A smiling woman named Linda Anthony wants to hire you. Jay Jones is convinced she is a bot trying to scam you.

Jones says he first encountered her on LinkedIn one evening just after midnight. Her title on the platform: "Contract Recruiter" at "Confidential Jobs," based in Smyrna, Ga. He found her clone, "Linda Anthony," a "Contract Specialist" also at "Confidential Jobs"-this time in California.

Then he found three more Linda Anthonys.

Each had the same photo. Their pages showed they had joined LinkedIn recently. Their profile URLs ended in the same numbers and letters-a tell, Jones said, that they were created in bulk. Smiling profile pictures aside, if they messaged job seekers en masse, they could steal users' identities or hard-earned cash.

It is just another Tuesday for Jones, a Chicago-area resident who calls himself The Profiler and spends hours daily wading through this kind of online sludge. An out-of-work copywriter on the job hunt himself, he now hunts down the proliferating scams targeting job seekers everywhere. The mission has taken him into the netherworld of the online job market.

Jones has tracked nearly 60,000 fake jobs that he says he has helped yank from the internet, most on LinkedIn and some on the website Teal. Working into the wee hours of the morning, he has flagged about 7,000 scam profiles, including many funneling applicants to those roles.

"It's like rabbit hole after rabbit hole," says Jones, who drives for Uber between his hours of hunting fraud.

Americans are increasingly frustrated with fraud in the job-search process, and job seekers are desperate. The share of unemployed people who have been looking for work for more than half a year stood at 27% in August, near its highest level in more than a decade outside the pandemic.

LinkedIn says its automated AI systems catch and weed out nearly all scams before members-or Jones-can encounter them. The company said it stopped close to 90 million fake accounts before they went live in the second half of 2025 alone and continues to release updates to crack down on potential scams. It teamed up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation this summer to educate job seekers.

Jones says bots such as Linda Anthony use artificial intelligence to tailor roles to an individual's profile and scale exponentially. They will say your résumé isn't up to par-but if you pay up, they will help you get an offer. Other fake positions resemble open roles for real employers including Hyundai Motor and Capital One.

The 39-year-old Jones came to his Sisyphean effort after being laid off from his role in advertising in late 2023. Barely into the job search, he encountered a fake resume writer similar to Linda Anthony. When prompted to pay, he realized it was a hoax and dug deeper. Some fake recruiters, he says, will ask for a driver's license or social-security number-and sell that data, too.

These days, he is still job-hunting. But he is also training cybersecurity professionals to spot scams and seeking paid speaking engagements. He raises money online from people grateful for his services and sells apparel with catchphrases like, "I lay off scammers."

One of Jones's scam-spotting tips? Look twice at profiles with last names that can also be first names. After finding Linda Anthony, he found "Olivia Parker" and "Jessica Bennett," both claiming to be recruiters at "Confidential." Fake profiles might include an AI-generated photo or another picture that's easy to snag, such as that of a real-estate agent or actor.

Once Jones posted about the multiple Linda Anthonys, the links went dark.

"You turn the lights on," he said, "and the roaches run."

Hijacked profiles

Jones soon stumbled upon another scam, which takes advantage of users' trust in verified profiles. It is akin to a "Weekend at Bernie's" plot, in which beach-house guests pretend their dead host is still alive.

Many users submit government identification to their LinkedIn profiles and receive a "verified" badge, a sign of authenticity. But some later forget about their profiles, leaving them to gather dust on the internet.

That is a hacker's dream, Jones says. Scammers can wrest control of the verified account-no matter if the profile is a schoolteacher or an engineer-and list themselves as recruiters for real companies. With apparent credibility, they then send fake jobs to job seekers to collect their information.

One recently hijacked profile belonged to a dentist in Chile. He and others were listed as employees of the boutique Colorado recruiting firm Argenta Talent Acquisition this summer.

Argenta CEO Kelley Barcus was alarmed when she saw the new hires. She is a one-woman operation: "It's my brand, it's my reputation."

She retained Jones to disconnect the profiles from her business's page.

That wasn't easy. LinkedIn accepted his reports on the hijacked profiles. But before the site removed the affiliation with Argenta, the profiles had 14 days to update their accounts or appeal. In many cases, asking members to correct their own data resolves the problem, LinkedIn says.

Jones was livid-two weeks could allow the miscreants to hoodwink more applicants. "Scammers don't deserve fairness," he said. "It's economic terrorism."

Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn's VP of trust product, said scammers adapt quickly to the platform's defensive efforts, and anti-spam efforts are a constant battle. LinkedIn asks recruiters to verify their identities, but Rodriguez says verification offers additional context and isn't a guarantee.

When users click external URLs to apply for jobs, the website urges vigilance through a pop-up notification. Later this month, LinkedIn is rolling out a feature that lets verified employers sever users' affiliations with their companies instantly.

David Fano, founder and CEO of Teal, said the company tries to take down postings as soon as Jones flags them. "There are a lot of scam jobs out there, and it's a hard problem to fight," Fano said.

Fake ads embedded in verified pages

Another tip from Jones: Be wary of positions posted to company pages on third-party platforms such as LinkedIn. Hyundai Motor appeared to post 30 data-entry specialist and customer-service representative roles to LinkedIn eight months ago, Jones found.

The typo-ridden ads were embedded within Hyundai's verified LinkedIn page, screenshots seen by The Wall Street Journal show. But the ads linked to an external, non-Hyundai website. Applicants were urged to email their résumés to an external email address.

Jones also backstops the job titles against the companies' real career pages to discern if the roles are fake.

LinkedIn postings for "Administrative Assistant" at Capital One were verified, Jones's screenshots show, but the job ads led to a website unaffiliated with the company. On Capital One's real website, most administrative assistant jobs have a slightly different title, "senior administrative assistant" or "administrative assistant III."

Spokespeople for Hyundai and Capital One said they work with LinkedIn to take down false job postings.

Jones often has about 50 tabs open on his computer at once. His browser typically crashes a few times a week. Recently, he wrote online that he is stressed about the world his two young children will inherit, but he is heartened by one thing:

"When they grow up and they hear what their dad did to make it better," he added, "they know I meant it."