When the job hunter becomes the prey

I’m in the middle of being scammed for the second time in less than a week. This time I know I’m being scammed; this time I will not end up $400 light. I know the score, and I’m going through the motions once more for the purpose of research, and a bit of sadism.

I’m chatting with some “person” who calls himself John McHutcheon. He says he’s the HR head at Suchandsuch Healthcare, and after a few perfunctory questions about my qualifications, he’s like “Wow, Ben, you sound like a perfect fit for our team!”

He tells me the duties of the job: clerical, data entry, some administrative; and he tells me about the pay and the benefits. He lubes my desire with talk of 401Ks, 60K a year, medical, dental. He gives me a questionnaire to fill out. It takes all of five minutes to answer, then he tells me he’s sending it to the Director of Hiring.

Ten minutes pass, not nearly enough time to perform the background check he said they were executing, and I GOT THE JOB!

Even though I know that it’s a scam, I know because I was done the same way a fortnight prior, there’s the linger of hope that says, what if this one is real? A Pie in Outer Space Hope that will not die is in my heart.

I let it play on. I feel so in control of this conversation with the second grifter-posing-as-a-hiring manager. The dynamic of the conversation is how they say it’s supposed to be when you’re successfully interviewing for a job—I had the tables turned so that it was incumbent on him to impress me.

I’m responding with language and command that is much stronger and more relaxed than it would be if I had the thought in mind: This job is for real. My disposition being highly skeptical made me—not—his subordinate, made me appear confident and unafraid of the man who was playing the role of the man-determining-my-fate.

He fears the confidence in my tone: John hesitates to mention the heart of the grift. On my first go-around, when I thought I was interviewing for an actual job, I behaved as the subordinate. That first guy was on top of the con right way:

The only way you can get this high-paying job that offers benefits and the ability to work from home is to deposit the check, our company will send you immediately, into your own personal checking account.

I complied.

He knew that only $400 of the $4950 would be immediately available, that is the policy of many banks, including my own—Wells Fargo. I was to take the $400 and go to the nearest Target and purchase Ebay gift cards, two of them worth $200 a piece. And I did.

I’m embarrassed.

I sent my contact the code numbers associated with the gift cards and headed home.

My wife was working from home that day. She asked what I’d been doing. I explained it all to her. I watched her eyes, the look of growing incredulousness intensified with each of my words. I finished explaining what I had done.

She responded by asking me if that seemed okay to me.

I stuttered an attempt to rationalizing my actions. Words would not fit together comprehensively. I exhausted myself in a futile effort to piece together any possible legitimate reason for my actions. She watched me flop and flounder, not with pleasure –she too was out $400—but with patience.

Finally, like a hundred-pound mass of prehistoric fecal matter falling from a pterodactyl in the troposphere, the truth landed on me. She said go back to the bank, post haste!

The check was for $4950. If it were for another $50 it would be another classification of crime. Wells Fargo, and most large financial institutions, will not prosecute this type of fraud. They account for this to happen. The banker with whom I spoke and pleaded my innocence, my negligence, told me this was the third or fourth such occurrence in that branch that day. It was barely past noon.

I was out the $400; that money is irretrievable. The hefty price of a lesson learned.

A couple of days after that debacle, the second, supposed, hiring manager was interested in adding me to their team. He too intended to send a check for startup costs, which I was to deposit into my personal account. The funds were to be spent on a new laptop for me and all the software needed to perform the job.

I played along, but with a far different tone. By the end of the conversation, after I grilled him on the necessity of using my personal banking account to purchase the tools for the job, “why can you not simply purchase it from the company’s account?”

He squirmed for a bit, repeating the same rebuttal: That’s our policy. I assure you the funds will be there and that we are legitimate and respectable…

“That makes no sense to me,” I let him know.

He asked if I was going to be ultimately compliant so I could join the team. I said I would, but only if they were able to purchase the stuff without my middling. After that, radio silence.

Hindsight, there were so many red flags that my prefrontal cortex identified, but I bypassed my thinking system and sent the information to my amygdala. My lizard brain said: Eat. And I needed a job, thus I circumvented logic and was scammed.

The signs of a scam of this sort are obvious and everywhere, still so many intelligent people—a group I at times do consider myself to be among—who need a job get duped daily. I was one of those scammed, then I was one who allowed a grifter to spin his lies, waste his time, and to think he had another 185-pound dupe on his hook.

But he got nothing from me. I got some research from him. And if one someone happens upon this article, who is blinded by their hope for ideal employment, will have their blinders removed, will retain their $400.