I Got Scammed Out Of My First Job. Here’s What I Learned.
When independence and money push you too far
It was the summer after I graduated high school, and I had nothing better to do. Fresh off the high of independence and determined to make my own pocket money, I applied to job on online platforms like Indeed.com, Chegg internships, and WayUp.
To be honest, I didn’t have any specific criteria in mind other than the position being remote. This dismissed any “standard” high school jobs like being a waiter or making drinks at Kung Fu Tea. Though I was planning on studying Biology in college, I was open to research and business internships i.e. accounting and management to get hands on experience (and usually these jobs are more likely to be monetarily compensated).
Typing away at my laptop, plugging and chugging the numbers from my transcript into my resume, and copy and pasting the same applicant persona I had constructed for college applications into cover letters, I didn’t think too much about what I was looking for. It was a steady rhythm that kept the boredom at bay while I reluctantly anticipated the change in my quarantine routine with this new phase of my life called college.
I forgot what I had applied for after weeks of no response. Though I wanted money, I acknowledged that it was coming from a place of privilege and not necessity and subsequently moved on to graduation parties and the Pinterest board that is Bed Bath & Beyond (to shop for my dorm). The places I had applied to were small business, some which I couldn’t even find a website for, and I had been primed for rejection after the ’21 college applications cycle.
The offer to a job I didn’t apply for.
Unexpectedly, I received an email from a Rachel Taylor at Esperion for an accounting position. There was a followup request time to schedule an interview, and the email had been sent to me in a thread of previous emails letting the hiring manager know that they should followup with desirable applicants. Esperion wasn’t a company that I had applied for, and I was subsequently left extremely confused.
Upon further research, I realized that Esperion was a pharmaceuticals company that created drugs specifically targetting cardiovascular risk. Pharmaceuticals was related to the healthcare industry, which I was planning on going into after college. Being on the drug side of the field would give me experience through a different perspective. And I would be working under the accounting department, so I would also be gaining business experience. There could not have been a more perfect combination to learn more about healthcare and business. And I was going to get paid for it!
Sound cheesy? Probably. I had applied for a marketing position at an extremely small firm. It had applied for small business funding during the pandemic, and the *current* employment status was just two individuals. But this firm worked with other business, and it was possible that this firm could have possibly also been a talent recruitment form and sent my contact information to the Hiring Manager at Esperion.
The interview that occurred over text.
After setting up a time for my interview, I was asked to download an app to use to communicate with the team and conduct my interview. I was paranoid with technology and downloading apps because I didn’t want to have my personal information to be accessed from unknown sources (how ironic), so I called my best friend to see if she knew about the app.
This app was an instant messaging communication platform, and its App Store profile seemed legitimate. The only negative comment (or comment in general) that we could find about it was some Reddit user claiming that it was used for scams. It was a singular comment, and we joked it off together because I was so determined to get a job — any job.
I downloaded the app on the day before my interview and began frantically preparing responses to standard interview questions. About two hours before my scheduled interview time, I logged into the app to create an account. I connected with Rachel Taylor, and her profile lit up with a green bubble, indicating that was active on the app.
She messaged me asking if I was ready to have the interview now, and I immediately freaked out. The stress set in of being unprepared, but not wanting to act indifferent to the job, I agreed. In the two minutes of the “…” on her messages, I ran around my room — putting up clothes that were tossed on my bed, throwing on a blouse, and skimming through my prepared responses.
Expecting a video interview, I was surprised to receive a text of 15 interview questions with the statement “Please respond to these questions promptly and let me know when you are done.” Was I about to have a text interview? Sure, the format and style of interviews has altered dramatically with the influx of technology, but text? Really? Maybe this is how some businesses did things.
I joked it off, relieved that I could type up my answers and avoid the stuttering and repetition that were ubiquitous in my verbal responses. I had time to prepare, format, proofread, and submit my responses. The entire process took two hours, but I felt qualified and hopeful for the position. This interview concluded with the notification that Rachel Taylor would send my responses and her evaluation to the Hiring Manager and get back to me about my status in the next couple of days.
I got the job! Or did I…?
A couple of days later, I received an email saying I got the job! The official offer was for a full time 9am-5pm position that would pay $24 an hour. For my first job ever, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was getting paid, but I wasn’t about to complain. I let my parents know amidst the daily chatter at our dining hall table, and it felt like I was finally going to get what I asked for from my senior summer.
As part of my position as an accounting intern, I needed to have equipment to download the information I would analyze and categorize. Rachel Taylor messaged me to send her a cashier check of $5, so that Esperion would be able to compensate me and mail me the technology that I needed.
What was a cashier check? I had never heard of this before. In my head, the logic didn’t make sense. If they were already going to compensate me, then why did I need to send them money in the first place? It seemed redundant.
Later in the day, I Googled cashier checks. The money came from the bank instead of the purchaser and was often used in real estate and brokerage transactions. Much like how it was the money that drew me into this job, it was money that threw me off. Something didn’t feel right anymore. Or maybe this job had never felt right, and I was too blindsided by my own emotions and desire for a job and independence that I ignored the red flags.
The nagging feeling of guilt and anxiety lingered over me for the rest of the day, and I waited until my father returned home before asking him if my suspicions made sense. The moment I told him that my interview happened over text chrystallized the scam to the both of us. It was both embarassing and terrifying. How far would I have gone? If the position paperwork required that I list my Social Security number, would I have done so?
After going deeper into Esperion’s website, I found the notice on their job postings that they had recent cases of fraud imposters who used their name and company to lure potential applicants in. I deleted the app and blocked Rachel Taylor as the humiliation sank in. I was a victim of a scam out of my own carelessness. At every red flag, if I had sat and thought about it a little more, I wouldn’t have been in this situation.
Thankfully, I didn’t lose any money. But I could have lost my identity. My desire to own my own money was a product of the American dream ideal that I had grown up with. The independence I chased to not burden my parents’ wallet was rooted in the idea that I would someday make something out of myself. But how deeply has this paradigm woven itself into my decisions if I was willing to be scammed for it?
Handle your job search and personal information with care. Too often, we brush off intuition when we want something. Whether it’s to believe that a person can stay, that this business partnership is beneficial, or that a job is truly the best fit for us, we put blinders on and keep chugging forward — throwing ourselves into the situation further to prevent the reality check from ever occurring.
How can we know to pay attention to the red flags? Perhaps the larger picture is about not forgetting the rationality in the course of our desire. Though we value logic and clear thought, we are ultimately an emotion-drived species. We need those emotions, but we need that step by step analysis as well to ensure that we’re not getting ahead of ourselves.
Logic and emotion — we need them both. We need an androgynous mind to rein in our emotions when caution is needed. Because no matter how much money and independence is prized in our hustle culture, we need to be careful with what information we put out there for the world to see.
