[VonGuard]

Guy gets a "job" as a software engineer with a WHOLE lot of work, onboarding, paperwork, etc. Then the first thing they ask him to do is deposit a check into his account and send them the Cash immediately, before the check clears. They had the check UPS'd to his house, too.

[nigamanth]

Yep, he gets the job and then they suddenly run into a lot of errors and whatnot and he has to pay their check. When he tells them its a scam, they start questioning him lmao.

Look at their bad grammar in the full conversation though, this was the last dead giveaway.

[notahacker]

tbf bad grammar is not unusual when dealing with remote teams. The gmail is a bigger giveaway (but again, I've done business with big corporations via gmail addresses where it's just easier to use a personal address than get IT to sort remote access or a mailbox big enough to handle attachments...)

"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...

[snotrockets]

It's not bad grammar. It's just not American English.

[geocrasher]

False.

"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.

[titanomachy]

Every other line of the IM transcript would be grammatically incorrect in any English-speaking country I’m aware of.

“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.

[snotrockets]

Pidgin dialects of English are no less correct than more wildly use dialects of English (grammar rules are shaped by the speaker of a dialect or language, as they use it, they are only set from on high when some people like to declare others as "unwanted" users of that language. But I digress)

[ngc248]

Even Indian English follows grammatical rules, the difference would be the words used, idiomatic sentences etc.

[snotrockets]

Slightly different grammatical rules. For example, some dialects of Indian English use the present participle for future tense (similar to some Caribbean dialects)

[aerovistae]

Why would he send them money though? Like what was the given reason why he would be sending them anything?

[defen]

"Ok Bob, you're hired. Normally we'd send you a computer and all the other equipment you need, but our vendor communications are all fucked up. So we're going to send you the check we would have sent them, you deposit it, then you order the equipment from them. Plus that way your name is officially on the purchase and you own the equipment after 15 weeks! Why don't we just send the check to the vendor? What, are you calling me a scammer? How dare you!"

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.

[aerovistae]

Ah that is truly a very obvious scam

[jpoesen]

My friend, if you have time to ask for a tl;dr and ask follow-up questions, you have time to read the original post. Off you go.

[aerovistae]

Definitely took less time to type these few sentences than it would take to read that wall of text

[pimlottc]

The original post here is just a long string of original documents and background information, leaving the reader to read the entire thing to piece together what happened. Providing a summary in the introduction is a key part of effective communication.