Job Hunting: Another SCAM?! Fake job posting!

Anyone can clone someone else's profile on LinkedIn, then change it a little. 

Anyone can register a domain that "sounds like" an existing domain, or as we've highlighted before, claim to be a company that hadn't existed for 10+ years with a website contain false information. 

Armed with both, they can then post fake jobs on LinkedIn. 

Why? I have no idea. What would they do with all those resumes? Offer them fake opportunities? Like someone tried on me?  

But it's clear I ran into another scam, this time on LinkedIn. But let me start from the beginning. 

I was browsing for jobs when LinkedIn found this "Customer Service Representative" remote job listing. 

Screenshot of the fake job listing, did you spot the red flags? 

I have 6 out of 10 skills, yeah! But something nagged at me in the back of my brain... Something is "off" about this job listing. And I don't mean "cara jacobsen". Yes, that's how it's written... all lower case.

What's the first thing that caught your attention with the job listing itself? 

The post has horrible grammar ("a upbeat"), capitalization ("Customer service Rep"), and missing punctuation marks ("customers concerns"). And that's within the first sentence! 

But that wasn't what caught my eye. It's the mismatching company name. Did you see that the job listing was for the company "Empowered Build Inc", but "cara" works at Empowered build LLC"? (bad capitalization AGAIN?)

This job supposedly pays from $20-$43 per hour, just for customer service work! That's way too high. 

So what sort of profile does Ms "cara jacobsen" have? More red flags. 

Screenshot of potentially fake profile (from video)

The logo looks like it's done in MS Paint by a kindergartener. And she ONLY has 2 connections and 7 followers (probably from those 100+ people who applied). She had NO activity on LinkedIn. She allegedly lives in Shingle Springs, which is Central California, 100+ miles east-northeast of San Francisco. 

What can we find about "Empowered build LLC"? There's a website at www.empoweredbuild.net that matches, that claimed to be founded in 2012 "delivering top notch construction solutions". Yet if you go to the website, and scroll to the very bottom... it's based in CANADA?!

Empowered Build LLC gave a 579 area code, which is Quebec, Canada. 

Given the job listing mentioned construction equipment rental customers, does it even MAKE SENSE for anyone in the US to be renting equipment from a Canadian company? 

But there's more... When we explore the "team" at this Empoweredbuild.net, we found "Cara Jacobsen"... with a completely different photo. 

So who's the "real" Cara Jacobsen? Left is LinkedIn, and right is website. 
Screenshot of video expose

As I explore this "website", I came across the "team" page, giving 6 different people, supposedly employees of the company. Except this Cara Jacobsen (capitalized correctly) is clearly NOT the "cara jacobsen" on LinkedIn, despite same name (sorta) and same employer. Hmmm...

Google Reverse Image Search found no match for the left Cara, but it did find a match for the right Cara... on LinkedIn. 

This Cara has 149 connections and 170+ followers. 
The other "cara jacobsen" is very likely a clone of this one. 

But let's compare the two Cara's employment history, as given to LinkedIn... 

Exactly the same period of employment, hmmm...
then "cara" learned NO skills in HR and Insurance fields? 

When you combine this with the fact that "Cara J" has well over 100 connections and followers, and "cara jacobsen" has only a handful, it's pretty conclusive that "cara jacobsen" is a cloned profile. Which means the company is fake, and the job listing is fake as well. 

And let's just say of the 5 remaining photos on the "team", one of them is practically a stock photo. (Try Google Reverse Image search the bottom right, the African-American girl)

So I reported this job listing. 

Within 90 minutes, LinkedIn deleted the job listing. By the time I finished the video, the job listing no longer exists. 

Here's the video if you prefer to watch that: 

Don't get scammed out there, unlike the 100+ people who applied to this fake job.