothing about.

martini333 4y ago

Meta: HN should show subdomain for pages.dev

skilled 4y ago

I haven't gone through all the comments, but am I the only one in here who doesn't want to read past 2nd email? If someone sent me some shady email address, then that shady email address sent me a message saying, "Hey it's me that shady email address owner, but I can't get to it, so I am using ANOTHER shady address." Someone convince me this post of his is not a waste of time.

deepspace 4y ago
It's a waste of time. The idiot fell for the most obvious of scams. Apart from the fake email addresses, the first line of the first email reads: "Our company AutoNation received your resume and application in respect of our job posting". That weird phrasing just screams scam. Every conversation with the "company" after that gets worse and more scammy.
evandale 4y ago
Yeah, I don't know how I would have gone past that point. There's also the weird capitalization of words after commas and "Screening Test/Interview Questions" and if you do bother to make it past email two it changes to "Screening test/Interview Questions" and really bad grammar in general. Those kinds of silly mistakes are nearly intolerable on resumes, why would it be acceptable for a hiring manager or HR to communicate using horrible grammar?
- skilled 4y ago
  I've been thinking about this more, and I wonder if it could be related to what the "advance fee" or "inheritance" scammers do. Basically, they make the email as ridiculous as possible because it weeds out the smart people and leaves them with those who would genuinely fall for it. (I am not calling the author of this post stupid, btw. I'm just making an observation.)
chrisbaker98 4y ago
Yeah, I read the post thinking "how on earth is this guy still falling for it? Everything about this screams scam, scam, scam, scam. Is he stupid or something?" If I'd come this close to falling for such an obvious scam I'd be embarrassed to tell anyone it happened at all, much less publish a full transcript.

trhr 4y ago

I gotta that say by email 2, I'd be like "I don't work for people who send corporate emails from gmail" and ghosted them.

chaostheory 4y ago

These people are the same ones targeting the elderly. Now they’re targeting people in financial distress who have no real work experience in a corporate environment. These scammers are garbage because they specifically target the weak and vulnerable I’m glad that OP didn’t fall for it, and I’m impressed that he would publicly post a detailed account despite the embarrassment. It’s a nice public service

evo_9 4y ago

Your rate of $40 an hour is way off; I hired a jr/mid c# dev @115k (fully remote) recently.

throwoutway 4y ago

> If you have any advice please send it to me. I would submit this to law enforcement. Wire fraud is a crime that is often investigated, and the more examples of these scams they have the better.

tlogan 4y ago

One thing what does not help is that legit companies and businesses act as scammers. I receive also a valid calls from companies and email which look 100% as scam. Just recently I got call from hospital about upcoming my procedure (I did not answer — all unverified calls go to vmail) and when I called back the hospital and they had no clue. But it was a valid call: they outsourced all these things to company x which outsourced that to company y. All they cared is that company which does this have HIPPA compliance - all other things (unverified phone numbers, central system, etc.) whatever.

simne 4y ago
Sorry, but Your case with hospital, is very similar to typical corporative chaos, when because of CAP theorem (corporations are distributed systems by definition), information delays unavoidable, and one department already know information, and others have no clue. Sure, CAP theorem, is not reason to pardon chaos.

rob-alarcon 4y ago

Yeah I've encountered at least a couple of recruiter companies who were really weird and gave me bad vibes and decided not to continue with them, trust your gut, what made me think twice about these recruiters: 1- Unusually bad English (Not talking about normal immigrant English like mine, but like really bad, no way someone hired this person to recruit for these kind of positions). 2- These `recruiters` talk in very low volume, I had to tell them to speak louder, my guess is that they are in an office with a lot of people doing the same. 3- They ask you about weird stuff in their e-mail communication, like sign something in early phases of interviewing. 4- When tell you when they will call you and the number is flagged as 'SCAM LIKELY' then they tell you to save the number, super red flag After that I googled the companies / job postings and were super generic with bad reviews in glassdoor.

WesleyJohnson 4y ago

My wife almost got taken by a similar scam very recently, but for a remote content editor position. She was applying for various jobs, but one she didn't apply reached out to her. As she had been looking for a little while, but only finding opportunities that didn't quite fit what she needed in terms of pay, hours and schedule flexibility - when she was offered a position that checked all the boxes she was ecstatic. I'll spare the full back and forth, but the scam was somewhat similar in the setup. The send you a check, but instead of you wiring it back to them, you use the funds to purchase your remote equipment from THEIR online store. They have specific requirements on what kind of setup you need and claim it's easier for you to buy it from them in a bundle. I hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the correspondence between her and the "employer", but once she told me that I knew it wasn't legit. Why wouldn't they just send you equipment instead of check to buy it from them? We played along for a little bit longer, mostly because she wanted to believe it was legitimate and her pride was hurt. When they asked her to print a check from an email and then deposit that with her mobile app, she saw the writing on the wall. She was very, very hurt and felt silly having to go back to friends and family and let them know she wasn't gainfully employed, after all. But thankfully we figured it out before we were out any money.

Forgeties79 4y ago
Content producer/editor here. Had a similar experience but they wanted me to sign up for all this stuff to begin the application process, as well as asked for a LOT of personal info. We are definitely being targeted unfortunately.

andix 4y ago

I think it's quite simple: If you are starting a job, the company pays you. Never ever should you spend a significant amount of money before receiving the first pay check.

mint2 4y ago
spending personal money after is sketchy too if they “pay” and it’s still only the first few weeks
- andix 4y ago
  Yeah, but on business trips this is usually the reality in big corporations. Quite often even the company credit card is deducted from the employees bank account. And you need to get the money reimbursed with the receipts. If you do it fast enough you may get reimbursed before your credit card invoice is deducted from the account.

throwaway67743 4y ago

I'm confused - doesn't everyone immediately junk it when they use throwaway gmail addrs?

imwillofficial 4y ago

This was an almost incoherent, very poorly organized, and hard to read story. Needs another pass by the editor before I can recommend anyone waste their time.

jostiniane 4y ago

I got scammed twice in my life by people from the same country (will let you guess the country). What bugs me the most is the people blaming the victims (oh how can you fall for that..) which gives some sense that scammers are "smart", when they actually exploited/abused the most valuable thing in a functioning society: Trust, that would drag the society way back because now you can't have nice things, you have to doubt, distrust everything you deal with.

mint2 4y ago

Oh no! Even after the rude awakening they’re still erring on the side of trusting. At least put a credit freeze on. It’s easy! What’s done is done so no sense beating oneself over it or worrying, but take precaution! >”They have my drivers license which contains a lot personal information but eh... proably somewhere based in india or something, I dunno.” While hopefully not likely the worst case scenario can be a nightmare but doing two new actions now can help. 1. File a police report! 2. Put credit freeze! And a third action that everyone should do, request the free credit report a couple times a year and inspect. But makes sure it’s the legit site and also free. These actions will help prevent this https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2022-10-26/identity-theft-nightmare https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2022-10-26...

jliptzin 4y ago

“Our company AutoNation received your resume and application in respect of our job posting” That’s it for me, once I see language like that I know it is 100% a scam and e-mail goes to trash.

jwmoz 4y ago

Honestly, I don't know how you can fall for this

KabukiOrigin 4y ago

I think you're in the U.S., and if so immediately freeze your credit so that they can't take out new credit in your name. They seem pretty motivated and they have a lot of your identity information. You can learn how to freeze and unfreeze your credit for free at https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-credit https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-cre.... Then pull all three of your credit reports to check for anomalies. You can do that for free at https://www.annualcreditreport.com https://www.annualcreditreport.com. Right now you can do it for free every week. In non-pandemic times it's once a year. Do NOT agree to any upsells for additional features or protection to get your free report; it's not required to just get your reports.

lnxg33k1 4y ago

I think recently I dodged a scam too, i had an interview with a guy with camera off, website without tax code and all blanked off whois for the domain website

shaman1 4y ago

I don't see what Indeed and Autonation have to do with you being scammed. Autonation looks like a legit company that the scammers impersonated. There are numerous giveaways and red flags in the process, the major one is them using a non-corporate e-mail address. I interviewed with dozens of companies, that never happens. Also there are many spelling and grammatical errors, no serious company will present itself like that. A basic search reveals that Marc Cannon is EVP Chief CX Officer at Autonation. Do you think he is involved is hiring engineers so early in the process? One round of interviews to get hirred? Sorry, that never happens either (unless you work in crypto). Asked to pay for equipement in order to start work? Again, that never happens. Also, you transfered money to Destin Ellis? Why is that not a company? Where is the invoice? Why does the equipement go to them and not to you? Also, the offer letter is signed by Manfred Eissner which is a Brand Designer (on a simple search on LinkedIn) and not the CTO of the company. Not to mention that CTO's are not botherer with these offer letters usually, it's the head of HR who deals with these. Also, an offer letter is much longer and detailed. Some basic reasearch would have stopped you from getting scammed. I'm sorry that this is not what you want to hear, but scammers usually throw the bait and the most desperate buy it. What you show above is that you are not experienced with the workings of a corporation and were quite desperate to get hired. Try to recover the money by contacting the bank and after that maybe it's a good time to reflect why you fell for this trap and how to improve your reasoning in the future.

iamthejuan 4y ago

Time pressure is always a red flag, they will try to give you time pressure to try to switch off your logic and just do it right away.

yellowapple 4y ago

Pretty common scam, and one that I've run into multiple times, including at the very start of my freelance IT work right out of high school. In that case, a "business" wanted some computers fixed, but they needed to be released from some courier. The "business" stated they would send a check for me to deposit, and that I would then pay the courier on my end to release the hardware to be delivered for me to repair and send back. I hadn't seen this scam before, but I knew something was fishy; after all, if they're able to write me a check, why wouldn't they be able to pay this courier themselves? I stood my ground, insisting that delivering the hardware for repair was their responsibility, and theirs alone. The "business" sent the check anyway; I shredded it and ghosted them. I only learned later how common such check-bouncing scams indeed are, and how big of a bullet I had dodged.

diavelguru 4y ago

>> You will receive your duties everyday via email This to me is a dealbreaker. I would rather die than have daily tasks assigned. As a jr dev this may be tolerable for a short while but after umpteen years no way!

Charlie11 4y ago