Sadly, my daughter got scammed earlier this year. She is a recent college grad from a liberal arts school, and had been working six months doing retail work after graduation.

Looking to make use of her degree, she was excited to get a job offer doing remote work as an office coordinator. She has a dog so working from home was a plus, and $25/hr instead of $16/hr doing retail was a big raise.

She not only lost $3000 from the scam check, she also lost her old job, having given two weeks notice and didn't realize it was a scam until she was gone. The thing that pained her the most was the shame of having been scammed.

Although some red flags were there, her main blind spot was the disbelief that scammers would go to so much effort to (a) set up an entire website for the fake company, (b) were willing to spend hours in the fake interview, and (c) having her do two weeks of "training" courses while they waited for the laptop and other things she bought made it it cross country into their hands.