You’ll pass the sniff test, they don’t.
Be careful they might try and use your identity to then commit more fraud.
How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
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Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#12Outsourcing your own job is quite a fraud business. Recently my friend was approached by a Telugu broker stating that he would pay 10k for a part time job ... My friend agreed to a tech stack and he was connected with one of his US clients and he started sharing his screen and gave him his entire sprint's work. There are thousands of such [Non-resident Indians] especially from Andhra, Telangana going to USA not learn…
Yes and having employees that work 2 hours and F off just makes it not worth it. Outsource that 2h work to an AI farm and pay a grand total of $200 per month. Easy win.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#13Similar thread:
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#14Not that complicated? The scammer gets a salary for a job they would not be able to get legally. "Arizona woman to serve 8 years for identity theft scheme benefiting North Korea": https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5479906/north-korea-ide...
You manage to make the connection to North Korea, but somehow think that the salary is what they are after. Interesting
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#15You will get interviews from fake companies these same guys organised in the same manner, then you get paid, send them their half, and then it will turn out that those companies were fakes and pay came from accounts fed by stolen corporate CC numbers, and you will go to jail because everything was done from your name.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#16Not that complicated? The scammer gets a salary for a job they would not be able to get legally. "Arizona woman to serve 8 years for identity theft scheme benefiting North Korea": https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5479906/north-korea-ide...
You manage to make the connection to North Korea, but somehow think that the salary is what they are after. Interesting
These NK operations are after salary and intelligence. The salary ensures the operation is self-sustaining even while it doesn’t yield actionable intelligence. They can keep growing their army of staffers until they get a hit on a prime target. And since nobody at the company meets the actual worker, they can rotate “employees” as needed – when a big score is in sight, they can plug their best hackers into the operation to “close the deal” (stealing cryptocurrency, trade secrets, or other actionable intel).
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#17I got this offer once but they wanted 80%, which won’t even cover taxes. They wanted the money first so, which was shady, like what guarantee would anyone have they would get anything. Plus they would need all of someone’s personal info.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#18There's been an ongoing issue with North Korean state agents infiltrating SV companies, and this proposal helps them pass the interview process more easily. There's multipronged benefit for them: Access to company infrastructure to potentially cause harm or ransom in the future, access to technology / intelligence, but also simply foreign currency.
There's an event bigger number of Indian candidates trying to scam themselves into US jobs, than north Korean ones.
Especially when the recruiting process of big companies becomes predictable and well documented online, candidates will just perfect the targeting and cheating of that specific system.
What if the future just becomes in person interviews again, because every remote candidate will either be an Deepfaked scammer with a stolen ID, or a cheater with someone nearby whispering AI generated answers to him?
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#19Basically you're lending your name and identity as a front for someone with malicious intentions.
There are a few different angles to this. Other people have already mentioned the North Korean state-sponsored espionage, but honestly I think this is a small minority of this market.
The other two big ones are visa fraud and employment fraud. With the first one, you have a developer, possibly even skilled in a low-wage overseas company (say Thailand) that wants to make American wages. If he applies as who he actually is, he makes Thai wages, which can be as low as $10K/year. If he uses your identity to apply, he makes American wages, say $200K+/year. He can split that with you and make 10x what he would otherwise, while you get $100K/year for doing nothing (assuming he's honest enough to pay out, which is not a guarantee. There's no honor in thieves).
With the second, they use his interview skills and your identity to get the job, and then do nothing except get other jobs. It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits. If the employer does seem to catch on, he has a lawyer and a psychiatrist on the payroll too. The psychiatrist produces a doctor's note that you are disabled, the lawyer threatens to sue if you are fired. "You" go on disability, where you can stay for up to a year and they can't fire you. Collect the salary, move on after the year. In the meantime, "you" (or the organization using your identity) has done the same thing to hundreds of other corporations. I personally know 2 managers that have been victimized by this scam.
In all 3 cases, you're not the direct victim of the scam. They're using your identity as a shield to legitimize the scam. When it's discovered, it's you who suffer the reputational risk and/or criminal charges.
Re: How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
#20Just playing devils advocate but don’t companies already do this to their customers, silently outsource to another company or contractor? What’s the difference here if people do this but still make sure that the work is done properly?