LinkedIn Job Scams: How Fake Recruiters Steal Money and Trust
When Jay Jones went to look for a new role, he discovered the world of job scams instead. And he decided to fight it.
Episode 27: As soon as he posted the “Open to Work” banner on his LinkedIn profile, Jay Jones started getting attention from recruiters, hiring managers, and people offering to help him in his job search. Since then, as “The Profiler,” Jones has removed more than 32,500 fake jobs and over 7,000 fake profiles from LinkedIn alone.
“I can add Harvard to my profile right now. If I wanted to say I worked at Oracle, Apple, or Microsoft, I could. And there's nothing to verify that.” — Jay Jones
Scammers prey on vulnerabilities. The job market has created a large population of people who are actively, publicly identifying themselves as needing assistance. And the scammers want to steal their money, steal their data, and lead you to other sites to be scammed in more ways — even posing as recovery services.
The scammers create profiles on job sites, including Upwork, WhatsApp, and. other platforms, steal photos from real profiles, and falsely claim employment with legitimate companies. They usually change the person’s name to avoid detection.
Resume and Job Profile Scams
The resume writers are ready to help you improve your resume. They’ll put your resume through their software to predict how it will perform in the applicant tracking systems that hiring managers use to identify viable candidates. They give you a score. It’s always low, of course. But they’ll help you improve it — for a fee, or course. If you’re lucky, they’ll just take your money and disappear. If you’re not, they’ll steal your personal data and take over your LinkedIn account to scam other people.
Hiring Scams
The hiring managers have a job for you in your area of expertise. They lead you through their hiring pipeline and make an offer. Or they have a high-paying, flexible online data entry or customer service job that you can do from home whenever you want. All you need to do is complete the background check, so they’ll need your driver’s license and social security number. And that’s when they take your personal information to sell it to data brokers.
Money Mule Schemes: A contact will offer a quick part-time job. All you have to do is pick up packages from people and deliver them to another address. It seems like quick, easy money. But in many cases, you’re actually supporting another scam — picking up a package of money from a victim and delivering it to a scammer, or another money mule on the way to a scammer.
Job seekers are immensely vulnerable. They don't know the scale of the issue because they're sold that this is a safe place to be, it's trustworthy. — Jay Jones
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Who Is “The Profiler”?
Jay Jones had his dream job as a copywriter at an ad agency. Two weeks before his daughter's birth, he was laid off. It was a scary time. As soon as he posted LinkedIn’s #opentowork banner on his profile, he started getting a lot of attention from recruiters and hiring managers. I realized something was off about the messages. They were too eager, too flattering. He initially blocked the scammers, but decided he needed to take action to protect other people. As The Profiler, he turned his attention to exposing fraud in the job market, educating people how to protect themselves, and identifying the scammers to have them removed from LinkedIn.
Episode Chapters
0:00 — Scams in Job Seeking
02:45 — The Birth of The Profiler
04:42 — Understanding Job Scams and the Mechanics of Scams
10:38 — The Role of Vulnerability in Scams
13:24 — Identifying Fake Profiles
16:38 — The Impact of Scams on Victims
26:30 — Understanding Job Scams and Reporting Challenges
28:15 — The Scam Process: Identity Theft and Fraud
30:00 — Job Seeker Frustrations and Reporting Experiences
31:59 — The Role of Bots and Hijacked Profiles
37:50 — The Importance of Awareness and Reporting
40:52 — The Scale of the Problem: Impersonation and Fake Profiles
48:51 — The Need for Better Monitoring by Platforms
50:35 — Scams as a National Security Threat
Useful Links
Sponsors of Stolen
BioCatch prevents financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting 3,000 anonymized data points – keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, physical device attributes, and more – as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's models reveal patterns that distinguish the criminal from the legitimate.
Scamnetic is a leader in AI-powered scam detection and prevention, protecting individuals, businesses, and financial institutions from digital scams. With solutions like KnowScam and IDeveryone, Scamnetic delivers real-time scam insights, identity verification, and intervention. Restoring trust, reducing losses, and empowering organizations to safeguard customers in an increasingly complex digital world.
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