On mobile, so sorry for any formatting issues. Also using a throwaway.

So back in college, I met this guy (M) in one of my classes. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and struggled with a lot of the assignments.

Now, I would regularly help out a few struggling classmates with their assignments. One day, M found our study group and asked for help on the particular assignment we were currently working on in our group.

I told him that I would be happy to help, but M didn’t have the assignment on him at the time, so he asked if he could email me the assignment and if I could help him later that night since the assignment was due the next day. I said that was fine, but I had work later so he would have to wait until later that night. 

I got home from work and found an email from M in my inbox. He sent me what he had so far and it was clear that he put in little to no effort. Everything was either completely wrong or incomplete. I took roughly an hour to reply to him with a very thoughtful, well-written, constructive email with feedback on what he can do to improve his work. He later replied and instead of saying “Thanks for your help” or asking a follow up question, I got the letter “K”. A “K” in return for the time I took out of my evening to analyze his shitty work and explain to him what the professor had already explained in class. I was pissed, and I didn’t help him after that.

A few weeks later after the class I had with M ended, I was working on an assignment in one of the common areas on campus and M found me. He came and sat down next to me and started bragging about how he had made $400 working 40 hours at his internship. I wasn’t having it, so I made up some excuse, got up and left.

I didn’t see him much after that, but I heard from a lot of friends that he would regularly manipulate people to do his assignments for him and brag about how much money he was making to everyone and anyone.  

Fast forward to present day, all of my friends graduated college and we are all working jobs that we enjoy. One day out of the blue, I got an invitation from M to connect on LinkedIn. At first, I was just going to decline it, but my curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see what he was up to, so I accepted. I saw his profile and it didn’t appear that he was able to hold onto any job for longer than a few months, which wasn’t surprising since the guy would just have other people do his assignments for him. I told my friends who knew him and we all had a good laugh about it since it seemed like this manipulator got what he deserved. 

A few days later, he messaged me on LinkedIn asking me if I was enjoying my current job. I just ignored it and went on living life.

A few weeks after that, he messaged me again asking the same question. Again, I ignored it and moved on.

Then a few days ago, he messaged me once more asking if I ever consider employment opportunities outside and in addition to my current job. For the hell of it, I replied saying that I do and I asked him what he had in mind. The TL;DR of the conversation we had over a week is that he was working with a wealthy couple who set him up with the opportunity to help other individuals start their own business selling products and services. He bragged about how this opportunity was going to allow him to retire in two years and by joining this MLM (pyramid scheme) I could potentially retire early as well. The whole time he was really defensive about all of the details (he wouldn’t tell me specifically who he was working with, what products he was selling, etc.) 

Turns out, he was messaging my friends as well about he same “opportunity”. We all began replying to him and asking for more details just to waste his time. The way we see it, the more time he spends talking with us, the less time he has to actually manipulate someone who is unsuspecting. 

In his last message, he was asking if we could meet up for a “pre-interview” and I was going to finally just block him and move on with my life. However, I was telling one of the interns at work (who goes to the same school M and I went to) about this and he told me that M regularly makes trips out to campus to prey on unsuspecting students and try to get them to join his pyramid scheme. His latest victim has apparently been a special needs student and this just made me hate M more.

I am thinking about scheduling a meeting with him out in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere just to waste more of his time and then just no-show and block him once and for all.

So, Reddit, AITA for wasting his time and WIBTA if I schedule the pre-interview?
