Hacker News Reader

Comment by windowshopping | Hacker News Reader

Could anyone be so kind as to comment a tl;dr of this one? I am curious but it was very long and I haven't the time at this moment.

View on HN

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 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.

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 combine all the pieces until I heard the words "wire transfer" which triggered memories of crime shows.

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.

Microfiche in particular cracked me up.

I'm in my mid-30s and barely old enough to know what microfiche even is!

This named cross-selling in scientific marketing, when somebody sell to customer related items, even far related.

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).

I got you. I said "implied threat" meaning that someone who was having second thoughts before wiring the money is thinking about what could go wrong if they didn't wire the money, and not what could go wrong if they did. As others have mentioned there is also the whole sunk cost fallacy. This whole story is a great example of social engineering and it's the first time I've heard of it. Good for you to take the effort to post it. It's just long and could use a quick summary of the actual scam upfront for people with short attention spans.

Absent all the red flags, the basic form of the scam is pretty sophisticated. Here's a check to get yourself setup from our preferred supplier and expense it when you start probably should set off alarms to the degree that other things seemed off. But it's not by itself something a legit company would likely never do.

IANAL, but the mail fraud laws in the US includes interstate delivery via private carriers, so if they catch the scammers it's still a felony. It seems likely that USPIS wouldn't be involved though.

Classic fake check, send us the money before it clears scam. The premise this time is that the check is for office equipment for a fake job offer.

When you receive the check, shouldn't you go to the bank and withdraw the cash with that? And bank lets you know that it is a fake check, thus denying the withdrawal. At what stage and why are you required to send your cash to someone else?

No, the bank doesn't know if it's a fake check straight away. They find out weeks later during a reconciliation process with the bank that printed the check.

To add more context: the check is usually not completely fake. It has a legit bank routing and account number on it, typically a business that is also being scammed. So the money will likely actually get withdrawn from some random business’s account and only discovered weeks or even months later.

And if you've attempted to withdraw it, they immediately become very suspicious that you knew it was fake and were trying to steal from them.

Good luck convincing them otherwise!

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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

"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.

Ah that is truly a very obvious scam

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.

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com