Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
If you were just looking at his LinkedIn page, you’d certainly think Mai Linzheng was a top-notch engineer. With a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua, China’s top university, and a master’s degree in semiconductor manufacturing from UCLA, Mai began his career at Intel and KBR, a space tech company, before ending up at SpaceX in 2013. Having spent the past eight years and nine months working in the human race to space, he’s now a senior technician.
[...] Upon closer inspection, there are plenty of red flags: Despite having been in the US for 18 years, Mai has written all his job titles, degrees, and company locations in Chinese. His bachelor's degree is in business management, even though his alma mater, Tsinghua, only offers that degree to student athletes, and Mai was not one. Besides, the man in his profile photo looks younger than Mai’s stated age. The image, as it turns out, was stolen from Korean influencer Yang In-mo's Instagram. In fact, none of the information on this page is true.
[...] Scammers “are always thinking about different ways to victimize people, victimize companies,” Sean Ragan, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the San Francisco and Sacramento field offices, told CNBC in June. “And they spend their time doing their homework, defining their goals and their strategies, and their tools and tactics that they use.” He called the work of these criminals a “significant threat.”
At one point in July, there were over 1,000 LinkedIn profiles for individuals who, like “Mai Linzheng,” claimed to have graduated from Tsinghua University and to work at SpaceX. The eye-popping number even triggered patriotic Chinese influencers to lament the brain drain and accuse Chinese university graduates of disloyalty to their country.
[...] In recent years, as China has cracked down on fraudulent online activities, these operations have pivoted to targeting people outside China who are of Chinese descent or speak Mandarin. GASO was established in July 2021 by one such victim, and the organization now has nearly 70 volunteers on several continents.
While these fake accounts are relatively new to LinkedIn, they have permeated other platforms for a long time. “Scammers started moving to LinkedIn maybe after dating sites tried to crack down on them, [like] Coffee Meets Bagel, Tinder,” Yuen says.
In certain ways, LinkedIn is a great way for fraudsters to expand their reach. “You might be already married and you are not on the dating sites, but you probably have a LinkedIn account that you check occasionally,” says Yuen.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Beneficiam on Friday September 09 2022, @05:43AM (1 child)
Why do Chinese weigh more than Americans"
. .
l
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Because there are more of them.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @05:46AM
We leave the calculation for Chinese engineers as a exercise for the Editors.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday September 09 2022, @07:32AM (5 children)
This is typical resume stuffing, only 10x overdone because internet, and 100x overdone because China - and when China does fake, they go all the way and then some.
People of my generation who didn't have a very long resume when they were young embellished their previous work titles a bit, or pretended they participated in slightly more or better projects than those they really did participate in, or pretended they did a stint at companies that were defunct at the time they applied for a new job, so it was next to impossible to call up to check former employees' credentials.
But then internet savvy smarty-pants realized they could get away with much more outrageous claims because it's so damn easy to fool lazy recruiters who only Google potential recruits.
And now of course the Chinese turn this into an industry, as they do just about everything.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Opportunist on Friday September 09 2022, @07:36AM (1 child)
That's why my Facebook page is a total fabrication. According to it, I am the personal buddy of Bruce Schneier (Photoshop is such an awesome tool) and I'm the one who had a hand in pretty much any relevant security problem discovery in the past decade.
And if you're honest enough to ask, I will even tell you it is a fabrication, meant to fool idiots who don't ask.
If you just use it to figure me out without even ever asking, you get what you deserve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @11:44PM
Amateur. I went so far as to get a doctorate and position at a prestigious institute just so I could blag to students. Those idiots all fall for it!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @10:46AM (1 child)
From the article, this isn't simple resume stuffing. This is all done to perpetuate fraud and to scam people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @11:48PM
There's only scammers now. There's so many scammers they've forgotten that there were ever any people other than scammers, and getting one over on somebody is considered a good day's work. Top tier scamming is now prized behavior. The giveaway was UCLA in the dude's resume.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2022, @06:51PM
My take, fake entries on LinkedIn will continue, until Elon decides to buy it from MS(grin). Then he'll change his mind and/or ask for a lower price, once he questions the number of fake accounts and the lack of transparency on that topic.