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Cautionary tales from a Craigslist job scam

Scamming: the ultimate missed connection

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.

Tim Donnelly :

View Comments (3)

  • I feel bad for anyone who gets scammed, but hate to break it to this Salon writer -- his scam filter is broken. Any moron could see this was a scam. Unless selling things on Etsy and eBay is your job, a real job does not require you to supply your credit card information in order to get paid.

    • Yeah, he sounds like a moron but he did get his story published on Salon (which is probably the bigger scam).