Because of course it's a scam when you step back and see how all the pieces fit together. But when the victim is in the middle, they're being confused in a lot of ways:

* The scammer keeps the focus on the upsides (job, office supplies) which are good but not unrealistic.

* The scammer is keeping the victim overwhelmed with interviews, paperwork, training, etc. The actual scam part is a small percentage of the victim's focus. This is classic misdirection.

* The scammer gets the victim to commit a lot of time and energy. Loss aversion and social norms stops people calling out slightly suspicious activity immediately.

* The big one is that the scammer drip feeds pieces so that the victim doesn't see the big picture. It's not like the scammer lays out the scheme on day one. They start with the company providing supplies (not suspicious), bureaucratic fumbling meaning the process changes (understandable), the new hire submitting the order themselves (ok), etc. Each step is logical and only slightly peculiar in isolation. Once the victim is comfortable with each step they are fed the next lie.

The last one works because even if people are suspicious of new information, once they've decided something is true they rarely reconsider their position. In this case the scammer got the victim to believe that the job was real, and the scammer was a legitimate HR person before introducing the scam element. If you believe the company is real, why would you imagine the check is fake? If you truly believe the check is real, how does the transfer risk your own money? They build a foundation of trust by layering a lot of little lies.

Companies sometimes do things that don't make much sense. If you are not familiar with what is and what isn't "normal", it can be hard to tell the difference.

For example, when I company I worked for sent me on a business trip, I was supposed to buy the flight ticket using my own money, then bring them then receipt, and then they would pay me the money back. Why couldn't they buy the flight ticket themselves instead? They knew when and where I am traveling; they were the ones deciding that. It would be easier for one HR person to buy 5 tickets at once whenever one of the teams went to a business trip, than for 5 developers to buy the tickets individually and figure out the rules.

This totally felt like a scam (use your own money to buy something we want to buy, and you only have our word that will get the money later back), except it didn't make sense, because it was a large international company employing thousands of people, and I have already worked there for months. And yes, it was perfectly legit. Just needlessly complicated and weird.

So the fact that a company does something weird and needlessly complicated doesn't necessarily make it a scam. It's just likely a scam when they do it before paying you the first salary.

I've seen that though. I was told to book my own travel and get it reimbursed too. Eventually they provided a portal to do bookings through, but it's still my card and reimbursement-after-the-event.

I suspect with a small firm that doesn't necessarily have a dedicated travel "guy" it probably simplifies things letting people book their own flights.

For some people, airline choice is a big deal. For some cities, you might even pick the wrong airport (i. e. if the person has an easier commute to Newark or Laguardia than JFK). Not to mention scheduling (maybe someone wants to travel the "day before" because of risk of too-tight scheduling).

OTOH, maybe it's simpler for "local team all in one city" versus "remote workers being herded to a single event".

At what point were they having you send the money they just sent you back to them, but in a different form? Did your company have you wire to some random bank account? I assume not. These are not the same scenarios at all.

For one thing even if the company never reimbursed you - it wasn’t an outright scam, you did get a flight. The scam scenario you are literally just sending money to a scammer - with the extra flourish of getting a fake check.

What you say about expensing is not unusual and there a number of reasons for it. It does offload the onus of correctly making reservations, putting in KTIN and immigration info on you. And then the big one is that I get all the travel card benefits (points). I even prefer it this way.

The point is not that it's the same though, it's that companies can behave in seemingly weird ways, to an outsider some of these behaviours might even appear scammish or risky (and it probably is risky to by the flight ticket on the guarantee that your employer will pay you back, what if they decide it wasn't an approved trip belatedly).

> it's that companies can behave in seemingly weird ways, to an outsider some of these behaviours might even appear scammish or risky

This is no more inherently scammish than my relationship with my credit card company or any time one agrees to pay later (which is the norm of how businesses with supply chains operate).

The point is there’s no need to use some ill defined concept of weird. Where is the money going and what is the purpose? If someone is giving you an unbacked check and requesting a wire transfer to themselves it’s a scam.

While agreeing to be paid later for an unrelated good or service has some amount of risk it isn’t a scam.

And there are clear benefits to booking your own plane tickets.

It doesn’t feel like a scam at all unless:

a) you’re buying tickets for someone else

b) that scam company also owns the airline (or if you’re buying from a third part online agency)

Otherwise how could you get scammed? Haha we tricked you into going to Atlanta but didn’t monetarily benefit from it at all!

> unless its your very close friend or family, don't launder money. i think this is a life lesson we learn in middle school

Sorry, what middle school child learned that? None that I know.

I think it was in high school, that I found out about the basic money-back scam, because I innocently tried to buy something in a store with a certified (bank) check for more than the right amount and they wouldn't give me change. Eventually they took it and said I would get a refund from headquarters, but they were extremely suspicious.

This was before the internet was really a thing, too, so the same basic scam has been around for a long long time.

I might have used a certified bank check once in my entire life, maybe to make a down payment on something huge, certainly not during highschool. I have no idea how you think highschoolers are running around casually with bank checks.

>I have no idea how you think highschoolers are running around casually with bank checks.

I don't! They aren't! I wasn't! Nobody does that because they cost (at least then) several dollars.

The point of my anecdote was you use a bank check once and you learn about scams and laundering money, so you don't "run around casually" using them.

Probably there are more high schoolers "running around casually" with credit cards than there were 25-30 years ago, but in any case I didn't have one.

I certainly never again tried to use a check that wasn't for an exact amount.

By the way, some people do or did use personal checks at the grocery store and get cash back - I don't know if you can still do that and I never have tried it, but it used to be a thing.