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Fake job seekers are flooding US companies that are hiring for remote positions

(www.cnbc.com)
182 points arizen | 7 comments | 09 Apr 25 12:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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specialp ◴[09 Apr 25 13:31 UTC] No.43631863[source]▶
Another remote employment fraud that is much more prevalent is "Overemployment". You will get an applicant that is very skilled and hits the interview out of the park. But then when hired they are working many jobs and just trying to steal as many paychecks as they can until you fire them. They keep their first jobs resume clean and they all check out.

There is a Reddit community with over 400k members to show how prevalent this is [1]. There's lots of tactics like not allowing mentions on LinkedIn so they can't be publicly mentioned and seen by other unsuspecting employers, and just maintaining plausible deniability about why they can't make an on camera meeting. It is technically not illegal so it is very lucrative and hard to detect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/top/

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1. hackable_sand ◴[09 Apr 25 13:45 UTC] No.43632025[source]▶
If it's not illegal then why are you using words like "fraud" and "steal"?
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2. specialp ◴[09 Apr 25 13:56 UTC] No.43632176[source]▶
Because it is the technical definition of the words and that is exactly what it is. Something not being illegal does not mean that it isn't fraud or stealing. Misrepresenting your availability and willfully trying to cover that is is fraud. Taking someone's money while fraudulently not working for it is stealing. I know overemployment people will rationalize it some other way but it doesn't change that.
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3. wpietri ◴[09 Apr 25 13:56 UTC] No.43632179[source]▶
If you look at the history of fraud, people are always coming up with new ways to steal from people that are at the margins of legality. Consider the category "wire fraud", for example. It's not like some lawmakers looked at the nascent telephone and the telegraph and said, "Well boys, we'd better make sure these aren't used for crime." No, innovative scammers found ways to use the new technology for new crime for a few decades before the laws were updated. See Joesph "The Yellow Kid" Weil's autobiography for some examples.

Just because the fraud or theft isn't at the moment illegal doesn't meant it isn't fraud or theft.

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4. sneak ◴[09 Apr 25 17:21 UTC] No.43634725[source]▶
If those so "overemployed" (that is to say, working multiple jobs, a normal and common thing to do in society) were not working for their employer, they would be dismissed quickly.

Nobody's stealing anything in these situations.

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5. specialp ◴[09 Apr 25 18:07 UTC] No.43635304{3}[source]▶
I think you are conflating "working multiple jobs" with working multiple jobs during the same time period and lying to the other jobs about what you are doing when you cannot be reached. There is a big difference. If I work 9-5 on one job, and 5-1am on the other job that is not taking time from one to spend on the other. If I work 2+ jobs during that 9-5 period and not tell anyone and make excuses for not getting things done long enough until one of them fires me that is being dishonest.
6. FireBeyond ◴[10 Apr 25 04:40 UTC] No.43640674[source]▶
> Just because the fraud or theft isn't at the moment illegal doesn't meant it isn't fraud or theft.

It's a breach of contract. It's not fraud or theft.

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7. wpietri ◴[10 Apr 25 13:14 UTC] No.43643452{3}[source]▶
No. Fraud and theft are concepts that are broader than whatever legal jurisdiction you happen to be in at the time. Imagine that somebody gets one of those libertarian paradises up and going. Or imagine a failed state or a post-apocalyptic scenario, where there is no longer any law. It's still possible to run a fraud, it's just that the fraud would be, de jure or de facto, legal.