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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.

Exactly this. How these email addresses didn't raise any red flags is beyond me.

Looks like many people are much more gullible than I ever imagined.

Not true in UK, small businesses that are not working in tech will use free email with the suppliers domain.

That's true in the US as well. Lots of small businesses just use gmail.

It is quite common among US businesses that are not large enough to afford a dedicated IT department and do not want to spend too much on a MSP. Not the kind of company that would be offering this kind of job, for sure.