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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand the logistics of this to be honest. From the article it doesn't sound like these people have false IDs, they just make fake LinkedIn profiles?

In a lot of countries certainly here in Germany your employer has to pay social security contributions and needs your insurance, healthcare information etc. In addition if you're a foreigner you need to know their legal status to see if they can even work. Like what do these scammed companies do, just wire money to some guy they interviewed on social media and ship company property to random addresses? Is that even legal in most places?

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They presumably wire the money to a person operating in the US who sends a portion of that money to the NK employee. The US person is then the one in the company payroll files. At least that's my understanding.

We should definitely go after those folks, but it's not pleasant, as many of them may be having their own issues that add to the problem.

One of the big problems with the US, is that we worship money like a god. People will do almost anything, and compromise all their personal values, for money. We have entire industries that sell narratives, rationalizing these compromises.

This is exacerbated by the current employment problems. They keep talking about how unemployment is down, but I think we all know folks that are un (or under-) employed, and the difficulties they are having, finding work.

Someone in that state, is fertile ground for money- and job-laundering bad actors. It sucks to punish them, but that is what we need to do, to discourage the practice.

I agree but I don't actually feel bad about punishing people for committing fraud (as long as we punish all people fairly, etc).

> People will do almost anything, and compromise all their personal values, for money

I think this demonstrates what their ACTUAL values are or at get very least the priority of those values.

> One of the big problems with the US, is that we worship money like a god. People will do almost anything, and compromise all their personal values, for money.

A US person without adequate cashflow is likely to not be able to have food, housing, clothing, medical care, etc. A lack of morals are not what causes people to do anything to make money, it's a lack of money in a capitalist society. Blaming people for systemic problems is incredibly regressive.

Quite a few people will have adequate food, housing, etc and still dispense with morals for money. Some studies suggest that having more money makes one more dishonest rather than less.

The problems are indeed systemic, but it's not just lack of money. The system is constructed around the love of money, such that too much is never enough.

> Some studies suggest that having more money makes one more dishonest rather than less.

What came first, money or dishonesty?

My understanding is for a US employee, the employer is supposed to confirm eligibility to work in the first 3 days of employment. Some form of government id plus a social security card or a passport or something like that. IRS form I-9

Otoh, if these positions are independent contractors, form I-9 isn't required. Just a tax id for reporting purposes.

I would imagine whoever is hosting the laptops may be authorized to work in the US and could also be convinced to provide identity documentation. I think there's a lot of borrowing of documentation by immigrants/migrants who are not authorized to work in the US; so there's probably a marketplace somewhere too.

Because it's contractors. You are not an employer in that person's country.

That’s part of what is being exposed here. The hiring process for many companies is not very robust. I doubt many even check references

In three decades, I’ve had some call me to check a reference only twice for private sector jobs. The federal government actually does this as part of background checks so it works but you need to want to badly enough to pay real money.

The other problem is liability: companies often tell their employees not to give references for fear of being sued if the employee doesn’t work out, and most companies don’t expect useful information from them unless someone left in a way which has a public record like a court case. The federal checks don’t have that problem because not answering honestly is a crime. You’d need some kind of shield for honest statements for the private sector to really get accurate assessments, and that’s tricky to do in a way which allows the most useful opinions.

They're targeting locales and companies with less stringent checks.

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