100% scam.

There is no job.

There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money and maybe your freedom.

The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "assistant" and will supply you with stock ads of fake "cash the fake check" type jobs. You are suppose to post the ads, the victims contact the scammer, he sends them a fake check to cash and they send him their money via Western Union or moneygram. When the victims realize they were scammed, they report YOUR post to craigslist and now you are ip banned from ever posting there again. Being ip banned is the real reason that scammer can't post his ads for fake jobs.

Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.

Any "paycheck" you receive will be fake and will bounce. In fact the scammer might try to steal more of your money by saying he "accidently" sent a check made out for "too much money". Then he will demand you cash that large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the "money" via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank's money you sent to an overseas criminal.

Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails and texts from his other free email addresses and paid-for-in-cash cell phone number using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.

You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.

Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.

Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even partial sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.

7 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs:

1) Job asks you to use your personal bank account and/or open a new one.

2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order.

3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity.

4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone.

5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram.

6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site.

7) Job asks you to post ads on ebay/craigslist or on forums advertising merchandise, programs or other websites

Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed 'red flags' and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason.

If you google "fake job posting ads scam", "selling on ebay fraud Western Union" or something similar, you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.

That sounds like a classic Nigerian 419 scam offering to overpay for an item, providing a portion of the (counterfeit check) money is returned. It's not money laundering, it's just a fake check fraud scam that takes advantage of a weakness in the banking system, it can take I believe over a week for a check to actually clear the issuer bank, your bank is effectively ending you the funds up front in the mean time, you would end up financially and legally responsible for the full amount.

I really don't get the rational for wiring him back money??

That same scheme was originally used by the Nigerian prince emails needing assistance to get a million dollars out of the country and is commonly used in eBay and well as Craigslist purchases where an excess is to be send to a shipping company, often they don't want the goods just the 10% or so of the price send to the so called shipping service.

A practical point, Craigslist can block or "ghost" your ads if you post more than 1 a day, professional Craigslist spammers invest in services so they appear to have multiple computers in multiple cities.

There was a pop song celebrating such fraud: "I Go Chop Your Dollar"