A fake job offer gone wrong(indeedjobscam.pages.dev) |
A fake job offer gone wrong(indeedjobscam.pages.dev) |
"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?"
Levels.fyi, salary ranges on a large number of employer websites, even glassdoor, will give you a reasonable indication of rates.
Then pull all three of your credit reports to check for anomalies. You can do that for free at 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.
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 it for me, once I see language like that I know it is 100% a scam and e-mail goes to trash.
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
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!
Needs another pass by the editor before I can recommend anyone waste their time.
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 bad checks to come back.
Edit: Check was sent to him by UPS which avoids the use of mail fraud which the USPS Inspection Service can prosecute very aggressively.
Look at their bad grammar in the full conversation though, this was the last dead giveaway.
Good luck convincing them otherwise!
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.
I'm in my mid-30s and barely old enough to know what microfiche even is!
Best example, when You will buy auto, good seller will try to sell items for tourists, picnic items, spinning, and even bait (sure, will include regulated items in base, like insurance, fire-extinguisher).
The scam is that they are secretly the vendor and they never send you the computer equipment that you buy with your own money. The money from the check they sent gets taken back by the bank because it's fake.
"We're mailing you a check, now please send the money to someone else" is always a red flag. In the rare cases someone doing this isn't scamming you, they're probably using you to avoid taxes or breach spending guidelines or something else unfavourable to you instead...
"Do you track the check" "I will send you later" "A IT director Lead from the company..." "...by purchasing the home office equipments..." "Immediately the funds are available, you will be directed..."
That's not even mentioning the smorgasbord of run-on sentences, weird capitalizations, etc. Yes, there's a lot of non American English. But it's presented as coming from an American given that the job listing is all US and that name is an American (or at least Anglo) name.
“All hotel and booking has been made and trips has been plnanned”
“Is this how you want to be difficult”
“I will send you later”
Where is any of that considered correct English? If my manager sent any of those message I’d be worried about a stroke.
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.
The most shocking element of OP's story is that he never actually got interviewed by a real person. He filled out a questionaire, received no feedback from it other than "You're hired at 12.5% more than you're asking". This to me is the biggest red flag of all leading up to the actual "ask" to cash the check and send funds.
It seems odd to get a job for $90k /yr without ever meeting someone from the company. Even if that actually wasn't a scam, I would avoid taking a job for a company like that. How good are your co-workers going to be if they are just hired based on a text-based questionaire and a prayer?
Odd but not unheard of. I got a job offer from Boeing sight unseen based on a cover letter and resume. When I asked, they did give me a site visit (though I didn't ultimately take the offer).
I know it may seem odd in a world of leetcode interviews etc. but, if you're hiring a bunch of new grad engineers for one of the aerospace boom cycles, you can save a lot of effort by just hiring a bunch of people out of schools that pass some filter.
unless its your very close friend or family, don't launder money. i think this is a life lesson we learn in middle school and grow up to think adults are more trustworthy
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.
Which would be completely unbelievable if there wasn't security footage of the whole thing!
Someone tried to scam me once by taking over the Instagram account of a hotel and baiting me with a discount. That by itself is not a problem, it could be a legit offer. Their intentions became obvious when I randomly got a message with a 2 factor code and they asked me for the number.
Criminals must necessarily violate social rules in order to carry out their crimes. A robber on the street must close the distance against the victim in order to get in attack range. In my case, the unacceptable behavior was asking me about information that was not only secret but also useless to anyone but me. Recognizing these violations of social norms and enforcing firm boundaries is necessary to defend against these people. People who don't understand what a 2 factor code is will not recognize that it is unacceptable behavior for another person to ask for one and will see no problem with revealing the secret.
But no one likes to think about this version of confirmation bias/the bias you were talking about, somehow.
I've fallen victim to a scammer as well (paid rent to a "landlord" who it turns out didn't actually own the place). It sucks, but I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. Our society is built on trust, and some people exploit that.
I almost got scammed by this as well. But it felt strange to me that there was no actual person I needed to meet to complete the rental agreement. And then when they asked me to wire the money I knew it was a scam.
That said, receiving a personal check from a company of any size should properly set off a lot of alarm bells.
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.
We are definitely being targeted unfortunately.
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-challeng...
Sorry you had to deal with that, sounds like a nightmare.
If the offer hasn't been rescinded at least once it's probably a red flag as well.
Scams don't work because scammers are smart; scams work because scammers exploit our motivations. Beware of charity scams this holiday season.
That's not how I've seen things work at larger companies. It's more like "please go in that room that's full of abandoned computer junk and scrounge a monitor that still works as it's easier and faster than requesting a new one".
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?
"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.
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!
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.
Someone convince me this post of his is not a waste of time.
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?
(I am not calling the author of this post stupid, btw. I'm just making an observation.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Open call: Anyone out there paying or receiving payment with cheque in the last ten years?
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.
Sure, CAP theorem, is not reason to pardon chaos.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
Though it's been many years since I've traveled to interview, I was always paid by check for anything out of pocket. (Except for a 3 letter government agency who paid me in cash.)
I suspect they wrote to their bosses much more carefully.
But something as sketchy as this setup would have my antenna twitching anyway, so these kinds of mistakes would probably be red flags given that context, otherwise maybe not
I'm also surrounded by Asian immigrants in the US and its pretty common to take an English name (sometimes first and last) if your name is so full of non-ASCII characters that American's can't pronounce.
They act like Colt, polling any semi-relevant phrase from scrap-bag of memory, and shooting with it.
> Not too well antiquated with the job hiring process
“Antiquated” means archaic or old-fashioned. There may be other errors in your article; I didn’t read the rest.
I've worked with lots of professionals, including founders and c-suite people, who appear barely literate in emails and online chat. They're often very good talkers and very bad writers.
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
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.
- buy a domain for 20 USD/year and create the corresponding hr@MyNiceAndSeriousLookingDomain.com
- do what the scammer did in the blog post but without grammatical errors (I could even use chatgpt for that) and alway using my custom email address
See. That's easy to fake. If people are willing to pay the scammers, then the grammar errors and proton emails do not matter
Except for the unnecessarily uppercased H and the extraneous space before the question mark, this is a perfectly fine English sentence, no?
(Of course, there are other reasons why would one spot yet ignore grammatical mistakes - sometimes it is because of the personal situation they are in, sometimes it's of empathy towards non-native English speakers)
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 mechanism or institution where the victim could report the scam and once verified it would gather information from Google, Dropbox sign, the bank receiving the funds, and other tools scammers use to build a case against the scammer in the relevant jurisdiction, and avoid them using the same tools for further scams.
My strategy to repel scams is to stay humble. Mo matter how much I think I'm prepared to identify scams, I am still vulnerable and I will continue to be vulnerable. Arrogance is your worst friend if your objective is to stay safe. No matter how many ceremonies you do when you're 16, in the right context and with the right words, you will still fall for a talented social engineer.
Indeed, the scammers are the bad guys. At the same time, what about people that still fall for Nigerian princes or go through their spam folder for "sex in your area" or "penis enlargement pills"?
> ...verified it would gather information from Google, Dropbox sign, the bank receiving the funds...
While I agree that our banking system should evolve past the high-trust model that it has organically grown out of, this sounds absolutely dystopian to me. I would much rather live in a world where the resolution is "sorry, you got scammed, that sucks, learn from it" rather than "our corporate overlords will collaborate to ensure your safety." Even if real-time 2FA of fund transfers existed everywhere, people (including everyone in the right state, sure) would still click those things. Technology doesn't solve social problems.
I was scammed about EUR 1500 some 7 years ago. It didn’t seem a scam: the price for an item was low but not too low, the identity of the seller I could verify. But the item ultimately didn’t arrive, and I didn’t know that for italian law it’s considered an “unfulfilled contract” rather than fraud, and requires a civil rather than a criminal case, which would turn out far too costly.
But the point is: I didn’t recognize some warnings because I just had my first kid and I was stressed, overworked and sleep deprived. Shit happens.
Exactly. A point made over and over in "The Field Guide to 'Human Error'" [1] is that when looking at failure, you can't use your current knowledge and state of mind when evaluating the circumstance. You have to look at it with the actual knowledge and state of mind at the time. If you don't, you will fail to find the actual problems and correct them.
Take this, for example:
> You would think that by now every human being that walks the earth would know
I would not think that! That's an unevidenced assumption. It's less a statement about the world than it is a declaration of ignorance. It makes it hard to engage curiously with the reality of the circumstances. Even if it were true, it assumes that having heard something once is the same thing as being able to apply it in all circumstances and all cognitive conditions. If people just stop there, we will never improve things.
Indeed, I think it's worth asking why victim-blaming is such a common reaction to stories of scams. One part is the just world fallacy [2]. Another is the fundamental attribution error [3]. And one that I have definitely been guilty of is that it lets me feel smart. "I, a genius, recognize the specific scam pattern. They, those helpless fools, never see it coming. Ergo, I have once again proved my mental superiority." It's hogwash, of course. But satisfying, comforting hogwash. It took me a long time to realize that it was incorrect and that pursuing feelings of smartness often made me effectively stupider.
[1] A book I strongly recommend to everybody in software: https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
[3] https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution...
I interpreted the parent post as describing a mere "contributing cause", but you seem to be saying the post is assigning moral guilt to the victims. Why? And how can we discuss preventative measures that potential victims of any crime (or accident) can take, if the two are so often conflated?
E.g. is teaching people self-defense equivalent to blaming them for successful physical assaults upon them?
There was a keyboard I really wanted but it was no longer being made. However, I found an online shop that had them in stock! I ordered, paid, got my confirmation, and waited about two weeks before complaining that it hadn’t shipped.
Ended up with some dude from the usual geography for this stuff, yelling at me and threatening me over the phone. At which point I realized it was all fake, told him where to stick it and hung up. It was only $100 or so and I was lucky they didn’t do anything creative with my credit card.
The point being, there are lots of circumstances that can make you let your guard down. Thinking you’re too smart to be at risk is probably not the safest position to take.
Guilt is not zero-sum. A killer gets 20 years, but a group of 10 people conspiring to a murder get 20 years each, not 2 years each.
It's perfectly possible the scammers are culpable to the maximum extent, while at the same time there is a smaller but consistent culpability on the part of the victim.
Suggesting people arm themselves with knowledge and use that knowledge for prevention is not really the same thing as assigning blame.
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.
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.
(The exception is if there's some other social expectation that specifically says that the gift should be cash, like Jewish wedding gifts).
Imagine you go to vacation to Paris, take an evening walk and get mugged. Your attitude is like the local saying "what an idiot for walking around in that neighborhood at night".
The gift card thing is something that should trigger an alarm even if you never heard of it.
Months of effort and multiple email domains created to push the scam.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vq8m/india-nidhi-razdan-ph...
Every new human has to learn aaaaalll of this over again.
That's also why empires like the Roman was able to disappear.
Knowledge fades and we need actively teach over and over again.
More money to our education system!
And btw people still have no clue how computers work. This hasn't changed too much :(
Most Americans (especially those under 30) do not own a checkbook and don't know how to write a check. That is part of why this scam works. 20 years ago Checks were common enough that every adult understood that Check's aren't real money and people would be more cautious until it clears.
But the fact that now everything is instantaneous, Checks are maybe the last exception to that. So someone with no knowledge of checks might assume that it is "real" money. I think few people understand the differences even between a cashiers check, a personal check, and a money order.
Luckily Banks are more aware of these scams and tellers have been trained to ask A LOT of questions about wire transfers before executing them. It sounds like in the posted article, that OP actually got a warning about this from the banker how this is non-reversible. But again, even OP admitted that he had never completed a wire transfer before. I've only ever made 2 wire transfers in my life (and I'm 36) and both were to buy a house. Few Americans have complete a wire transfer and probably don't understand the implications of it either.
So I think this scam actually preys and relies on the fact that little knowledge exists of wiretransfers and checks.
Idea: physical financial instrument with a specified payee (OR a bearer instrument, using the same format!), with a completely unconstrained denomination, which the payer can draw up on demand and in the field.
Implementation: reveal enough information about your account that anyone can "authorize" arbitrary transfers; take weeks and weeks to learn whether the funds are actually available and there's absolutely no way to convince your bank to reveal whether the transaction is verified, at any point; etc.
Of course skepticism is required, but I know a lot of people who got dealt a lot of shit by their (real) employers simply by not understanding what is normal or not, as it was their first job.
10,000, and that's just the US
What this group did was lure someone into thinking they're part of a company as you're more likely to do what your employer tells you and you're far more likely to trust your employer too.
It probably pays off for the scammers to spend time this way as they probably get a much better conversion ratio.
Based on the cheques spelling I guess you're not in the US.
Checks are very common here, I write them every month. In theory I could pay my water bill by credit card but their payment portal is so randomly broken that I save a ton of headache by writing a check and dropping it off at their payment box. My office lease only takes checks. Various other rentals mainly only take checks or they charge a fee so I save money by giving them a check. Anything government-related is either a check or a big additional fee, so again I write them a check to avoid giving away extra money for no reason.
Checks are actually super convenient and more trustworthy than most alternatives. When paying, sending a check costs me a stamp which is far less than the credit card fees most places charge, or sometimes I can drop it off for free.
When receiving one, in most places it can be deposited by just taking a photo, doesn't get easier than that. Most importantly, I don't get to be another victim of the "$PAYMENT_PROCESSOR froze my account and stole my money", whether it be paypal or any of the other ones.
If only there was a way for people to transfer money from their bank to someone else's bank... They could call it "bank transfer", and it would solve all these problems!
This same company strongly encourages us to use their “payment portal” to pay our HOA dues. They, of course, charge an extra few percent on every transaction. That’s annoying, but given their inability to properly operate email, I can’t imagine how insecure their payment processing is. Even if they’re using some third party system, they probably have it configured incorrectly. So yeah, it’s a check in the mail every month.
All of my regular bills in the UK (mortgage, energy, water, internet, insurance, debt, probably some others I'm forgetting) are deducted automatically from my bank account every month. I don't have to think about it all - and there's zero possibility of nuking my credit score by accidentally missing a payment.
Having to remember to write a check for each bill every month sounds like an enormous (and enormously unnecessary) inconvenience. Is there really not a better option in the world's richest country in 2022?
I've received money from the Canadian government using cheques in that time frame too, but admittedly you could just special case the government.
I've received prize money from a university run contest during that time frame using cheques (barely in the time frame, small sum of money), and I know others who have received prize from privately run chess tournaments using cheques (I think the latter just because it's a cool souvenir).
A year or two ago when we had a tree service come out to trim some things. Before that, when we had a fence redone. Both of those were smaller local companies.
In the UK and here in Australia, when I set up a utility account I get a message saying "why not set up a direct debit?", which means that a transfer goes straight from my account to theirs at the alotted time each month, for the amount of the bill.
You get your usual bill usually a week or two before the debit goes out so you can make sure it's OK well before the transfer, and the debit process is guaranteed to return the money to you in case of a dispute. You can go into your online banking app and cancel any/all direct debit authorisations whenever you like.
But looking at the last 2 years - hardly written any cheques (checks).
But I do receive checks. From mortgage refinancing company, from escrow, from FSA/HSA (probably could get it electronic, but I have failed twice to get this set up, and now I do not even bother), and recently some ROTH conversions since the company refused to do bank transfers any more so they make me receive and deposit checks.
A cheque cheque (not sure what the right name for it is), not a cashiers cheque?
They are slow. That's the point.
They are essentially a two factor method of instruction to your bank. Legally (in Britain at least) one can use any reasonable method to give instructions to ones bank. Banks that want to "phase them out" because they are "too expensive and slow" are derelict in their function and should be hauled over the coals by trade and industry legislators.
In fact, counting both my personal accounts and the org account I'm treasurer for, I've probably sent or received two dozen checks just in the last month.
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.
- The US Treasury sends refund checks and also sent the stimulus checks to me.
- I paid my rent by check when living in Manhattan 9-10 years ago.
When you ain't doing it frequently enough, it's frustrating. (edit: it's more friction given I live outside the states and the bank I have now requires phone-based 2FA to login to the internet bank, but at least it is infrequent enough to not worry too much)
You may as well start spelling it the US way, because we'll still be using them ;)
2. I've written them to myself to transfer money between accounts when electronic transfer restrictions are too painful, etc.
May be I'm confused but it seems a case of either or :)
Can cheques in USA be cashed out? I mean, can a contractor take a check to any bank and exchange it for cash or do they have to be paid into an account (and money accessed 3-5 days later)?
I only ask because usually contractors want to avoid cards/back transfer did they don't have to declare the income and can do tax fraud.
Back in the 80s in UK you could "cash a cheque" meaning take it to a bank and get cash. Chequebooks then were printed as "crossed cheques" which couldn't be cashed [easily?]. Then by the 90s one wasn't guaranteed to get the money unless a "guarantee card" had its details copied onto the cheque -- for which an imprinting machine was used (still a valid technique about 10 years ago).
Edit in case a simple answer is viewed as stifling discourse: I probably write around 20 checks per year. Mostly to local vendors/laborers or for youth fundraising activities. I receive checks for fundraising activities that I host. Venmo is basically the same, and getting more common.
Looks like many people are much more gullible than I ever imagined.
Hanlons Razor is probably appropriate here.
Those people are also victims.
Let's aim for a better middle ground maybe?
If they don't have a bank account or refuse direct deposit or direct deposit isn't set up yet.
Or if the employer is treating them as an independent contractor, maybe.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
It's naive to think only the destitute perpetrate or fall victim to scams. By that logic, people like Bernie Maddoff or (allegedly) Sam Bankman-Fried wouldn't exist.
that's fraud like an art form... maybe mr. bankster-"cooked in oil" should play that defense: "It was an art project that got out of hand"...
But by doing that you're imposing the risk to the seller that they may lose their money when paypal/zelle/venmo/etc freeze their account and steal their money (see frequent recurring threads right here on HN of this happening over and over).
I realize as a payer it's not your problem but something to think about.
1. Aatish Taseer: His OCI card (something like dual citizenship, but not quite) was cancelled. He claims he's been told not to even attempt to visit India ever again.
2. Rana Ayyub: she created a donation website and got clobbered with tax evasion.
3. Numerous NGOs: including Green Peace and Amnesty have had their licenses revoked.
There are many more such cases, but off the top of my head, these jumped out.
Yes, it is ACH, which is what a check is. One doesn't need to physically have the piece of paper to make it happen (which is why you can deposit a check with just a photo). Either way it's just ACH.
(US American spelling)
My payments are still done electronically but I have to go into my bank's BillPay service and direct the amounts and payment dates for each bill. It's a bit more work but it also means far fewer surprises or errors to clean up. I already reconcile my accounts on a weekly basis, so it's only an extra minute or two to set up the payments for the coming week.
Sometimes, vendors may support doing a recurring ACH transfer out of your account for the total of the month. In terms of mechanism, this is exactly the same as a check which is also just an ACH transfer out of your account. Not all vendors support this.
There is increased risk, however. By giving them blanket authorization to deduct whatever they want out of your bank account you now have the risk that they might get it wrong and deduct too much.
If you have enough money in the account to absorb the difference it'll eventually get sorted out. But what if you don't? Your balance may go to zero and all those other recurring payments get rejected and you'll get hit with tons of late payment fees and you'll be stuck with those. So you might nuke your credit score with all those late payments that weren't even your fault.
My absolute preferred approach is to do auto-pay to a credit card. That way I'm insulated from risk (at least in the US, credit card laws strongly favor the consumer; perhaps the only laws in the US that favor the consumer so well). Any mistakes in the system are not my problem and can't impact my balance.
But for vendors who can't bill to a credit card or charge too many fees to do so, the safest approach is still a check.
Once you've decided something is true, it's easy to dismiss all sorts of signals that maybe it isn't.
I once had something similar happen when I purchased Prince of Qin off Ebay (10-15 years ago I think?). Package never arrived.
That is in a wholly different class than these scams where they're asking you to cash a check and wire the money back, nigerian prince, etc.
What the other poster ISN'T considering is that there are still large segments of the population that are old enough that they're just not internet savvy. It's just the nature of life.
But their point stands as is, it's not reasonable for younger generations to be falling for these scams.
Of course proving a persons state of mind is extremely difficult. As a consequence it’s unlikely that police or prosecutors are going to take an interest in fraud that only involves small sums of money (less than a few million $).
However proving that a contract is unfulfilled is pretty trivial, and generally cut-and-dry. But failure to fulfil a contract obviously isn’t a criminal offence, so your only option is to file a civil suite. Thankfully most countries have small claims courts that cheap and very accessible, but with limits on how much you can claim. Just because the amount of money you’ve lost is above the small claims court amount, doesn’t prevent you from suing of an amount within the purview of a small claims court.
Beyond that, use a credit card. If credit card networks have provided any value in this world, it’s in the form of generally consumer friendly chargeback processes. It’s in there interest to make sure that people feel safe using their credit cards to buy stuff, more purchases means more transaction fees for them.
> I just had my first kid and I was stressed
I often think back to when my nephew was tiny and imagine my brother trying to work a particular interface with one hand while holding a crying baby in the other.
That's crazy, but the same binary outcomes also exist in US law. Some states make very clear (to civil litigants' chagrin) that closing a sale with no intent to perform is a fraud; others haven't made that so clear; and, always, it's how you explain your situation to the gatekeeper that determines whether you might qualify for one side or the other.
That's what it's called in the UK anyway. I assume Italy has something equivalent.
https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/enforce-a-judg...
The root issue it archaic payment systems and banks where a check can take 7 days to clear. In this age a bank check should clean in seconds and funds should not be available in your account until it clears. It should be on the bank to not lie to you about funds in your account.
If you want the "check" experience, you can also fill out that information in a form and hand it to a bank teller.
We barely have bank outlets let alone tellers here though. That's the downside. Trying to deposit cash or check is quite painful.
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.
Not only, it is normal also in Poland (though it is normal that people give both physical gift and cash).
Traditionally, people often registered somewhere like a department store or a kitchen goods store. Some of the function of gifts was historically to get a young couple moving out of their parents' houses a start. Of course, these days a lot of people are pretty well set-up before they get married.
That's tricky though. Often enough, people really don't know or think enough to match properly, which causes the gift to end up being offloaded somewhere else later, and/or breeds silent resentment.
It's not just when people don't know what the recipient is interested in, but importantly, when they think they know, but don't understand that you shouldn't buy something related to someone's interest/hobby if you yourself aren't comparably proficient in it.
> Cash is not specifically matched to its recipient.
In some sense, it's maximally matched to every recipient, by virtue of being universal. Question is, is the gift supposed to be about recipient, or about the gift-giver? Super specific gifts are often about the latter.
The somewhat read flag is "kindly" (likely Indian?) with "Marc" (likely not Indian) but it's common for people with a name that's difficult for Americans to understand/spell to use an Americanized name.
Using an email address that doesn't match up with the company's well known domain name is a real problem. Suggesting payroll comes by something other than check or direct deposit is a red flag. Luckily, requesting money via wire transfer tipped this person off before things got real bad.
This is usually a Chinese thing, though. Indian people tend to just use their own names. Even then, a Chinese person would incorporate some of their name e.g. Mark Li.
I’m not blaming OP here, of course. As he said, he was tired and it takes real bravery to put your hand up and say “I was nearly scammed!”
Oh, maybe the real use for gift cards is that the receiver can't haggle. "I know you wanted to give me $200, but how about we make that an even $500 instead?" :)
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
I've never had one, though, so I don't know the specifics.
Apparently, BNP Paribas (one of the major local banks) now has a "teen offer", for people 12-17 yo. This seems to still be attached to the parents' account with the same bank, but the kids get to "manage" the account.
Card payments are not gift cards.
There are even other TLDs you could play with that most non-tech people would think are legit. For example auto-nation.co or autonation.inc autonation.corporation. All of these would cost less than $20. I haven't checked these all for availability, but I suspect at least half the ones on this list are available, and even if they aren't you can play with different combinations to get something that is available. The purpose is only to fool people at first glance.
While most people on HN might know that internal-autonation.com does not actually mean its from autonation, I suspect it would still fool a lot of HN readers. Outside of tech workers, I think this technique would fool the vast majority of the population.
You could even buy a domain for something like new-fake-hrm-saas.com and make a fake website for a fake SaaS HRM/Recruiting tool. Then send all emails from that domain. If anyone asks, you can say that intial emails go through that SaaS tool until you have fully onboarded. This is something legit that actually happens in real life early on in the hiring process when they want all hiring correspondance to go through an HRM tool. Again, maybe a tech worker would be cautious of this technique, but most people would be none the wiser. This would allow you to maintain one domain for multiple scams so you could easily burn one if you get exposed. You could even do subdomains with it like autonation.fakehrm.com and salesforce.fakehrm.com and so on for each company you impersonate.
Again, this isn't to give people ideas. But this could be easily done for $20 a year and minimal effort. (The fake hrm saas site could be a template site, all real SaaS sites look the same anyway).
For example imagine getting an email from recruiting@internal-autonation.com. Again, I know a tech worker who actually is likely to have purchased a domain might know what is happening here, but most Americans would think this is legit.
Let us use an example, Moldovian fraudsters using stolen credit cards and kyc docs online, this leads to chargebacks etc. None of these cards are issued in Moldova, they are issued by american, british, new zealand, spain etc.
These banks often have offices in the countries where the fraudsters reside and they will absolutelly go for the fraudsters, if the word is that their cards and products can be compromised without consequences, they will lose a lot of revenue, customers, trust and reputation.
The government will not tolerate them becoming a high risk jurisdiction because of some carder kiddies, they will totally look them up.
I have friends who know many russian(many are coming to southern europe and russian friendly countries like serbia) friends who tried some stuff like that out of pure desperation, none of them made big money, but all of them eent to prison.
I work in finance and had personal correspondence with some fraudster groups, if you explain to them how you are going after them preciselly, step by step, they will immediatelly offer a truce. I am talking about really highly sophisticated groups here.
They know to not fly too close to the sun.
This is what I usually do: (1) check my bank 1 week before the end of each month, (2) eyeball the amounts for all e-invoices, (3) approve everything with a single click.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-...
* The scammer keeps the focus on the upsides (job, office supplies) which are good but not unrealistic.
* The scammer is keeping the victim overwhelmed with interviews, paperwork, training, etc. The actual scam part is a small percentage of the victim's focus. This is classic misdirection.
* The scammer gets the victim to commit a lot of time and energy. Loss aversion and social norms stops people calling out slightly suspicious activity immediately.
* The big one is that the scammer drip feeds pieces so that the victim doesn't see the big picture. It's not like the scammer lays out the scheme on day one. They start with the company providing supplies (not suspicious), bureaucratic fumbling meaning the process changes (understandable), the new hire submitting the order themselves (ok), etc. Each step is logical and only slightly peculiar in isolation. Once the victim is comfortable with each step they are fed the next lie.
The last one works because even if people are suspicious of new information, once they've decided something is true they rarely reconsider their position. In this case the scammer got the victim to believe that the job was real, and the scammer was a legitimate HR person before introducing the scam element. If you believe the company is real, why would you imagine the check is fake? If you truly believe the check is real, how does the transfer risk your own money? They build a foundation of trust by layering a lot of little lies.
For example, when I company I worked for sent me on a business trip, I was supposed to buy the flight ticket using my own money, then bring them then receipt, and then they would pay me the money back. Why couldn't they buy the flight ticket themselves instead? They knew when and where I am traveling; they were the ones deciding that. It would be easier for one HR person to buy 5 tickets at once whenever one of the teams went to a business trip, than for 5 developers to buy the tickets individually and figure out the rules.
This totally felt like a scam (use your own money to buy something we want to buy, and you only have our word that will get the money later back), except it didn't make sense, because it was a large international company employing thousands of people, and I have already worked there for months. And yes, it was perfectly legit. Just needlessly complicated and weird.
So the fact that a company does something weird and needlessly complicated doesn't necessarily make it a scam. It's just likely a scam when they do it before paying you the first salary.
I suspect with a small firm that doesn't necessarily have a dedicated travel "guy" it probably simplifies things letting people book their own flights.
For some people, airline choice is a big deal. For some cities, you might even pick the wrong airport (i. e. if the person has an easier commute to Newark or Laguardia than JFK). Not to mention scheduling (maybe someone wants to travel the "day before" because of risk of too-tight scheduling).
OTOH, maybe it's simpler for "local team all in one city" versus "remote workers being herded to a single event".
For one thing even if the company never reimbursed you - it wasn’t an outright scam, you did get a flight. The scam scenario you are literally just sending money to a scammer - with the extra flourish of getting a fake check.
What you say about expensing is not unusual and there a number of reasons for it. It does offload the onus of correctly making reservations, putting in KTIN and immigration info on you. And then the big one is that I get all the travel card benefits (points). I even prefer it this way.
a) you’re buying tickets for someone else
b) that scam company also owns the airline (or if you’re buying from a third part online agency)
Otherwise how could you get scammed? Haha we tricked you into going to Atlanta but didn’t monetarily benefit from it at all!
Sorry, what middle school child learned that? None that I know.
This was before the internet was really a thing, too, so the same basic scam has been around for a long long time.
The UK direct-debit guarantee includes the provision that you must get a full and immediate refund on error, to prevent this sort of thing, and while I'm sure it doesn't always work as smoothly as you'd want, they are very commonly used and not a great source of complaints.
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/complaints...
That said, fuckups do still happen! https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/07/kent-family...
If enough people do chargebacks the payment processor will drop them because the ACH operator representing them will 100% fine the shit out of them if they don't. It's all contractual.
My point is, if you want to put a dent in stuff like this, do a chargeback. Like a union, the power isn't in your action, it's in the action of many.
---
But also, this is why I'm very picky and have quite often refused to purchase something I wanted. I'll trust Walmart.com in a way I won't trust momandpop.com. Unless they're using a payment process that isn't handled by them (CC via paypal, for example) I just flat won't use them.
What's worse is most people don't even consider the risk to calling in an order from a local restaurant for delivery (chinese, for example). They may or may not save your CC information and you have no idea how well those systems are secured. They're probably using a 3rd party, but you don't know who that 3rd party is so you can't even begin to assess that risk.
I'm not a fan of doordash by any means, but they do offer a service here in terms of risk assessment.
if you review your monthly statement, the "risk" is the possible inconvenience of having your card replaced. I don't let it stop me from ordering my favorite takeout, but you do you.
For $100-ish, and a good couple weeks since I made the payment, getting my money back wasn’t the main thing on my mind. Which, again, is an example of circumstances clouding your judgement. I was mostly just pissed I wouldn’t be getting the keyboard.
I did try a complaint to the BBB since the shop was (probably not really) listed there… from which I learned how useless the BBB is, so I guess in the end I got something for my money after all.
> Summers also sued McDonald's and was awarded $1 million in punitive damages and $100,000 in compensatory damages.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
The real life story is pretty sickening: an ~8 hour ordeal starting with the CDP saying "we think you have drugs" and forcibly sending an 18 year old girl to the hospital for an x-ray, in handcuffs, where she is instead invasively strip searched (with the CDP and hospital staff in audience). Nothing is found so they eventually let her go.
The court basically ruled that:
- The CDP did its job "correctly". They just need to think you did something wrong to detain you and force you to accept medical interventions.
- This was the wrong way to sue: the plaintiff must seek state-law tort action against the doctor for malpractice.
I can only hope that additional legal remediation brought some kind of justice and relief. Maybe this is yet another example of how contorted US law practice can be.
I'm not holding my breath.
This is no more inherently scammish than my relationship with my credit card company or any time one agrees to pay later (which is the norm of how businesses with supply chains operate).
The point is there’s no need to use some ill defined concept of weird. Where is the money going and what is the purpose? If someone is giving you an unbacked check and requesting a wire transfer to themselves it’s a scam.
While agreeing to be paid later for an unrelated good or service has some amount of risk it isn’t a scam.
And there are clear benefits to booking your own plane tickets.
I don't! They aren't! I wasn't! Nobody does that because they cost (at least then) several dollars.
The point of my anecdote was you use a bank check once and you learn about scams and laundering money, so you don't "run around casually" using them.
Probably there are more high schoolers "running around casually" with credit cards than there were 25-30 years ago, but in any case I didn't have one.
I certainly never again tried to use a check that wasn't for an exact amount.
By the way, some people do or did use personal checks at the grocery store and get cash back - I don't know if you can still do that and I never have tried it, but it used to be a thing.
I guess someone could probably treat themselves to their own monthly takeout order without me noticing for a while, but at least to me, this minuscule risk does not seem worth the mitigations you are taking.
Furthermore, many people use debit cards backed by an actual bank account and the vast majority of people can't afford to have those drained in any meaningful fashion without experiencing some severe consequences.
And thirdly, when the equifax breach happened I didn't bother doing anything. Why? Because I do NOT have the attitude that it's ok to be defrauded of money since someone else will pay for it. There was nothing for them to go after.
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3688563
> Nix was sentenced in March, 2006 to five years in prison.
> He pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, and unlawful imprisonment.
> Donna Summers was fired after the incident.
> She was charged with unlawful imprisonment, and was sentenced to probation after entering an Alford plea — a type of guilty plea in which a person does not admit guilt, but acknowledges the evidence is sufficient for a conviction.
> She broke off her engagement to Nix after viewing the surveillance tapes.
> Summers also sued McDonald's and was awarded $1 million in punitive damages and $100,000 in compensatory damages.
> After two hours of deliberations, Stewart was found not guilty on all charges.
Justice is a funny thing, isn't it?
>"Everything is by the book," he explained. "This is how you serve it. This is exactly how you do it. You follow the book — you're OK. I believe he picked fast food restaurants because he knew, once you got them away from that book, once it was something outside the manual or the procedures, they would be lost."
This woman should be in jail, criminal negligence is a thing.