[itgoon]

That was the biggest flag to me.

Nobody in any kind of business uses @gmail.com. Maybe some Etsy person selling out of their extra bedroom, but that's it.

Domain names and email hosting is too cheap to use gmail for business. Even if it was a legit business, I'd stay away if they couldn't be bothered to do that minimum.

[minimaul]

It's not just the use of @gmail.com, it's the fact that it's clearly an autogenerated address with random chars that tripped me.

If it was claiming to be a small business from [e-mail], I'd be less suspicious - but a large corporate not using their own domain for mail, the email address itself, and the then switching to a second email address are all giant red flags for me.

[bitcharmer]

Exactly this. How these email addresses didn't raise any red flags is beyond me.

Looks like many people are much more gullible than I ever imagined.

[pbhjpbhj]

Not true in UK, small businesses that are not working in tech will use free email with the suppliers domain.

[ghaff]

That's true in the US as well. Lots of small businesses just use gmail.

[kube-system]

It is quite common among US businesses that are not large enough to afford a dedicated IT department and do not want to spend too much on a MSP. Not the kind of company that would be offering this kind of job, for sure.