They're getting pretty good at scamming these days. Putting a lot of work into it in the hope you'll finally take the bait. My daughter went through 5 weeks of interviews for a job as an ESL teacher at a German university. She finally "got the Job" but it was all an elaborate scam. She had found tenants for her apartment for the 12 months she'd be working in Germany.

https://medium.com/the-daily-cuppa-grande/my-daughter-landed-a-job-in-germany-0ac0bdd467db

Your experience was well written with the red flags identified.