Transcript
Speaker: And there's no barriers to entry into what people can actually put on their profile on LinkedIn. Anybody can sound like a CEO. They can sound like an executive recruiter with decades of experience in this industry.
Speaker: They can use whatever photo they want. If they do go through the effort of being verified, they can then change that picture after they have the verification batch to another picture and another name. It doesn't trigger a red flag on LinkedIn. That's something that allows these scammers to then hijack a profile, change the content. and then operate under that authority that was earned from the real person.
Speaker: I am so excited to welcome today's scam ranger, also known as the profiler, Jay Jones. And today we're going to focus on something that we don't, I don't think we really touched on the podcast and it is job scams.
Speaker: I know that we had talked about LinkedIn being a place where there are romance scams or pig butchering scams, really starting relationships with random people, but there is a whole other class of scams out there.
Speaker: Welcome to Scamrangers, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us. I'm your host Ayelet Begir Levine and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this
Speaker: Jay, welcome to Scamrangers podcast. So happy to have you here. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm looking forward to helping people. Amazing. So I wanted to start with what you do today. i think it will really set the stage. But of course, we'll go back to how you came to do it. But let's start with what you do today. What is your focus today? What are the services that you offer today?
Speaker: So I go out for job fraud scams in the market that target businesses by hijacking their identities and then using those synthetic identities to then target job seekers and then defraud them out of their information and money because there's no gatekeeping to who can say where they work on LinkedIn, who can profess to have for a certain level of experience. And so with that stolen credibility, they then turn that into what they weaponize against unsuspecting job seekers to, again, steal their money and information. And it's my mission to stop that.
Speaker: So how do you stop them? What are the services? And we'll we'll get to the scams as well. But what are what are the services that you provide today in in a nutshell before getting into the the problem and everything? Sure. So I go after the fake job postings to get them taken down. I go after the fake profiles to get those taken down, ah provide outplacement services to companies that if they're unfortunately doing way off, then, you know, bring me in as part of that process to help educate their um former employees at that point. So they're not scammed in the job market for educational institutions, um creating curriculum for the universities, for the college students that are entering the market, that they know what is actually out there. so they're better prepared. protected from it. And then from there, focusing on, you know, the elderly people. So protecting them from the romance scams that you mentioned in the intro, because they're more likely to be targeted by that.
Speaker: That's super important. So if you are, you know, for our listeners, somehow involved in unfortunately layoffs in your organization, or if you are accepting interns, or if you are talking to communities of graduates who will be entering the job business or the workforce and looking for jobs, or... You know, anyone who kind of goes to LinkedIn to to look for a job, this episode is for you and people around you. So super important. So how did this all start?
Speaker: Jay, tell us, share your story with how did you get to be kind of the profiler for job scams and and do this important work? Well, started on December 4th of 2023 when I got an impromptu Teams message that let me know that I was being laid off because, know, my manager at the time, we had a great rapport and, you know, we would routinely have a Teams message that would turn into a quick hop on a call to talk about advertising because I was a copywriter in my full-time position. We talk about advertising, previous projects and whatnot. And so when he asked, hey, hey, do I have a sec? And then I was like, sure, jumped on the call, but HR was there. So I was surprised, blindsided. And that's what actually started it because I then went to the job market because job seekers are told, put up your resume, update your LinkedIn profile, and then put the open to work banner up.
Speaker: And prior to the layoff that came, I'd heard rumblings with how bad the job market was, but I didn't want to believe it. I just kept my head down, kept focusing and doing more work. But then when I got the call that I was being laid off, that's what prompted me to enter the job market.
Speaker: And I was immediately targeted after I put up the open to work banner. And so I had um fake resume writers out of Pakistan at the time reach out to me. I didn't know they were fake in the beginning. But as I started to look into this business, quote unquote, I thought they had over 3000 fake profiles. They had stolen pictures of attractive women and claimed that they were resume writers for their company, which was 10 star resume limited.
Speaker: And as I started to follow every thread, as I say, and piece this all together, I realized that this was a fraudulent organization hitting job seekers at the basic, basically the starting point of their job search, which is their resume, which that's how it got me started.
Speaker: So just to make sure i understand, so you go into LinkedIn, you put the open to work green ah thing on your profile picture, and then immediately you are targeted with individuals offering jobs that are fake. So how did you realize what, what were the red flags for you into the in that process? ah The red flags were the huge crop of attractive women working in one Pakistani resume writing company.
Speaker: But then as I did some OSINT work and I found ah different pictures that were the same picture, but under different names, I realized that they stole these pictures from actual women that were either on LinkedIn that had dormant profiles or they stole them from like photographers, website, websites for headshots. And then they also stole pictures of like overseas models and put those on their um profiles that were fake as well. And this is before ah image creation with AI got so good, right?
Speaker: Correct. Yeah, this was when it was either not created or in its infancy. So when I saw that, I realized that they were stealing the likenesses of people and using not attractiveness, i.e. romance scam parallel. But they were using the attractive women to get past people's defenses and make them more likely to listen to them. And so I saw that they had employees, but these employees were fake. They all said they were in one specific region, which was typically Connecticut, New Jersey and so on, because foreign scammers pretend they're stateside and they use the more reputable states, so to speak, to make that lie seem more legitimate. And as I dug into it, I realized that they were targeting people. They stole content from real resume writers' profiles and put it on theirs. And they also fabricated documents like forging CPR ah certified resume writing certificates and giving them the certificates claiming they had credentials that they didn't.
Speaker: So they, in fact, reach out to you to offer help because they knew you were looking for a job, not offer a job, my mistake. They offered help in creating your resume, yeah, updating your resume. And then with all these tactics of, you know, we're here local, we're attractive people. Therefore, you know, we we know there's research on correlation between, know, attractiveness attractiveness and and success in life or whatever. um And therefore, yeah, response rates for for that. So, but how did you get to that? So how did you realize that this is happening? like What was the before even doing your research um and seeing that there's so much going on here that doesn't make sense? How did you know it it was Pakistani? How do you did you know that? know What made you do deeper research?
Speaker: But once I saw the images were stolen, I then went to the website and I looked at it and I'm like, these look like stock photos, which they were. So the website was one that was quickly spun up to look legitimate. It had a stock photo as the CEO claiming that the CEO's name was Nasira Amir, but it was just a stock photo of a woman sitting at a desk. um And as I looked into like the articles and incorporation, because what this Pakistani company did was they registered their business through CompaniesHouse.co.uk, I believe. And Companies House is a legitimate organization out of the UK where businesses register their um paperwork and stuff. But unwittingly, it's become involved in a place where
Speaker: ah bad companies and fake ones registered their business just to look legitimate. And so when I found the paperwork there, that's what led me to the actual head of the organization, which was Nasir Ahmed or Nasir Jot. And as I continued following it and I realized the scale of the operation and fleshed him out, first he said that he had no idea this was going on. And then he said, well, he didn't make a few fake profiles, but it was just a drum up business. Then by, you know, once he realized his lies were all failing, he was like, he deserves death and he scammed everybody, you know, just, just trying to play the victim. But the company, quote unquote, it was formally dissolved in February of 2025. So they're not able to do this anymore.
Speaker: That's amazing. So recently there was an article on the Wall Street Journal, followed by a number of articles about your work. So tell me, and we'll we'll up put links in the show notes, but tell me a little bit about those articles. How did that happen? How did that suddenly explode? You've been doing this more or less since then, right? You've been kind of...
Speaker: after this happened to you and you'll tell us the story, but tell us about the articles. How did that come to be and what? Sure. Yeah. So my first case, which was that one that started in January of 2024. And the reason I started doing this work is because I knew if they were targeting me, they'd be targeting millions of other people. and I couldn't just sit by and do nothing. And so, you know, it'll be three years in January upcoming. And so the Wall Street Journal article came about because somebody who followed my work for some time, his name is Ken Jordan. He actually had a connection at The Wall Street Journal and mentioned me to that reporter, Lindsay Ellis. And then we took a few weeks back and forth going through case files, going through my origin story, actually what my mission is and how it actually pertains to directly impacting job fraud and stopping it. And so that's how that came about.
Speaker: um Literally showed him a case file with all the big jobs documented that I'd taken down. um the methodology behind what these scammers are doing and how it actually has global implications, not just only in the job market. And so that's how that came to fruition. And then the other outlets, once they saw that, they reached out to me as well and extended the coverage. Amazing.
Speaker: Congratulations. And I think followed by Bloomberg and you mentioned also Fox. I'll put all those showcases. So let's go through what other scams are out there and the anatomy of the scam. You mentioned the fake resume writers. Are there other services like this ah offered? Are there also job scams that are fake posted? Take us through the anatomy of the attack and then let's identify the different accomplices across this scam lifecycle. We always draw here on Scam Rangers, the anatomy of a scam, how it starts, how it is enabled, who could stop it, are they stopping it, all these good things. So you already mentioned that company that unwittingly helped register the fake company. But let's get deeper into other types of scams in that lifecycle of how it starts, how they cash out, et cetera.
Speaker: So the one, two punches, the fake jobs and the yeah fake resume writers. And then the third punch will be the fake recruiters. And there's no barrier to entry into what people can actually put on their profile on LinkedIn. Anybody can sound like a CEO. They can sound like an executive recruiter with decades of experience in this industry. They can use whatever folder they want. If they do go through the effort of being verified, they can then change that picture after they have the verification badge to another picture and another name. It doesn't trigger a red flag on LinkedIn. That's something that allows these scammers to then hijack a profile, change the content and then operate under that authority that was earned from the real person.
Speaker: But with With connections, right? Because I think there are two things. You can create a fake profile with all the things and try try to get connections, but you will have an age of the profile. you like When they join LinkedIn, you will have a barrier to entry with. you know I will trust, and that's also something we need to be very careful of. I will trust someone who has many connections with me when they ask to connect with me, but I need to... We all know by now, or at least the listeners of this podcast, you need to be super careful. It's not enough. I think there was a case a while ago where a malicious actor connected, requested to connect with me and someone I know posted on LinkedIn, beware. so i and you know, I unlinked to myself to that person, but that is happening. So how do they hijack someone's account on LinkedIn?
Speaker: It's it goes back to it's a multilayered answer. So the first one and the most common route is if a profile doesn't have two factor authentication. So basically they'll infiltrate it and then reroute the person's personal information to their email system and then overtake it that way.
Speaker: ah the fake jobs come into play where they ask for your personal information, they ask for you to complete a background check after you quote unquote make the ah cut, so to speak. And then that's how they get your personal information. They'll ask pointed questions to then possibly figure out what your ah security vulnerabilities are.
Speaker: There's LinkedIn account selling that happens on LinkedIn openly, where I had a case from over a year ago called the LinkedIn open air account dealers, where they're literally saying buy aged LinkedIn accounts, buy warmed up linkin LinkedIn accounts.
Speaker: um They're offered to sell LinkedIn accounts. So they're pitching people to sell their account. And if somebody is not using it and it has an established presence and they can make some money off of it, they'll do it. But what happens is when you give your credentials over, then they take it over, change the password and you have no recourse because then you have to go to LinkedIn and say, hey, I rented out my account. Can you get it back for me? And it's like, you're not supposed to do that. It's like if a drug dealer has their house raided, they can't tell the police, hey, somebody stole my drugs. You know, it's like that. It's you're you're helping commit a crime if you do that. So that be be aware um and not just the drugs. Definitely, um you know, buying and selling social media accounts and not a good it's it's 99.9% for if not for bad use. so Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing that these scammers do is they'll pretend to be reverse recruiters. And so if people don't know what a reverse reverse recruiter is, that it differentiates from a real recruiter because, or not a real recruiter, but a just sole recruiter, their function is to source candidates and get a job filled. But a reverse recruiter actually works with you. They cost a bit more, they get more personal information about you. And then they apply to jobs as you in the right way to help you actually get placed But these scammers pretend to be reverse recruiters to get more information. And from that information that they get, they weaponize it against you to take over your account or pretend to be you and scam your contacts. So going back to that earlier point about accepting connections that are already connected to you. The ah scammers, what they do, um if they hijack an account and they weaponize that authority, they also send connection requests to people in the industry they're pretending to work in. So when you see a connection request from somebody and it says, oh, you're connected through these mutual connections, that little line makes you think you should trust it, but you don't know it's been overtaken. And then if it's a new account and they don't have a lot of connections, what you'll see is they say, kindly send me a connection request. And they're trying to get you to connect with them because it's a two pronged benefit. When you send a connection request, you automatically follow them. So that's a borrowed authority right there. And they get to save their connection request count because I believe ah for LinkedIn, you can only send 250 connection requests per week. So if they ask you to connect, then they get you to follow them and they get to save that connection outreach that is fraudulent to other people. And the whole kindly send me a connection request actually made a shirt saying, don't kindly send them me a resume, because what they'll do is they'll say, kindly send me a resume, kindly send me a connection request, which kindly is a hallmark phrase that Indian scammers use to reach out to people to sound professional. And so that's what they do to try to weaponize authority. ah First of all, they used to use Kindly. Now they use ChatGPT, so they don't use Kindly anymore so much because that's not... i still see it, though, but yeah. Yeah. so And I think there was a third way where, um speaking of those reverse recruiters, where ah people will, quote-unquote, help you get a job by acting as you. So they'll also ask access to your LinkedIn to act on your behalf, and then they have access to your account, and then they lock you out, right? said Yeah. Yeah, that part, that's another component that they offer in their fake outreach, which is called a LinkedIn optimization.
Speaker: So they'll tell you that they'll bundle it. They'll say they have a resume rewrite for you. They'll do a cover letter for you and then a LinkedIn optimization. And this is specifically to scammers because LinkedIn optimization is a real thing that real people sell. But what the scammers do with LinkedIn optimization is they say they'll update all of the content on your profile that make you best positioned for the roles that you're looking for.
Speaker: But part of that is you have to share your password and your email, and then that's how they infiltrate. They'll ghost you and take over your account. So don't do that. No, no. ah You can be perfectly optimized without giving over your credentials. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So, okay. So we talked about the presence on LinkedIn. They either take over an account or they create a ah fake account. And then what happens next? They reach out with authority?
Speaker: Correct. Yeah. They use that borrowed authority because what most people are trained to do is they look at the follower count. They look at the age of the account. They look at ah the connections that are on that account. But what you can see as a tell is if somebody is suddenly a recruiter, but previously they've never worked on recruiting for their entire work experience. Like, I mean, I've seen cases where a sommelier who that's the wine industry, ah they all they did was wine, but suddenly they're an executive recruiter.
Speaker: And then I saw one with the guy who worked in construction all of his life and suddenly he's an executive recruiter. And these were profiles that had the badge, they were verified, but they were overtaken. So Any sudden pivot from decade plus of experience, that's a major red flag, the type of outreach, because they do what I call recruiting love bombing. So they'll be like, hey, I can't believe a professional like you is in the job market. You're amazing. Your profile blew me away. These are certain phrases that they use. So it like gets you to engage because it counters what most people hear in the job market, which is a lot of no's, which is a lot of Well, better luck next time. And so when you hear something that validates you and you have been feeling invalidated for so long, you go to it. I haven't thought about that. That's wow. That's really creating the psychological hook that we're all waiting for, right? The... Somebody noticed me. Somebody sees me. Somebody wants what I have to offer. And it's not romantic. It's value-driven. Like, my purpose in life is to the best job that I can. And so someone can see me and value my contribution to society. That's really deep. I can see how that can be a very powerful, unfortunate hook for these criminals.
Speaker: And so they reach out to someone. And then what? What happens? I'm trying to get to the money here, where how they cash out. Yeah, yeah. so Slowly. Slowly. Yeah. So it's what I call the scammer pipeline. So it starts with the outreach that validates you. You gravitate to it because it counters what you've heard. Then they say, um well, send me your resume, which is a common common request, because if you're trying to get a job, the key thing you need is a resume, except if you're in the executive space where That's executive headhunting and stuff. But for the common job seeker, you send your resume and then they say it's not ATS friendly or um it's scored too low in the ATS, which are both lies. There's no such thing. ATS means applicant tracking system. And it's basically it's an online folder for resumes to come in. It just houses the resumes. It doesn't you know, you don't have to beat it. You don't have to keyword stuff it and all this other stuff. Basically, your resume is the entry point for you to sound like you're the best candidate for the role that you apply to. So they say it's not ATS friendly, but they can get you connected with their expert. But that's them pretending to be somebody else. And so that's a rewrite cost of about three hundred to five hundred dollars that they get out of you for that.
Speaker: ah The pipeline can stop at that point if they decide to just block you and then take your money. But then they can take it further where they then say you qualify for this offer and then you have this quick start date or this ah onboarding date. And part of onboarding is a background check. And that's how they get the social security number and the driver's license. That's full identity theft right there.
Speaker: And then they take your information and apply to companies as you to try to infiltrate the ah U.S. businesses and extract that data. And I've seen it. our Wall Street Journal ran a story not long after not long before mine came out where this gentleman was showing the 401k paperwork in his name for a company he never applied to.
Speaker: So that is, ah were now we're reaching national security threat area here, right? where We know that there are job seekers from North Korea. We all heard about the deep fake interviews where candidates wouldn't put the three freewares in front of them, yeah. So that is also part of this scheme. So that's another mode of operation or or means to an end to get ah into or to get you involved in that or so to steal your account to then really apply for a job in a legitimate company as a perpetrator. Wow. Yeah, because I would see people on LinkedIn, they would make fun of businesses and they'd be like, ha ha, look, they sent me a rejection letter for a job I never applied to. And I'm sitting there thinking like that's not something to laugh at, because yes, I mean, the longer somebody is in the job market, the more likely they're going to be bitter and start raging against the system, so to speak. So they'd be like, these companies are so and are so incompetent. no wonder people can't get hired. They're rejecting people that didn't apply, but they have your email for a reason. They sent you that rejection email for a reason. And that reason is somebody applied as you. And so I also would see a bunch of people say across different backgrounds and demographics that basically I can't get hired. I'm not um I'm perfectly qualified for this, but I'm not hearing anything back. And when I see multiple people across different areas say the same thing, then something is off there. And that's when I got the idea. I'm like, these people are being impersonated. That's the only explanation that makes sense. And then I started to see these posts of people saying that, ha ha, this company sent me this email rejecting me, that was confirmation. And so that's when I started to educate people about that.
Speaker: And then the, um, North Korean infiltration. Again, yes, this is a national security issue. I also call it economic terrorism because if the job seekers are defrauded out of their money and they can't then put that money into the economy, they can't support these U.S. businesses. And then the businesses are having their data extracted and sold to data brokers overseas and trade secrets are violated and infiltrated. Then you have like, again, a global problem.
Speaker: So let's talk about enablers in this ecosystem. The first that comes to mind is LinkedIn um as the go-to. It's amazing how you know we have social media all around us for personal life, but there's not one. There's many. And I know we talk about meta often because they are the biggest one, at least in the U.S. But LinkedIn is the de facto place for job seeking, for news, for industry connections. um It's an amazing platform. And I, you know, I'm so thankful ah to many things. However, at the same time, there are things that I question, like, for example, the ability to say that I work for a company that I don't work for. um That is, tell us a little more about that. I'm sure you have investigated this, ah this part of this area in LinkedIn. And How can we even as employers trust that someone in fact worked at a place, that the references work at the place, that is LinkedIn a source of truth here or or not? The people on LinkedIn that are telling the truth are the source of truth. And when it comes to like the people claiming they work places that they don't, I saw this pattern pretty early on when I would go after these fake profiles and I started to see all these prestigious organizations. They would say they work for Oracle. They say they work for Microsoft. ah They say they work for major executive recruitment firms like the Manpower Group, Robert Half, LHH, and so on. And the only barrier to them listing that employer is a few clicks of the mouse. Now, what I noticed um and I told LinkedIn this many times behind the scenes, I'm like, they're impersonating these companies. There's nothing stopping them from actually adding this information. And I understand the reason for the ease of access, because you're assuming that the people adding this information are telling the truth.
Speaker: But what the scammers are doing are weaponizing that access and then making profiles that look legitimate and trustworthy. to deceive people because we're trained if we see an esteemed organization, if we see an esteemed job title, if we see a thoroughly written out ah experience history, those things are meant to signal this person is real and trustworthy. Then not only the problems with the verification badge, we can get to that later, but with AI and the advancing of it, how quickly people can spin up a profile that looks legitimate. It's shocking. It's ah deeply disturbing. because these things all work in concert to enable the scammers. And when I've told LinkedIn about this behind the scenes, it's been a a lot of premature click cases closed early, a lot of resistance. And then, you know, it's ironic because I said this to them about a year and a half ago and 19 hours after the Wall Street Journal article came out about my work, then they announced that verification of employees. ah The company pages can now remove pages that falsely claim to be employed with them. But the catch is they have to be a premium paying company page. So it's like you're leaving the non-paying customers in the wind to profit off of something that should be a standard feature. Right.
Speaker: Scams don't target intelligence, they target trust. Successful professionals, executives, teachers, engineers, retirees. Scammers don't care who you are. They care whether they can build trust. As scams become more personalized and AI-powered, consumers need more than awareness campaigns. They need support in the moment and in context.
Speaker: ScamRanger helps people verify messages, understand manipulation tactics, and make safer decisions before sending money, sharing information, or taking action. Because intelligence isn't the defense. In a world where trust has become the attack surface, awareness alone isn't enough. We need resilience.
Speaker: Learn more about ScamRanger and Rangers AI at RangersAI.com.
Speaker: I'm wondering what else did this article trigger? And so you mentioned that you've been kind of banging on the LinkedIn door for a while here. ah to Tell us more about that. What have you, i' I'm sure you had many cases that you dealt with and we'll dive into a few stories in just a bit, but you reached out to LinkedIn several times over the past three years, I presume.
Speaker: ah What have you been asking? Yeah, hundreds, hundreds. um I mean, in the earlier cases, if you look back, you can see that in the post that I made, I actually tagged them because I was naive at the time. I was like, well, they don't know what's going on. So I would tag LinkedIn. I would tag LinkedIn Talent Solutions. I would tag LinkedIn Premium. Like, hey, these things are targeting paying users. These things are targeting job seekers. Here's the proof. Here's the evidence. This is not conjecture. sure This is not slander. I'm like showing you they stole this information from this resume writer who not only is a premium paying customer, but she or he is running a business and it's being...
Speaker: damaged by this nonsense. And then those profiles will come down, but not because they took action. It's because the pressure that I brought publicly forced action. It's never been something that is like, oh, let's act on it because it's the right thing to do. It's like when it gets to a certain den, then they act. um And it's just as frustrating. You know, we'll get into the fake jobs later, but the no barrier to the entry of what people can add is what's causing all of this. And then there's another um major problem, but we can get into that later. Sure.
Speaker: So, and what do you feel like has changed since the article? Genuinely changed, not just one day after news article, LinkedIn announces something, but do you think that there is something, maybe I'll ask a, what do you think are they going to change in the in the near future?
Speaker: following the article, the realization that they need to change. LinkedIn have not been at the table so much when it comes to what are we going to do about scams. There have been many industry initiatives, and I don't recall LinkedIn being at the table or being targeted so much, although they are definitely a player in this. And again, an unwitting accomplice, this is definitely not their target, but I don't feel like they have enough internal justification to do something about it because they're not on the hook. Meta is on the hot seat. Yeah, they're the scapegoat. But they are not.
Speaker: Right. So where are they in this? Well, to answer the question about what this has caused, it has validated what so many job seekers and companies have been facing. You know, more and more I'm seeing like recruitment businesses talk about how they're paying for these recruiters license seats. But when they're getting these candidates that they're supposed to actually be sourcing that are quality, they're getting a bunch of garbage, a bunch of fake profiles.
Speaker: um You're paying premium to have greater access and be able to network more, but the people don't respond or um the profiles that are um reaching out to you that are gate kept when you don't have premium when you get to the other side you see there's nothing there they're a bunch of fake ah service requests and what these scammers do is they create service requests with no intention of ever working with the business owner they're targeting but they're trying to get intel into how the business owner communicates with potential prospects so for example They'll pretend to need resume writing help to get a template from a resume writer that's legitimate, take that template, take that outreach, and then use that in their fake outreach so it looks more real because it's directly mirroring a real one. um And then when it comes to like actually taking action and monitoring this and really doing something substantive about it, it's like pulling teeth. um But what is necessary is for people's
Speaker: stories to be validated, for their experiences to be um treated with the respect they deserve. Because most of the time people are like, yes, something's off, but I can't prove it. And, you know, i feel like this is not a real thing, but, you know, they don't want to rock the boat. They want to remain professional, quote unquote. But people are remaining professional until they end up in homelessness, until they end up dead if they take their life.
Speaker: And that's something that I couldn't tolerate. And so with my work and the proof behind it, combined with these true stories from people that have longed to actually express them, that changes things. So I expect things to get better, but it requires force. It's not going to be done by waiting on them to do the right thing because the money is too good.
Speaker: and So let's talk about the money for a second and then let's walk through a few examples of how you, some specific cases of how you help people. So the first, the money. So how does LinkedIn make money? There are ads that companies use to target specific types of users in different professions. If it's like, we'll talk about the fraud detection space. So a company that sells a solution for fraud detection will want the right communities to be able to see those ads that they publish about a new product, solution, offer, and conference, whatever, boost posts, all that costs money. And that's really classic marketing. So from a LinkedIn perspective, they want, you know, they pay per
Speaker: clicks and views and as as many as as LinkedIn can provide to that company, they can use up the budget. So fake profiles here are in the interest of LinkedIn. Obviously, they don't want fake profiles. But again, from a monetary perspective, having more users on LinkedIn helps LinkedIn make money. So that's one aspect. The other one is the premium, right? All the premium, both for companies and individuals, the LinkedIn sales navigator, All the things. So the more profiles that are on LinkedIn, of course, that we want the right profiles, but criminals are are getting, you know, if we're talking about fake candidates and fake companies and fake a lot of things. So at the end of the day, the net net, it's more for LinkedIn. So anything that I miss here from a monetary perspective for LinkedIn?
Speaker: Jobs that are fake that are paid to be promoted, because I've seen that routinely where a job has ties to a shell company or a non-existing company. Jobs that are posted by a recruiter that is fake using a um either stolen headshot from a photographer's website or a stolen picture of a woman that is on LinkedIn. And you can tell when a job is paid for because underneath the job title in the lower left-hand corner in gray, it'll say sponsored or promoted by hirer. which means they paid to have that job posting boosted. Now, if you don't look at who's paying you, then this is what happens. If you just take the money and you don't vet the source of the funds, this allows scams to be proliferated and pushed out to more people because they simply had the only barrier being a payment.
Speaker: And, you know, given how scammers are known to steal people's credit card information, they're known to use gift cards and untraceable sources of payment methods, then that's no barrier at all. They can just pay and get their fake um outreach done to millions of people.
Speaker: then you're looking at following the money, they hang their hat on the number of premium memberships that they have. But it's like more and more I'm seeing the sentiment is like, what am I getting out of this? Is it useful? Is it actually getting me the opportunities that I'm seeking? Or is it just another bill that people can't afford? so Yeah, and I think I shared with you I just canceled my premium memberships yeah a week ago because, yeah, I am still yet to see that level value. But LinkedIn is very valuable as as someone who networks in the industry. At the same time, I realized they have a fake ad problem just like Meta, right? We learned a lot about 10% of Meta's ad revenue. It comes from criminals themselves. posting fake ads. So I don't know the numbers for LinkedIn. I don't know if there's anything published, but that's very interesting to see how many of the ads on LinkedIn belong to criminals promoting their fake companies, profile services to get people um to click on those ads and and find their way into being scammed, unfortunately. So maybe you can share one or two examples of unique stories, how you helped people in when they had issues on LinkedIn. and or Or I don't know, we're kind of talking about LinkedIn. Are there other kind of places that that you focus on or and is is everything on LinkedIn these days? um It's primarily on LinkedIn, but, you know, people have sent me um situations that they've encountered on Indeed with fake jobs. And, you know, it's an industry-wide problem, but Teal actually had 150 fake jobs posted on their um company website.
Speaker: And to their credit, they got those fake jobs taken down in about two hours after I spoke with the CEO and I showed him the proof that Because of the case that originated on LinkedIn, I did some OSINT work to actually find that these fake jobs that were tied to a company called Angelique Horizons LLC, which was entirely fake.
Speaker: They had listed 150 fake jobs on his website. So he got them taken down with about two hours. um um LinkedIn, it took, again, like about two weeks. So an abysmal rate of response on that front.
Speaker: um But primarily it's LinkedIn because... This is the place people are told is real. This is the place people are told is safe and trustworthy. It has more than a billion members. But how do we know those members are actually real and comprised of actual not hijacked profiles? Because for me, if a hijacked profile exists, then it's no longer real because the real person isn't operating it if it's entirely fake profile then that doesn't need to be explained it's fake and there are a lot of ah profiles on linkedin that say um undefined so like if you just search um quote undefined you'll see names of profiles with the last name that show undefined so that that's a whole another issue that i saw probably a year and a half ago and like nine ten months ago and then for real world examples there was a um
Speaker: business owner and she owns a business in talent and acquisition. She's owned it for over 20 years and it's called Argenta Talent Acquisition. And she had a situation where a profile claimed that her place of employment, her company was where they worked and they did it. And it was a fake profile reaching out to people claiming to do talent acquisition.
Speaker: And she made a post about it. And one of those fake profiles came down, but a mutual connection said, Hey, you should reach out to Jay and he could possibly help you. And so when I learned about the situation,
Speaker: We ah came to our agreement to work together and I started to go after these fake profiles, which six remained. And as I went to document this stuff and prove it to LinkedIn, because basically the word of the company owner should be enough. She's the only company. She's the only employee of the company because she founded it.
Speaker: So. I go to LinkedIn, I say, hey, this is my client. um She has these fake profiles attached to her company page. They need to come down. They responded with we can only work with the super admin of the page. So I go to her and I say, hey, can you make me the super admin of the page? Because that's what they're saying. So she does it. I go back and say, now I'm a super admin. Let's get these fake profiles taken down. They then say they have to allow 14 days for the people that I'm complaining against or proving that are not affiliated with their company to respond. And I'm like, so you're telling me that scammers have 14 days to respond and they will respond. Yes, I do. I work coming like what are they going to say? Exactly. And it took all told 37 days for all of these profiles to be taken down. So, you know, I had to consistently follow up, consistently like tell them like, hey, our brand is being damaged. Her reputation is being harmed. And you're telling me you're giving um scammers the ability to have some sort of fairness in the process. No, it's proven that they're scammers by the word of this employee who said they don't work for my business like that. That should be enough. um So, yeah, that's one egregious example right there.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I'm really curious if there are any stats or any information about the fake profiles, the and investment in ads or the percentage of fake ads. If LinkedIn is investigating those things um and what they're doing, I'm sure they're doing something, but I'm not familiar with that. So that's and definitely a point for us to get more information about Investigate. I don't know if you have any stats or if they've published anything that you've seen about this. They've never once said that the open to work banner is a signal for scammers. They've leaned into it by saying that, you know, the impetus and the creation of it was to get people more opportunities and get them more reach. But the second you find out that is being weaponized and used to defraud people, then it's your responsibility to say, hey, we're aware of this issue and this is what it causes and this is what we're working on to stop it. But since then, you know, the former CEO wrote a book in partnership with another um person and they're leaning into how open to work is, you know, the creme de la creme of finding opportunities. But they're not telling you that it immediately draws scammers because the second you put the banner up, bots that
Speaker: crawl the platform that scammers have implemented. They target you within 20 minutes to an hour, your inbox will start to get messages from these recruiters. Typically, it's ah um either they're claiming to work for a confidential company or they're claiming to work for one of the reputable firms and they have an opportunity that's just right for you.
Speaker: um Regarding the stats, you know, they won't disclose that stuff because, again, it makes it um It puts them in a position where they have to show the scale of the problem. And they've said that they've taken down over 90 million fake ah fake profiles by the end of 2025 at the registration point.
Speaker: But the problem is that stat only focuses on registration. It doesn't focus on hijacked profiles. It doesn't focus on fake jobs that get added and not only added, but then get paid to be promoted. um It doesn't focus on the um fake profiles that are geared to bypass registration because Scammers learn and adapt and then tweak their um approach so that they can then be better um positioned to bypass the initial review.
Speaker: And then regarding fake profiles, I'll give you a sneak peek into something that I've been working on regarding these hijacked profiles, because this is a case regarding a massive Deloitte impersonation that um I was tipped off to back in May of last year.
Speaker: And then as I continue to follow this this entire time, I told LinkedIn about this. They didn't act. And so I've been documenting what is going on. So give me one second and let me know when you can see my screen.
Speaker: I can see your screen now. All right. So this, these are in total 367 profiles. All of them are either hijacked or waiting. They're all hijacked and either actively being used or waiting to be used by scammers in this ah instance of impersonation. So, All of them have the location pretty much of Butler, Pennsylvania, the United States, or let's see Florida. But most commonly, you'll see Butler, Pennsylvania on these profiles. and what they're doing is they list Deloitte as their employer, and then they have the same headline present on all of them.
Speaker: the same job title, which is human resources business partner. And then for the description of what they do at Deloitte, quote unquote, they say Deloitte drives progress, but this is an actual copy from what Deloitte's website has on its description of its actual company.
Speaker: So all of these are hijacked profiles where people lost access to their real profile. And the criminals modify the profile. So the examples that you gave earlier, someone was, i don't know, a plumber. And then now they're an executive recruiter for Deloitte. No, that was an older case where they um pretended to be a recruiter for another company. But I'll show you something else in a moment.
Speaker: ah once so But in these cases, they they took people who don't work for Deloitte and hijacked their profile and made them all recruiter for Deloitte? Correct. Okay. Wow. Because Deloitte is a reputable organization. And, you know, again, once you see Deloitte, you think it's ah upright. And then you see the age of the profile and you think that it's legitimate because it's been on LinkedIn for X amount of years.
Speaker: So this profile is called Friedanand Zika or whatever. But you see the headline is Recruitment and Talent Development ah Vertical Bar Performance Management. Now a alone, that doesn't look like anything. But then when you go here and you see Mackenzie Williams with a stock photo, Deloitte, same headline, then you're starting to see like this is a coordinated effort.
Speaker: You go here, same thing. Albert Dona, Deloitte, same headline. ah You go here, no picture claiming to work for Randstad. But the headline. yeah Yeah, that's the headline is the same. And then.
Speaker: There are other changes intermittently. So like here you can see that headline saying company trying to find another example. This is where they claim to be a human resources business partner. But again, the description is what the company says about itself on its own website.
Speaker: Same thing here. But there were certain. how did you verify that these are not legitimate? Because there were some people that tipped me off back in May. Two people reached out and they said that they were contacted with scam messages from profiles claiming a word for Deloitte. And there were just two of them that they sent me. But for me, I'm like, it's never it never stops at one or two. And so I started to dig and look into it.
Speaker: And at the time, because this will be known as scale case part number six, but at the time that was part two. And so when I looked into it at that time, I found 70 hijacked profiles. But since it's grown 366 of them.
Speaker: So LinkedIn should have information about hijacked profiles, because if my profile is hijacked and I use LinkedIn, I will be reaching out and saying i need my my profile back. So I'm really curious to see if there are numbers. So that's something for another day that we need to I'll i'll definitely follow up on.
Speaker: What else did ah you uncover that we we need to be aware of as we wrap up? just the resistance to something that should galvanize people to fight against it. Because again, when you start talking about the money and the revenue, these fake profiles, they drive revenue. um You know, the promoted jobs, that's a revenue source. When a premium is espoused as the solution to the problem, that's revenue. Because If you deprioritize people's posts and if you um say that in order to increase the value of this post or the visibility, you can boost it within your then charging people for visibility. But if people go to the platform for visibility for their business or for visibility for themselves as a job seeker, and then it's gatekept by paying, then where is the actual authenticity? Like, why does everything have to be monetized? And that's that's the issue.
Speaker: Well, yeah, that's that's our our reality. ah Love it or not for, you know, money does drive everything. But when it comes to then criminal activity and taking ah taking over someone's profile and taking over and then scamming them out of their money or enabling national security threats, then definitely these companies, which are very big companies, need um to be better at taking down, at preventing, at rethinking the security of these platforms. Yeah. And that's the thing. um You know, they hide traditionally but behind Section 230 and claim that, you know, they're not responsible for what users do on the platform. But it's like the minute you know about it and you definitely know about it from me just by myself within in combination with all of the reports. And then also that's the other thing I forgot to mention is the faultiness in the AI itself that they use to vet reports.
Speaker: So basically, if you ask anybody in your audience as a job seeker, when they reported a job that was fake, what the ah average it is on whether or not it comes back and it's getting taken down. The average is low because what the AI looks at is the content of the job description, not the intent of the job description. So, for example, people will send me a job that is tied to a fake company it was sent to them by a fake profile the website doesn't exist or it's only been in existence for two months and the profile that is listed was created that same month the claims have worked at that company for many years these things are all a sign of a conspiracy to the fraud people but it's tied to something that is entirely fake while the ai looks at it and it says oh it's a job description there's nothing untoward about it There's no discriminatory language, not the political and so on. So it says we can't take this job down because there's nothing wrong with it. But the content is one thing you look at, but the intent is to defraud people. I look at the intent.
Speaker: And I think that's a really, really critical point. And that's true for also all social media. We always hear hear this doesn't you know cross our community guidelines, right? The community guidelines need to change.
Speaker: The community guidelines are not good enough today. Gaia is really supercharging these criminal activities. they didn't and i didn't invent them. But the community guidelines today are not good enough. And we do need absolutely to look at intent, what this can lead to, and just do better. um You have a lot of money from all these good sources of income and need to keep the platform authentic. legitimate and not to hurt people. And you mentioned the devastation all the way to suicide cases and and definitely people lose a lot of money, lose confidence. And these are people that are looking for jobs. So they're already in a state where they're... out of yeah Their confidence and their well-being is is hurt. And this can definitely bring to to consequences that are are dire. and And I do think that we need to revisit the community guidelines. and And the intent is a big deal, a big part of that that needs to be rethought. Because, yeah, the job posting looks fine. But the what is behind that? The intel. We need to go dig deeper. And you you're doing this. You're creating this blueprint for them. And that's and and another important point. There is a way to figure these things out. And you are doing this day in, day out and showing what type of research needs to be done. How do we track? what What are we looking for? How do we put the pieces together? It's not something that cannot be done. You're doing it every single day. so yeah LinkedIn can definitely leverage your methodologies and do it themselves. And the same with other companies. And I'm glad to hear that other companies are collaborating with you because it's it's extremely important.
Speaker: Jay, I wanted to thank you so much for joining Scam Rangers and sharing your insights. It's been a pleasure to have you on Keep up the good work. And if any company wants to reach out to you, how can they do that?
Speaker: They can reach me at theprofiler.org. If you'd like me to come and speak to your organization, you can email me at speaking at theprofiler.org. For any press inquiries, for any interviews or um documentary, that's press at theprofiler.org. If you'd like to work with me on an individual basis, you can find that under my services section on the website. And you know you can find me on LinkedIn and I'm here ready to help you.
Speaker: Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming to the podcast and for your time today. Thank you so much, Aileen. I appreciate it. Thank you.
