After some checking, apparently it is a thing. THere's a whole industry of people doing interviews from remote locations.
It was quite funny to see when we complained to the recruiting agency how they had to call him back to "sign some more papers before he can get paid". Apparently he did not realize that we are a small enough shop that people who interviewed him might remember that and start feeling suspicious when the guy who showed up looked nothing like any of the ones we did talk to before; it helped that one of the admins took a screenshot of his Skype image, too.
But the scariest thing is that he didn't even feel bad about it -- he told the agency "what? I need a job". That he did not know a database from a hole in the ground wasn't going to stop him.
