Thread by @nathanbarry

Have you ever had someone apply to a job who seemed too good to be true?

For the last 18 months we've had dozens of fake applications to our roles. All with stellar resumes, all created by the same person (we think).

The level effort is insane.

⬇️

It started when @BarrettABrooks and I were recruiting another board member. We got a DM on twitter that seemed interesting, but.. odd.

No Twitter profile. The website just looks like this.

We figure, "what the hell" and take the call from the car when Barrett is in Boise visiting the next day.

Emily tells a compelling story touching on points we care about (high revenue growth, small team, etc), but it lacks substance. How is she doing $50M ARR without a site?

She promises to follow up with details over email. Barrett and I exchange a weird look and say we look forward to that.

Here's what she follows up with:

I'd never had a fake applicant before. And especially not for a board seat. What's the long game? Con us into giving her advisor equity?

I'm always fascinated by the mechanics of sophisticated fraud and scams, but this one doesn't make sense.

We laughed it off and move on.

Then 2 weeks later I get another DM, Riley Pennington is interested in joining our advisory board.

She works for Gigasavvy, which is a legit agency in LA with a great portfolio...

But there's nothing to connect Riley Pennington to this company. I ask her about it and she sends a bunch of short blogspot posts that vaguely tie her to working there.

Her Twitter profile is brand new, but hey, at least she has great taste in who to follow.

Oh yeah, and I do a reverse image search on her photo and... turns out she stole it from a PM at Shopify named Sara.

Just four days later Brooke Mason reaches out. I don't reply right away and Brooke is a little snappy saying "I would like a reply rather than being ignored."

Now Brooke is a real person who runs a creative agency, but this Twitter account is just stealing a lot of her graphics.

I decide, screw it. Let's see where this goes.

Turns out she doesn't want to send over her financial information. I don't understand why!

That thread goes cold.

But wait, Emily Thorpe reaches out again! It's been a month since we last talked to her and in that time she launched the new website for Branth AND they got acquired by Atlassian. It's been a big month!

🍾 Champagne all around! 🎉

There are a couple more fake people who reach out to join our board, but we ignore them all.

But here's the crazy thing: for the next 18 months we've received fake applications in the same style for every single job listing we've posted.

At least 50 fake personas created.

They always come with a resume, cover letter (of varying levels of quality), matching email address. About half of them have a linkedin profile created.

The work history is always relevant featuring companies like InVision, Github, Intercom, & more.

Here's an example:

Finally we just had to get on a video call with this person. Elizabeth on our team got her on a call and said:

"It was...sad. I think she might have had some sort of mental illness."

From what Elizabeth describes it matched the Emily Barrett and I talked to.

We thought after she was called out on the call the fake applications would stop, but after about a month we got our next one—and another—and another.

It's been 18 months since our first encounter and we got a new fake application this morning.

So much work. So little return.

Some days I think it has to be @delk, @Matth3wMarshall, or @JamesClear trolling us (I'm pretty sure they have nothing better to do).

Is there some scam here that I'm missing? Have you encountered the same thing at your company? Will this haunt us for the rest of our lives?

Someone sent us this post as well, which is equally ridiculous and somewhat related:

Interviews as product marketing
shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/07/n…