Cautionary tales from a Craigslist job scam

You consider strange things when you run out of money: Dumpster diving, drinking half-full abandoned lipstick smudged beers at the bar and, of course, trolling for any job on Craigslist, which is basically the Dumpster diving of the internet. But even if you think you’re the most scam-savvy person, you can still wind up in the jaws of a big, scary hoax, as one writer reveals in this Salon piece. Desperate for a job and rent money after graduation, he filtered through CL looking for the least shady sounding gig he could find, which ended up being a “part time data entry person to help with a temporary computer project” (which still sounds shady to us). And even with what he says were all his defenses up, he still ended up a “sucker holding a laptop like a bottle of snake oil,” with strange charges on his credit card. It’s worth a read if you have ever considered trolling for a CL job. Here’s how you know for sure: All job offers are a always a scam, so please stop applying for them all the time.