I’m grateful for the support expressed in comments on the previous post.

As of today, however, I’m cutting off contact with those who were pretending to be Swistak.

A jillion details in the texts I worked on indicated they’re not who they said they are. These were somebody’s fanciful notions of what business correspondence might be, but didn’t jibe with how I know businesses actually work. “We’ll let you know when we receive your payment:” (1) Who does that? (2) What online business doesn’t require payment up front? Though they sent me links to Swistak’s home page, the only e-mail link I had was to someone at yandex.ru, a Russian equivalent of gmail.

The kicker was a text included in the batch I worked on yesterday, which told someone that they were about to invite all American customers and employees (“text correctors” included) to become “representatives.” (1) They need “representatives” on the ground in the U.S.? (2) A blanket invitation like that, to a fiduciary position? (3) A “representative” like this means, to me, someone who’s going to accept payments in their name in this country and then forward portions of same, less commission, to them. IOW the classic “payment processing scam.” (4) In my prayer time Sunday, it was given to me that this would be their next step.

The job offer came to me via spam. I bit, because (1) I figured, for this work, they’d likely recruit anyone they could find in the U.S., and (2) it’s right up my alley. The pay rate figured out to $40 per hour, which is high but not out of the ballpark. So far I’ve done three hours’ work for them, anticipating payment at month’s end via PayPal. As I saw in a previous scam I got caught in on Craigslist, these people go to great lengths to reel you in before the sting.

Reblogged 2020-06-18.