4 ms·

> Maybe I'm missing something basic, but why is this a remote issue? Far easier to blend in as a remote employee. Usually when this happens, the fake employee

> Maybe I'm missing something basic, but why is this a remote issue? Far easier to blend in as a remote employee. Usually when this happens, the fake employee will come up with excuses to leave video off: They'll say their camera isn't working today or that their internet connection isn't good enough to turn the camera on right now. If they do turn it on, it will be massively backlit so you can't see their face. Many companies don't even expect people to have video at all. The identity-swapping fraudsters are hoping that their companies fall into this category.

lumost 4y ago
I'm suspicious this is also affecting the hiring pipeline at top-tier firms. Student hiring programs rarely include an interviewer from your future team, It would be incredibly easy to pay someone a few thousand to crush the leet code rounds. The ROI of such a fraud would easily exceed 10-100x. I'm not entirely sure there is a good fix for this, the problem would have always existed with in-person work as well - however the perceived risk/reward ratio would be different.
- lazide 4y ago
  Risk/reward is different, and also physically and psychologically more committing going in person to the companies location and interacting with other employees. It’s plausibly a crime too (actual fraud), if pushed hard enough, though most courts will just laugh at companies and tell them they clearly didn’t do enough due diligence, so most people trying it will be worried about being arrested in person. If doing fully remote, they could be dialing in from another country and immune from arrest. Makes it much easier to do.
  - lumost 4y ago
    > If doing fully remote, they could be dialing in from another country and immune from arrest. Makes it much easier to do. This also substantially increases the reward. Traveling to SF for a 2 month con as a mid-level software engineer isn't a good deal. Working remote from a low cost location for a 2 month con might be a fantastic deal.
    - lazide 4y ago
      For sure. It wouldn't surprise me if a successful con like this - even if it only went on a month or two - could net them the equivalent of a 1-2 years of normal income locally or more. If they got lucky and they ended up in a situation like a prior co-worker of mine did at IBM (he wasn't scamming them, just a Software Engineer caught in the middle of a raft of corporate acquisitions and overwhelmed leadership) where they set him adrift for YEARS without direction or line management, it could be their retirement. Bonus - chances are, little to no taxes compared to the other option too, depending on how they structured the scam. The cut-out/middle man would get left holding the bag, but what else is new. Other Bonus - they wouldn't be using their real name, so chances are, no longer term impacts to the patsy either, unless they happen to end up trying to work legitimately with someone involved at the target company years later. Pretty unlikely to bother folks involved in this type of scam, IMO.
  - FerociousTimes 4y ago
    > though most courts will just laugh at companies and tell them they clearly didn’t do enough due diligence, so most people trying it will be worried about being arrested in person. There's a contradiction here, right?
    - lazide 4y ago
      Not really - it's a newness/information disparity thing. If someone has never committed a crime before (which most likely, these patsies would be in that camp - it's too high risk and expensive for someone experienced to want to do themselves if they could send someone else), fear of prosecution is going to be high. After all, THEY know they're doing something wrong, even if no one else does. Someone doing this is also very unlikely to have the direct experience managing a company, or dealing with these issues, to actually know the real risks of prosecution and likelihood of damaging consequences. So since it's new, uncertain, potential consequences seem personally very damaging, and it's 'bad' == high fear. They get a lot more dangerous once they've done it a few times, and the fear of the unknown wears off, and confidence starts to replace it. But since they're showing up in person, and would need (in this example) to physically be there for awhile, that's expensive, time consuming, and high risk.
      - FerociousTimes 4y ago
        What I was trying to say is that since courts would laugh at these organization, and rightly so, for not doing their due diligence, these would-be offenders might actually proceed to pull the stunt, and try their luck landing the job. Also, I fail to see how this can be prosecuted when there's no identity theft or forgery i.e. real crimes involved in this act. It can be all boiled down to being just another case of an under-qualified candidate holding a role without proper or adequate credentials due to flawed hiring procedures, or more frankly the incompetence of the decision makers inside the organization.
        lazide 4y ago
        It's somewhat difficult to do without committing those crimes in some way. Most states have laws with similar types of clauses, as Fraud is generally illegal, and the core elements of fraud are generally recognized as lying about a material fact for financial gain. In this case, they were impersonating someone else. For them to get to the point of getting paid, they'd likely have to provide identity documents (including a SSN, some form of photo ID, etc.) if the company was doing their paperwork correctly. Even contractors have to cough up a SSN, and that is enough to trigger federal identity fraud charges. If they provided real credentials and their real name, but had someone else sit in who pretended to be them to do the interviews, it gets trickier - it would still likely to be some variant of conspiracy to commit. Conspiracy at the federal level generally only requires a concrete action by a conspirator in furtherance of a crime, which with only a little squinting would likely apply here to anyone involved (including the fake interviewee). I present to you 18 USC 1028, the federal identity fraud code. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028], which provides penalties up to 5 years for a first and non-violent/non-drug related offense, or 20 years (for a second offense or other nastier qualifications). A felony, either way. It includes transferring said documents electronically. My 'favorite' section is 7, which explicitly states that SSN, DOB, etc. count, as well. Conspiracy would likely be under 18 USC 1346 & 1349 [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1346 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1346] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1349 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1349], which makes it a crime to 'deprive another of the intangible right of honest services', or conspire with another to do so. Either way, as I said elsewhere, I doubt anyone would be particularly interested in such prosecution unless it was very high profile for some reason. It's hard to get anyone sympathetic about a large company getting scammed by someone this way. Most companies also don't like having a reputation or PR as being scammable. So companies should be very interested in covering their asses here. That said, it IS also a federal (and likely state) level felony, so folks SHOULD also rightly be scared to attempt it. If the right parties were motivated, it could easily result in many years in federal prison. And it's hard to say when someone will want to make an example out of something like this.
flowersjeff 4y ago
Totally confused why folks are not understanding/believing what you've stated. I can attest, this is happening and at 'top' tier places. I can't tell you how spot on you are regarding the camera off strategy.
- _siis 4y ago
  Honestly, this has been happening for decades, long before remote work was a 100% thing. If they lie you fire them plain an simple. Company needs to do its due diligence, and the fact that complaints like this keep coming up trying to drive a corruptive narrative instead of performing due dilligence is just stupid, and that's on the company. Trying to characterize having the camera off as being a nefarious tactic because you can't see them working is beyond asinine. There are many good reasons to have the camera off while working. One being you are there to do work, you are being paid to do the work. One thing video has never gotten right inherently is the whole eye contact part of a video chat. When you don't look directly at someone (the angle is wrong) while you are communicating its a non-verbal sign of disrespect or in-congruence, and it causes non-verbal communication issues regardless of intent. The camera has never adjusted your eye angle, so you will always have that issue of people distrusting those communicating over video to a lesser or greater degree. With a flat picture and a phone call, you don't have that. You focus on the work and get things done. If the candidate misrepresented their expertise, fire them. If they aren't doing the work, fire them. If they plain just aren't working out for other reasons, fire them! (after due dilligence). I don't see why you have to bemoan your lack of due dilligence and instead blame it on something ludicrous like anyone with the camera off is doing this (when they aren't). Lets call this plug what it is, you want to surveil your employees like a micro manager instead of actually doing due diligence (i.e. the job of hiring). Seriously how hard is it to just fire someone that's a new-hire? Its a new position, if it doesn't work out, hire someone else, and terminate the temporary contract with the appropriate legal clause and time periods. Most work is an 'at will' position, so as an employer, if they lied, use that and 'fire at will'. Excessively surveilling your employees while they do work only does one thing, and that's drop productivity through the floor. Not only that, it shows serious deficits in Upper Management, and any skilled/experienced candidates will walk away from positions with redflags like that. You either want work to get done, or you just want to pretend that while doing something else. What's your actual priority, making money and doing the job (due dilligence is part of that), or watching your employees work in minutia and spinning a narrative. You can't have both.
rob_austin 4y ago
> that their internet connection isn't good enough a person who wants to work remotely but doesn't figure out how to have a good internet connection, then they are not a good fit for remote work. If a person decides to travel to a location where internet connection is not good on the day of the interview, you can imagine what he/she will do when it's a regular work day. Somebody shows up for a remote job and doesn't have a good internet connection is too big of a hiring risk to even both continuing the interview.
sanderjd 4y ago
What about 1:1s with their manager, though? I guess I just don't get this at all. If an organization has a bunch of people and absolutely no individual supervisory relationships with those people, then that's a much more general problem and I don't think it has all that much to do with remote work.
Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
Remote workers where I work have company provided business broadband, company laptop, webcam, etc. At any company serious about remote work these aren't things they should be stingy on. It's crazy that they are.
smallerfish 4y ago
This is why embedded is better than fully remote teams. Your engineering managers should start building relationships with candidates pre-hire, and then be doing 1:1s post hire. Even with camera off, you'd notice if somebody is not the same person, unless you have too many other responsibilities.
- boltzmann-brain 4y ago
  what do you mean by "embedded"?
  - smallerfish 4y ago
    Developers are directly part of the team, reporting to the same engineering manager, rather than being under their own agency manager, pm, etc. You should never be going through an intermediary to work with remote devs that you hire (aside from, perhaps, the handling of payroll & benefits.)
    - boltzmann-brain 4y ago
      Oh, yeah, that's terrible. Agreed

lumost 4y ago

I'm suspicious this is also affecting the hiring pipeline at top-tier firms. Student hiring programs rarely include an interviewer from your future team, It would be incredibly easy to pay someone a few thousand to crush the leet code rounds. The ROI of such a fraud would easily exceed 10-100x. I'm not entirely sure there is a good fix for this, the problem would have always existed with in-person work as well - however the perceived risk/reward ratio would be different.

lazide 4y ago
Risk/reward is different, and also physically and psychologically more committing going in person to the companies location and interacting with other employees. It’s plausibly a crime too (actual fraud), if pushed hard enough, though most courts will just laugh at companies and tell them they clearly didn’t do enough due diligence, so most people trying it will be worried about being arrested in person. If doing fully remote, they could be dialing in from another country and immune from arrest. Makes it much easier to do.
- lumost 4y ago
  > If doing fully remote, they could be dialing in from another country and immune from arrest. Makes it much easier to do. This also substantially increases the reward. Traveling to SF for a 2 month con as a mid-level software engineer isn't a good deal. Working remote from a low cost location for a 2 month con might be a fantastic deal.
  - lazide 4y ago
    For sure. It wouldn't surprise me if a successful con like this - even if it only went on a month or two - could net them the equivalent of a 1-2 years of normal income locally or more. If they got lucky and they ended up in a situation like a prior co-worker of mine did at IBM (he wasn't scamming them, just a Software Engineer caught in the middle of a raft of corporate acquisitions and overwhelmed leadership) where they set him adrift for YEARS without direction or line management, it could be their retirement. Bonus - chances are, little to no taxes compared to the other option too, depending on how they structured the scam. The cut-out/middle man would get left holding the bag, but what else is new. Other Bonus - they wouldn't be using their real name, so chances are, no longer term impacts to the patsy either, unless they happen to end up trying to work legitimately with someone involved at the target company years later. Pretty unlikely to bother folks involved in this type of scam, IMO.
- FerociousTimes 4y ago
  > though most courts will just laugh at companies and tell them they clearly didn’t do enough due diligence, so most people trying it will be worried about being arrested in person. There's a contradiction here, right?
  - lazide 4y ago
    Not really - it's a newness/information disparity thing. If someone has never committed a crime before (which most likely, these patsies would be in that camp - it's too high risk and expensive for someone experienced to want to do themselves if they could send someone else), fear of prosecution is going to be high. After all, THEY know they're doing something wrong, even if no one else does. Someone doing this is also very unlikely to have the direct experience managing a company, or dealing with these issues, to actually know the real risks of prosecution and likelihood of damaging consequences. So since it's new, uncertain, potential consequences seem personally very damaging, and it's 'bad' == high fear. They get a lot more dangerous once they've done it a few times, and the fear of the unknown wears off, and confidence starts to replace it. But since they're showing up in person, and would need (in this example) to physically be there for awhile, that's expensive, time consuming, and high risk.
    - FerociousTimes 4y ago
      What I was trying to say is that since courts would laugh at these organization, and rightly so, for not doing their due diligence, these would-be offenders might actually proceed to pull the stunt, and try their luck landing the job. Also, I fail to see how this can be prosecuted when there's no identity theft or forgery i.e. real crimes involved in this act. It can be all boiled down to being just another case of an under-qualified candidate holding a role without proper or adequate credentials due to flawed hiring procedures, or more frankly the incompetence of the decision makers inside the organization.
      - lazide 4y ago
        It's somewhat difficult to do without committing those crimes in some way. Most states have laws with similar types of clauses, as Fraud is generally illegal, and the core elements of fraud are generally recognized as lying about a material fact for financial gain. In this case, they were impersonating someone else. For them to get to the point of getting paid, they'd likely have to provide identity documents (including a SSN, some form of photo ID, etc.) if the company was doing their paperwork correctly. Even contractors have to cough up a SSN, and that is enough to trigger federal identity fraud charges. If they provided real credentials and their real name, but had someone else sit in who pretended to be them to do the interviews, it gets trickier - it would still likely to be some variant of conspiracy to commit. Conspiracy at the federal level generally only requires a concrete action by a conspirator in furtherance of a crime, which with only a little squinting would likely apply here to anyone involved (including the fake interviewee). I present to you 18 USC 1028, the federal identity fraud code. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028], which provides penalties up to 5 years for a first and non-violent/non-drug related offense, or 20 years (for a second offense or other nastier qualifications). A felony, either way. It includes transferring said documents electronically. My 'favorite' section is 7, which explicitly states that SSN, DOB, etc. count, as well. Conspiracy would likely be under 18 USC 1346 & 1349 [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1346 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1346] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1349 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1349], which makes it a crime to 'deprive another of the intangible right of honest services', or conspire with another to do so. Either way, as I said elsewhere, I doubt anyone would be particularly interested in such prosecution unless it was very high profile for some reason. It's hard to get anyone sympathetic about a large company getting scammed by someone this way. Most companies also don't like having a reputation or PR as being scammable. So companies should be very interested in covering their asses here. That said, it IS also a federal (and likely state) level felony, so folks SHOULD also rightly be scared to attempt it. If the right parties were motivated, it could easily result in many years in federal prison. And it's hard to say when someone will want to make an example out of something like this.

flowersjeff 4y ago

Totally confused why folks are not understanding/believing what you've stated. I can attest, this is happening and at 'top' tier places. I can't tell you how spot on you are regarding the camera off strategy.

_siis 4y ago
Honestly, this has been happening for decades, long before remote work was a 100% thing. If they lie you fire them plain an simple. Company needs to do its due diligence, and the fact that complaints like this keep coming up trying to drive a corruptive narrative instead of performing due dilligence is just stupid, and that's on the company. Trying to characterize having the camera off as being a nefarious tactic because you can't see them working is beyond asinine. There are many good reasons to have the camera off while working. One being you are there to do work, you are being paid to do the work. One thing video has never gotten right inherently is the whole eye contact part of a video chat. When you don't look directly at someone (the angle is wrong) while you are communicating its a non-verbal sign of disrespect or in-congruence, and it causes non-verbal communication issues regardless of intent. The camera has never adjusted your eye angle, so you will always have that issue of people distrusting those communicating over video to a lesser or greater degree. With a flat picture and a phone call, you don't have that. You focus on the work and get things done. If the candidate misrepresented their expertise, fire them. If they aren't doing the work, fire them. If they plain just aren't working out for other reasons, fire them! (after due dilligence). I don't see why you have to bemoan your lack of due dilligence and instead blame it on something ludicrous like anyone with the camera off is doing this (when they aren't). Lets call this plug what it is, you want to surveil your employees like a micro manager instead of actually doing due diligence (i.e. the job of hiring). Seriously how hard is it to just fire someone that's a new-hire? Its a new position, if it doesn't work out, hire someone else, and terminate the temporary contract with the appropriate legal clause and time periods. Most work is an 'at will' position, so as an employer, if they lied, use that and 'fire at will'. Excessively surveilling your employees while they do work only does one thing, and that's drop productivity through the floor. Not only that, it shows serious deficits in Upper Management, and any skilled/experienced candidates will walk away from positions with redflags like that. You either want work to get done, or you just want to pretend that while doing something else. What's your actual priority, making money and doing the job (due dilligence is part of that), or watching your employees work in minutia and spinning a narrative. You can't have both.

rob_austin 4y ago

> that their internet connection isn't good enough a person who wants to work remotely but doesn't figure out how to have a good internet connection, then they are not a good fit for remote work. If a person decides to travel to a location where internet connection is not good on the day of the interview, you can imagine what he/she will do when it's a regular work day. Somebody shows up for a remote job and doesn't have a good internet connection is too big of a hiring risk to even both continuing the interview.

sanderjd 4y ago

What about 1:1s with their manager, though? I guess I just don't get this at all. If an organization has a bunch of people and absolutely no individual supervisory relationships with those people, then that's a much more general problem and I don't think it has all that much to do with remote work.

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago

Remote workers where I work have company provided business broadband, company laptop, webcam, etc. At any company serious about remote work these aren't things they should be stingy on. It's crazy that they are.

smallerfish 4y ago

This is why embedded is better than fully remote teams. Your engineering managers should start building relationships with candidates pre-hire, and then be doing 1:1s post hire. Even with camera off, you'd notice if somebody is not the same person, unless you have too many other responsibilities.

boltzmann-brain 4y ago
what do you mean by "embedded"?
- smallerfish 4y ago
  Developers are directly part of the team, reporting to the same engineering manager, rather than being under their own agency manager, pm, etc. You should never be going through an intermediary to work with remote devs that you hire (aside from, perhaps, the handling of payroll & benefits.)
  - boltzmann-brain 4y ago
    Oh, yeah, that's terrible. Agreed