I recently received the wackiest job offer of my life. I’m quite certain no one will ever give me a wackier proposal.
By way of background, I am an attorney with very extensive international experience. The fellow who made me this unsolicited offer is an old acquaintance of mine. He is an American attorney who’s I met when we were both working in Asia.
He proposed to smuggle me in to an African country. I would be taken to Africa on a container ship, tucked away in a container all my own.
I was told that the inside of my container would be made very comfy.
Upon arrival in the Africa, his pals and connections in the local government would ensure that I would clear immigrations without any problems.
My housing in Africa would be provided free of charge.
In return for my legal, commercial and management services, I would receive a 10% stake in his company. He claims that 10% interest is currently worth about $2,400,000. But if the venture is successful, the value of that 10% interest would swell to approximately $24,000,000.
What could possibly go wrong?
As a lawyer who spent nearly four decades in international transactions, this proposal was covered with bright red warning flags. There was nothing about it that I liked, least of all the part about being smuggled into a third world African nation in a freight container in the middle of a global pandemic. Maybe it’s my pathetically poor sense of adventure, but I have never aspired to be an illegal foreign worker indebted to the local criminals who aided in my illegal entry and supplied my fraudulent immigration documents.
So needless to say, I politely declined the offer.
I will be honest, $24 million would come in handy, but I worry about the mental state of my old acquaintance.
Ask him if you could work from home .