39-Year-Old Is on a Mission to Take Down Job Scams

Job hunters scrolling LinkedIn may never see a recruiter at "Confidential Jobs" named "Linda Anthony," but Jay Jones can't stop seeing her. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Lindsay Ellis reports the 39-year-old unemployed copywriter turned scam-hunter claims to have identified nearly 60,000 bogus job listings and about 7,000 shady recruiter profiles, including multiple "Linda Anthonys" with identical photos and nearly identical URLs. Jones, who lives in the Chicago area and calls himself "The Profiler," now spends late nights tracing sketchy job ads on LinkedIn and career site Teal.

He cross-checks titles against real corporate listings and flags hijacked verified accounts that scammers repurpose as "recruiters" for legitimate companies—all in hopes of stealing users' identities or convincing them to pay for assistance in getting an offer (his mission started when he nearly got hoodwinked by a fake resume writer). LinkedIn tells the Journal its AI tools stop most scams before users ever see them, blocking nearly 90 million fake accounts in the second half of 2025 alone. But Jones sees the fakes as evolving fast, leaning on AI and the proliferation of desperate job seekers. He's turned his crusade into trainings and merch—one of his sweatshirts reads, "Don't kindly send them your resume." Read the full piece here.