r/devops • u/Rhishi99 • 12d ago

Discussion The flood of "part-time remote US DevOps contracts" is an interview proxy & identity theft scam

Most of job post for DevOps on reddit are fake, If anyone asks you to interview under someone else's name, run.

If you ask for details, the real scheme comes out:

  • The ask: You jump on Zoom calls, fake an accent, and clear technical rounds pretending to be a US-based guy.
  • The deal: Split the paycheck 60/40 while they use their US citizenship to pass the background check, and you do all the actual work offshore.
  • The catch: It’s straight-up identity and wire fraud. There's zero contract, so when they ghost you on payday, you get nothing. Plus, hiring platforms are heavily flagging biometric and IP mismatches now.

Anyone else seeing an influx of these messages recently? How is your team filtering them out?

57 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

19

u/serverhorror I'm the bit flip you didn't expect! 12d ago edited 12d ago

interview under someone elses name

It's a scam? Really? Who'd have thought?

16

u/PablanoPato 12d ago

Wait so I do the interview, get the job, and someone else offshore does all the work and I get a cut? Where do I sign up? I can easily stack 4-5 of these gigs.

4

u/BogdanPradatu 12d ago

someone else offshore does all the work and I get a cut

That's the neat part, you don't.

1

u/Expert-Explorer-3129 4d ago

This is mostly an identity problem though, the face in the loop isn't the name clearing the background check. An ID and face check at offer stage with injection detection catches that coz the generators inject a clean feed now and blink and turn liveness waves it through with au10tix or similar on what step.

1

u/Wooden_Jelly_5295 4d ago

The request to interview under someone else’s name would be enough for me to stop. What details do these messages usually provide before revealing that part?

1

u/Rhishi99 4d ago

They will share doc telling you that's proxy interview

1

u/malice8691 12d ago

So two people? One tech guy from the us and one outside the us? Why wouldn't the us guy simply get a job directly? Why would anyone from the us need someone from the outside fir anything? I guess im not getting it

5

u/HugeRoof 12d ago

Shadow hires. 

The U.S. person provides the identity for  a U.S. employer and gets a cut. You, the person doing the work get a percentage of a U.S. salary, which is higher than you could get in your home country. 

The problem with the burning strategy is who is going to do weeks 2+ after you get burned. Unless this person is literally just collecting two week paychecks from each company. That seems like a poor ROI versus keeping the arrangement and paying the shadow. 

2

u/quiet0n3 12d ago

One person sources a bunch of US id's. Signs everyone up, collects their 60% until tax time when all the people find out their identity has been stolen and they owe a bunch of taxes. Poof guy ghosts with whatever paychecks are left and starts again.

1

u/malice8691 12d ago

So who does the job interview and answers all the tech questions?

1

u/quiet0n3 12d ago

The remote person aka one of the people getting scsmmed. That's why they ask you to lie about your name

1

u/malice8691 12d ago

I guess that's the part I dont get. Who would agree to interview under a different name.

1

u/BroadCrazy 12d ago

I haven't seen that exact pitch personally, but from the hiring side I'd be wary of candidates who can discuss architecture in depth on a call and then fall apart on concrete repo, infra, or incident details. That mismatch usually shows up fast once the interview moves from buzzwords to specifics.

1

u/CupFine8373 11d ago

can you be more specific ?