自己还在找工作，他已帮领英撤下近六万个假职位

A man who is job-hunting himself spends hours every day catching recruitment scammers online.

His name is Jay Jones; he's 39 and lives near Chicago.

He's given himself a nickname: "The Profiler".

Jay used to write copy in the advertising industry and was laid off at the end of 2023.

Right after he started job-hunting, he ran into a fake résumé consultant.

They told him his résumé wasn't good enough, but if he paid, they could help him land a job.

When they asked him to pay, he realized it was a scam and decided to get to the bottom of it.

So far he has tracked nearly 60,000 fake job listings, most of them on LinkedIn and some on another job-search site.

He has also reported about 7,000 scam accounts, many of which were funneling job seekers to those fake listings.

One example shows best how he works.

One night just after midnight, he came across a recruiter on LinkedIn named Linda Anthony.

Her company was called "Confidential Jobs", based in a small city in Georgia in the American South.

Then he found another Linda Anthony, this time in California.

In the end, five Linda Anthonys turned up.

They all used the same photo, had all signed up recently, and the last few letters and numbers of their profile addresses were identical.

Jay says that shows the accounts were created in bulk.

After he posted about it online, the accounts quickly disappeared.

As he puts it: turn the lights on, and the roaches run.

So what are these fake recruiters actually after?

Jay says some will tell you your résumé is no good and get you to pay.

Others will ask for your driver's license or Social Security number, then sell that information.

He also warns: if a recruiter's last name can also be used as a first name — like Anthony or Parker — be on your guard.

Later, Jay found an even craftier scam.

Many people submitted ID to LinkedIn and got a "verified" badge.

But some of them later stopped using those accounts.

Scammers steal these verified accounts and turn them into recruiters at real companies.

One stolen account originally belonged to a dentist in Chile.

Suddenly the account was listed as an employee of a small recruiting firm in Colorado.

The firm's owner is its only employee; she was alarmed, because her reputation was at stake.

She asked Jay to help cut the accounts' ties to her company page.

LinkedIn accepted the reports, but under its rules, the accounts had fourteen days to update their details or appeal.

Jay was furious; he felt that in those two weeks, scammers could con even more people.

LinkedIn says its AI systems stop most scams before they ever appear.

In the second half of 2025 alone, it blocked nearly 90 million fake accounts before they went live.

LinkedIn also says that this month it will launch a new feature letting verified companies instantly cut ties with unknown accounts.

In America, job seekers are getting more and more anxious.

In August, 27% of unemployed people had been looking for more than half a year.

The more desperate people are, the easier they are to scam.

Jay is still job-hunting; he drives for a ride-hailing app to help pay the bills, and some people online donate money to thank him.

His computer often has fifty web pages open at once and crashes several times a week.

He says he worries about the world his two children will inherit, but one thing puts his mind at ease.

When his children grow up and hear what their dad did, they'll know he meant it.

Do you think fighting online scammers should be left to the platforms, or do we also need ordinary people like Jay?