Scammers Are Stealing Recruiters’ Identities to Target Job Seekers – Entrepreneur

Cybercriminals are impersonating recruiters to hustle job seekers, using real LinkedIn profiles and convincing details. edited by Dan Bova | Apr 17, 2026 Nick Russell made a mistake the moment he posted about his layoff from Epic Games on LinkedIn. Within hours, his inbox flooded with recruiting messages. One email pitched him a senior role at Blizzard Entertainment that seemed perfect for his videogame background. The job was real. The recruiter wasn’t. Cybercriminals are getting really good at stealing real recruiters’ identities and using their LinkedIn profiles to make pitches look legitimate, according to The Wall Street Journal. They reference your actual resume, mention real job openings, and sign messages with hyperlinks to verified LinkedIn profiles. Their goal is to harvest personal data from job seekers or request money to rewrite their resumes. The giveaway? Email addresses that don’t match official company domains. Sarah Englade, a Houston-based recruiter who’s been impersonated multiple times, says the scams are constant. Job seekers who post about layoffs or add #OpenToWork banners make themselves visible to scammers targeting people at their most vulnerable. Russell says he’ll keep responding to cold messages anyway. If he doesn’t the scammers win. Nick Russell made a mistake the
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