A fake job offer gone wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#181

Post by amarant » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:11 AM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #128

tommiegannert wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That people buy gift cards at all boggles my mind. You're buying a currency with less versatility (and hence value) for 1:1. Where I live, we have perfectly fine government-issued bills to gift if that's your thing. Somehow, that's considered a bad present? Because it's lazy? Because it doesn't show your opinion on clothes brands? I don't get it, from the consumer's perspective. To the shop/mall it's a clear winner,…

This is one more very good reason not to indulge the insanity that is a "cashless society". If you let go of those government issued bills be sure that in no time at all you'll have nothing but fragmented, private "smart" currencies each hobbled with its own insidious restrictions.

I mean, I don't really see that happening. Sweden is for all intents and purposes cashless these days, and I don't think we have more giftcards now than we did in the 90s when cash was commonplace.

To clarify about the cashlessness of Sweden: cash still exists, and you can still get government printed bills, but many places have stopped accepting them, and these days whenever someone has non-foreign cash it becomes the topic of discussion: "why the hell do you have those?"

Honestly I don't know that they're useful for anything except donating to homeless(and even they usually have swish these days) or buying illegal drugs

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#182

Post by minimaul » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:19 AM UTC

itgoon wrote: post #65

shmde wrote: post #44

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.

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.

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.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#183

Post by nindalf » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:22 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #48

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 somethin…

I’ve worked many years in fields adjacent to scams and fraud. I’ve seen many different kinds, especially romance and financial scams. This knowledge doesn’t make me more confident about avoiding scams, it’s made me realise that anyone can be scammed regardless of knowledge or intelligence.

Scams are about identifying what the victim really, really wants and offering it to them with some constraint. Some people are desperate for a job, for money to make ends meet. That desperation short circuits their common sense. I’ve seen successful romance scams that were so obviously scams. Even if you were in love, why didn’t you think twice about sending $10k the second time?? Neither of these would have worked on me because I’ve never been desperate for either of them.

That doesn’t mean I would dismissively talk like you did, saying no one should fall for them. I can be scammed, it’s just a question of finding what I’m desperate for and offering that to me, maybe with time pressure. In that situation I would ignore obvious red flags like a business asking for gift cards.

I need to be successful every time, the scammers need to be successful only once.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#184

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:23 AM UTC

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #166

Jiro wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for a gift to serve its social function, it must be specifically matched to its recipient. Cash is not specifically matched to its recipient. (The exception is if there's some other social expectation that specifically says that the gift should be cash, like Jewish wedding gifts).

Isn't wedding gift being cash the standard thing? Do you bring gift items to weddings? I always thought the standard of bringing cash to help them pay back for the cost of the event was standard everywhere. This is a Jewish thing? It kind of explains why weddings in Israel are so expensive, I heard it's almost cheaper to buy flight tickets to buy wedding dress in another country.

It's not the standard here. In person and in media, there's a table full of wrapped gifts for the bride and groom. While I'm sure nobody would turn down cash, they wouldn't feel as appreciative of it as something that was bought with them in mind. Especially things that they'll still have 20 or 50 years later, and it brings back a memory of their wedding.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#185

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:25 AM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #55

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 f…

For everything before the training courses, I was like "Eh, I could see it" but after that, it's pretty clear that it really did feel like a real job. At about that same age, I was pretty desperate for a decent job and I could totally see at least being very, very tempted to fall for it, too. I'd of course like to think I'd never fall for that, but you don't know until it happens to you.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#186

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:34 AM UTC

sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

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?

Yes, but even 20 years ago people were incredibly suspicious of checks, and that's only gotten stronger.

I get checks as refunds or payouts from companies a few times a year, and it's weird every time. I gather that they legally have to pay it out and can't just credit your account, but I'd rather they do the credit. It'd be safer for everyone, and if I cancel my account they could just cut a check then.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#187

Post by iLoveOncall » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:34 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #176

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 w…

> So yeah a public safety website for scams might be useful.

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.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#188

Post by jefftk » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:46 AM UTC

jestarray wrote: post #23

nigamanth wrote: post #6

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 m…

I was not in the right state of mind, my brain weirdly skimmed and auto-corrected grammar mistakes. I thought it was weird but I was just happy and yet busy to think about it further.

This is also a "red flag" that will probably stop being useful soon, as chatgpt etc make it easy for scammers to write things that don't have this kind of mistake.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#189

Post by somrand0 » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 11:49 AM UTC

zorrolovsky wrote: post #103

ryandrake wrote: post #48

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 somethin…

This post seem to blame victims for the problem, and that is not fair. People can be in dark places mentally, struggle with disease, family issues, etc. Not everybody is mentally sharp 100% of the time to identify a scam attack and fight it back. The problem is not victims, the problem is scammers. There should be better mechanisms to quickly clamp down on them. In this case, it would be really good if there was a me…

> The problem is not victims, the problem is scammers

but the solution isn't on the scammers side only, there are a series of circumstances on both sides involved that cause these things to happen.

if people weren't desperate for money, running out of alternatives, they wouldn't need to perpetrate these crimes, nor would they fall for them as often.

Re: A fake job offer gone wrong

#190

Post by jaclaz » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 12:09 PM UTC

jestarray wrote: post #69

baking wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The twist was the check was to cover his purchase of computer and supplies for his home office and after he deposits it he is told to wire $8,000 to a vendor for the equipment. Implied threat is that he is stealing from them if he doesn't wire the money. Of course even if he waits for the check to clear, the bank will still come after him for the money in a couple of weeks which is usually how long it takes for these…

Actually I was not threatened that I was stealing if I didn't wire! I wish I was though because that would have definitely given it away. The receipt of my bank deposit they asked me to take a picture of just had more than enough to pay! I remember double checking the receipt in-case it had too much personal information and even was aware that I didn't want to show my balance but something in my brain just didn't com…

Besides all the other red flags, what would have (probably) triggered an alarm would have been the actual list of equipment (and its generic content).

Set of furniture?

Copiers?

Graphics generator and software?

Data storage and Microfiche?

High speed Internet access?

All coming from a same supplier, the same that provides the Mac and the "Dual Monitors", maybe it is "normal" in US, but elsewhere there would be several different suppliers, very detailed confirm orders, a lengthy contract for the Internet access, endless back and forth for fixing delivery and installation dates, etc.