Our financial information research company is going to be temporarily adding 15 top tier legal minds to our staff in order to conduct an intensive due diligence and legal research project in Washington DC. We are hiring individuals who are independent and can work from their home office and local law libraries yet can still be accountable to a team and are available to begin immediately. Areas of law that will be utilized during this project are: corporate, mergers & acquisitions, intellectual property, securities, contract (product licenses), and copyright law. Conducting time sensitive world class research, writing memos to upper management, and the production of contract drafts and strategic partnership and licensing proposals will be required.
By answering that Craigslist ad, Arin Greenwood started down a path that led her and 80 other people to waste several months of their lives on scam jobs for a company called Global Speculator that never really existed. You can read the whole story here.
I doubt her conclusion about what the con artist was trying to do. Or rather, I doubt he was trying to do just one thing. This kind of con is all about stirring up a lot of activity and then taking advantage of any opportunities that come along. He probably tried to find investors, and he may have tried to find vendors that would sell him things on credit.
On the other hand, some people are excoriating her in the comments for being stupid enough to fall for this. That’s a bit unfair. First of all, we’re reading a condensed version of it all at once. It probably wasn’t obvious how crazy this was when it played out slowly over several months.
Second, it’s easy to delude yourself when there are many other people involved. It makes the business seem more legitimate, especially if the other people are enthusiastic sales types who are natural company boosters. That’s one reason for involving so many people in the con.
Third, it’s a lot harder to spot a fake when you’ve never seen the real thing. Have you ever taken a job with someone who had great goals, but after you’ve been there a while you realize they have no plan for making those goals a reality? That’s the same thing, except the problem is incompetence rather than fraud. It’s like getting into relationships with people who turn out to have a lot of problems. When you get older, you learn to spot them sooner.
Finally, a new job is always a test. You want to look good, and no matter what goes wrong, you want to be the kind of employee who gets the job done. It’s a case of can-do attitude overriding good judgement.
Hat tip: Mike at C&F.
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