I received a connection request on Linkedin that was very odd.
Her name was Angela Evans. She worked as a marketing executives. She had hardly any LinkedIn connections.
And she immediately wanted to begin communicating on WhatsApp.
Like thousands of others on LinkedIn, I was being lured into by a Pig Butchering scheme and Angela was the scammer.
This wasn’t the first time, I have received connection request like this. I get about 1 per week and sometimes several per week all with the same big red flags.
The question I have is why can’t LinkedIn get a handle on all of these Pig Butchering scammers?
How The LinkedIn Pig Butchering Scam Works
LinkedIn is the last bastion of trust in social media. With over 900 million users worldwide, it is trusted by business professionals to connect with other people in their industries.
And it’s that trust that Pig Butchering scammers exploit.
It has 4 simple steps
- A Pig Butchering scammers sets up a fake profile
- The scammer invites you to connect than moves the conversation to WhatsApp
- The scammer gets you to invest in a crypto platform
- You lose your money
Why Do All These Glamorous Models Work In Artificial Intelligence?
The level of fake accounts is so high that it’s easy to pick off hundreds of Pig Butchering profiles with simple searches.
I started to notice an increase in the number of Pig Butchering scam requests that all looked remarkably similiar – they all worked for OpenAI.
Close To 200 Different Accounts
After a little digging, I found close to 200 LinkedIn accounts that all had the same red flags.
- They all went to the same college – “Carnegie Mellon”
- They all worked as “Researchers at Bossa Nova”
- They all worked in AI with OpenAI or Google
This is just a snapshot of profiles and there are many, many more.
The Background and Resumes Are All The Same
This is what everybody’s background is on LinkedIn. I would have never guessed that OpenAI has so many “Platform Product Managers”
So many profiles that look like they were created with cut-and-paste or bots.
I reported many of the accounts to LinkedIn with No Response
I reported as many accounts as I could to LinkedIn Trust and Safety as obvious frauds and scams, but unfortunately they didn’t seem to take any action.
Many of the accounts remain active on LinkedIn, one week later.
Frustrations Are Mounting As Fraud Profiles Remain Active
And frustrations are mounting. Just last week, Fraud Chief Data Scientist of Bank of America, Jeff Finocchario, posted this warning to the industry.
He also mentioned that he reported all 3 profiles Bank of America profiles as fake to LinkedIn, yet 1 week later at least two of these fake profiles remain active – probably connecting with more would-be victims by the day.
If a senior executive from Bank of America, can’t even flag a fake account for LinkedIn from their own company, that is a big problem.
What Do You Think?
What do you think about this? Should LinkedIn be doing more to curtail these Pig Butchers from running amok on the platform?
With 3 new accounts created per second you can begin to understand the difficulty of stopping fake accounts but these are remarkably basic fakes that could be eliminated.
Thanks for reading!