The weirdest job offer I've seen

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Photo by Kharl Anthony Paica on Unsplash

I got an email and a Telegram message today. One came from a Lucas Kim and another from a Lucia. They both read similarly so of course my Spidey-Sense started tingling wildly.

Here is the text of the email.

X-Received: by 2002:a17:90b:1f86:b0:2ff:64a0:4a58 with SMTP id 98e67ed59e1d1-30a7f7052f2mr726135a91.22.1746485749693; Mon, 05 May 2025 15:55:49 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: Lucas Kim 
Date: Tue, 6 May 2025 00:55:18 +0200
X-Gm-Features: ATxdqUHggNmX1QtbO7qcPsTnVarfNJZMZSqtcShocxpJwSD92yK4Q_peYVoSZ5Q
Message-ID: 
Subject: 
To: Jason Vertucio
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000b7407506346b66f3"

--000000000000b7407506346b66f3
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable


Hi Jason,
I hope you're having a great day!


I came across your profile and was really impressed by your background. With 20 years of experience as a front-end engineer, you've clearly mastered the art of building intuitive and scalable web applications across a wide range of platforms. Your ability to collaborate across teams and mentor other developers stands out.
I run a remote development team based in Singapore, and we=E2=80=99re looking to partner with someone in the US who brings strong technical credibility and communication skills to help us connect with more clients and win new projects.
Here=E2=80=99s how the collaboration would work:


  • Your Role: Focus purely on participating in a handful of technical interviews per month (around 5=E2=80=9310). You won=E2=80=99t need to chase projects, find clients, or do hands-on coding=E2=80=94we handle all that.
  • Our Contribution: My team manages the full project lifecycle=E2=80=94from sourcing clients and winning jobs to full-stack development and delivery.
    • 

  • Shared Success: We split profits 50/50. Your experience helps us close deals, and you earn more without added stress.


To clarify=E2=80=94this isn=E2=80=99t a job offer, but a strategic collaboration where we each bring what we do best to the table.
If this sounds interesting, feel free to email me directly or book a time that works for you here:
<redacted>
Looking forward to connecting!

Best regards,
Lucas Kim
Tel: <redacted>
WhatsApp: <redacted>

A few things stood out to me, unrelated to the poor encoding/decoding job I did.

  1. First, the email starts with LLM-generated flattery.
  2. Second, the person does not provide a company name. If he runs a development team, why not provide the name of your organization?
  3. Third, it sounds too good to be true. I just go on interviews, they do the work, and they split the profits down the middle?

I redacted as much of the contact information as I could. But here is also what stood out. Both the phone number and WhatsApp number did not match. One was foreign, the other domestic. Neither from Singapore.

I am still trying to determine if this is a scam, and how exactly it's supposed to work. But it certainly does not seem like a legitimate opportunity.

I'll update this space if I can get any additional details.

Published: 05/05/2025 7:24pm

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