Several weeks ago, I received an email from someone who claimed to be conducting a search for an individual who would serve as a director and chair of the nominating and governance committee of the board of “a major enterprise client.”  Among (many) other things, the email stated that my profile “stands out as a strong match for the strategic governance, board leadership, and enterprise oversight required for this role.” It also said that the company in question was based in Florida (where I live) and that the compensation for the role would be as much as seven figures.

I was puzzled.  While I’d like to think I have the necessary governance chops, I was 78 years old at the time (I’m now 79), so I found it difficult to believe that a major company would want to bring on a first-time director of my age.  There were other puzzlements, including that the wording of the email was beyond formal and flowery (in other words, slightly non-human) and that the position description was very detailed, which seemed odd given the preliminary nature of the inquiry.  In addition, the individual (assuming it was an individual) who sent the email claimed to be with a search firm in Maryland – in fact, his email contained some graphics from the search firm’s website – but had been sent from a Gmail address rather than the firm’s email address.  His name was also similar, but not identical, to that of an individual with the Maryland search firm. 

To be clear, I love what I am doing and where I’m doing it, and for those and many other reasons I have no interest in seeking another position.  However, curiosity got the better of me, and I responded, noting that I doubted that a company of the size and stature he referred to would want me on its board and that pursuing the position seemed like a waste of time.

The responses and other communications I subsequently received were even more fulsome, flowery, and weird than the initial inquiry.  They identified the company and provided extensive additional details about the role and were even more rhapsodic about my expertise and accomplishments.  But that wasn’t all.  In fact, they began to take on an unpleasant aroma.  For example, in addition to the puzzlements referred to above:

• The company in question was not in Florida.
• A very quick check of the company’s most recent proxy statement demonstrated that the compensation discussed in the email was far more than the company actually paid.
• While his initial email concluded with a reference to having “a discreet conversation” to pursue the matter further, he dodged my suggestion that we speak.
• On a few occasions, he wrote me two or three times in a very short period of time, stressing how the window of opportunity was closing and how I therefore needed to move quickly.
• He urged me to engage someone who, for a “modest fee,” could help me prepare an updated resume and a board bio. 

Then, the aroma became a stench.  Specifically, he provided the name and email address of the resume writer – again, a generic Gmail address – and referred to the writer as “he” several times even though “he” had a woman’s name.  And, not surprisingly, when I searched for the woman’s name online, I found a legitimate website, wrote to her at the email address on the website (i.e., not a Gmail address), and got a very prompt response that she had nothing to do with the matter and in fact had engaged professional help to track down the impostor and take other appropriate action.

But wait – there’s more.

A couple of weeks after receiving the initial inquiry described above, I received another Gmail from a presumably different person purporting to be conducting a very similar search for another company.  The same flowery language about my skills, the same detailed description of the position, the same suggested compensation levels I could expect, and the same assurances that my age would not be an issue given my background, etc.  This second individual (assuming it was actually a second individual) did not apply the same degree of time pressure, but in most respects the drill was pretty much a carbon copy of what I’d just experienced.

This time, the resume writer was identified as a male, also with a Gmail address (I was unable to find a website for him or anyone with a similar name), and he got to the point very quickly – his fee.  And at some point I received instructions for wiring the fee, which gave the name of an account owner that was different from his.  That and some other weirdnesses made me wonder if I was being solicited to send money to some sort of terrorist organization or money laundering operation.

At that point, I put a stop to things and advised all and sundry that I was not interested in moving forward.  The second resume writer pushed back a bit, but I did not hear from any of the others involved.

I am quite sure that the scam made extensive use of artificial intelligence, given the flowery and rather unnatural writing style, the over-the-top descriptions of the positions, the compensation involved, my skills, and so on.  Possibly AI was used to select me as a target.  Fortunately, it didn’t take a whole lot of intelligence – artificial or otherwise – to figure out that it was a scam. But it does give me pause to have personally experienced how AI, for all its many ballyhooed blessings, can be used as a tool for nefarious activities as well.  At the same time, it occurs to me that the perpetrator or perpetrators of the scams were lazy and/or stupid, in that they could and should have corrected some of the more obvious errors that first raised my suspicions (e.g., saying that the company was based in Florida and referring to the resume writer as a male when her name was not).  And that strikes me as a basis for some optimism that, at least on some occasions, human stupidity might just neutralize the negative impacts of AI without even trying.