If you are reading this you probably were contacted by someone pretending to work for Lil Horse, like I was. I received an E-Mail late October 2022 subject titled “Interview Invitation – Lil Horse Inc.” I honestly could not remember applying to Lil Horse but I do normally receive E-Mails soliciting work. It seemed perhaps I didn’t remember or they hunted me down.
I was contacted by Edward Robertson, or whatever his fake name was… We set up a time for an interview via Microsoft’s Kaizala application. The interview was done via short text answers which I was given two minutes to respond to each question. in today’s day ago I did not think this was totally out of the realm of normal. However, at the completion of the interview, I had reservations about the progress.
Two days after the interview I received an E-Mail offering me a job “Offer of Employment:”. I reviewed the offer and everything seemed fair and on the up and up. I did some google at this point to see if there were any reports that would heed my consideration. I could not find anything negative and with the letterhead looking normal with nothing seemingly out of place I thought all the boxes were checked and it was legit. I work as an independent contractor and taking a job like this presented little risk and in turn, I accepted the offer. I do understand that not everyone is in the same boat as me and that is the main reason I am composing this post.
Edward got back to me a day later and congratulated me, stating they were excited to have me on the team. He also wanted to start the onboarding process which we did. I filled out some basic paperwork, and again nothing seemed unusual that would present a warning signal.
As Edward(or whoever) lead me through the fake onboarding process he stated a number of times that Lil Horse Inc would provide the tools needed and they had to connect to the Lil Horse server (first hint something was not right.) He then preceded to send me an equipment list and invoice stating that Lil Horse would be providing this equipment again. Here comes the big tell that something was not right. As freelancers, we know unless you are an established client there is a deposit and hold for new clients. This protects against chargebacks.
Edward wanted me to deposit a eCheck and proceed to pay the fake equipment vendor for equipment that would never come. This would result in a double loss with payment to a vendor that does not exist and the inevitable chargeback from insufficient funds! This has the potential to devastate unsuspecting people.
I would have hoped the story stopped here, but unfortunately, it does not. As I said I did a lot of googling and when I could not find the information I was looking for I sent employees of Lil Horse Linkedin messages asking if they knew who this guy was. I received only one message back from President Co-Founder, Alison Castillo.
She did respond somewhat in a timely fashion. But, they knew this has been going on but had not taken action to notify people of the potential fraud taking place under their company’s own namesake. This is absolutely horrible and unacceptable, it could have saved me and others a lot of time (and possibly money) if they had taken the high road and written a blog post or put out a public statement warning people. This only moves to damage Lil Horse’s reputation. It says volumes about Lil Horse’s ability to effectively communicate with the public.
If you have been a victim of this scam I urge you to report it to the authorities in your area and contact all parties.
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