Mike Rotondo gets a job offer.

I had received the following email on September 14, 2018:

> From: Simon Brickhouse <simon.brickhouse@gmail.com>
> Date: Sep 14, 2018 12:37 PM
> Subject: I would like to help you with your situation
> To: contact@inthemattersofmrrotondo.com

Good Afternoon Mr. Rotondo,

My name is Simon Brickhouse and I work as a department manager at Booz Allen Hamilton, which if you did not know, is a major consulting firm.

I’ve recently read up about your story online and I was saddened by the situation you are in with your eviction a few months ago and your on-going legal issues involving your son. I too went through a bad rough patch years ago involving my own family and I can understand how heartbreaking the situation can be.

Anyways as one person who has been in a similar situation to another, I would like to try to help you out. Currently we have a position open for a remote IT Support position with one of our clients that I would like extend an offer out to you. It would be completely remote (we would have you come to one of our local offices in the Syracuse area to pick up your equipment) so you would be able to work from home. We would also provide full training to get you up to speed on the position. The position would be offering around $75k annually with full benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k, company cell phone, etc).

Normally I would have one of our recruiters reach out to potential employees, but I felt the need to reach out in person first to discuss the opportunity with you.

On top of the position, our firm also offers a legal counsel service for all of our employees, and I would like to personally put down $2,000 as a retainer for you to help you with your current legal situation with your child.

Please think it over, and reach back out if you would like to discuss the opportunity further, and I’ll send you my contact details so we can discuss the matters over the phone.

I’m excited to speak with you, and hopefully you have a good Friday and weekend!

———–

Simon Brickhouse

IT Consultant – Booz Allen Hamilton

After the weekend had passed, I had replied to the email address provided with some questions that I had, and in response, google said that that the address did not exist, meaning that someone had taken it down sometime after sending the message.

My server logs show that the email did in fact come from google:

Sep 14 16:37:15 mx postfix/smtpd[25356]: connect from mail-qt0-f177.google.com[209.85.216.177]

Sep 14 16:37:16 mx postfix/smtpd[25356]: 010E71004DB: client=mail-qt0-f177.google.com[209.85.216.177]

Sep 14 16:37:16 mx postfix/cleanup[25362]: 010E71004DB: message-id=<CAEP8hB-JopSvcMR9+VUz4LZ-5HDp8OzU5S9Z47RYuB5aYf+PUw@mail.gmail.com>

Sep 14 16:37:16 mx postfix/qmgr[28113]: 010E71004DB: from=<simon.brickhouse@gmail.com>, size=6727, nrcpt=1 (queue active)

Sep 14 16:37:16 mx postfix/smtpd[25356]: disconnect from mail-qt0-f177.google.com[209.85.216.177] ehlo=2 starttls=1 mail=1 rcpt=1 data=1 quit=1 commands=7

After having contacted Booz Allen Hamilton, and they said that ‘Simon Brickhouse’ is not an employee at their firm.

Now, the reason that I’m posting about this, is because of how thoroughly thought out this email from ‘Simon’ was. It seems to me that someone put a lot of time and consideration into making sure that I fully believed that it was legitimate; and I feel this requires significantly more effort, than something that would have worked effectively as a simple prank. I’d go into my own analysis of how it is that I feel this way, but I don’t want to contaminate your considerations with my own.

Lastly, in the email that I had responded to ‘Simon’ with, I was very, very respectful; when I had asked how it was that I was worth 75K a year to their firm…