There is a Reddit community with over 400k members to show how prevalent this is [1]. There's lots of tactics like not allowing mentions on LinkedIn so they can't be publicly mentioned and seen by other unsuspecting employers, and just maintaining plausible deniability about why they can't make an on camera meeting. It is technically not illegal so it is very lucrative and hard to detect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/top/

Some background. I'm a senior developer who has performed hundreds of interviews and seen dozens of questionable recruits long before AI. Typically the scam is that an offshore consultancy wants to place some roles to collect wages. Many of these agencies are from collectivist cultures, so in the mind of the agency, they all work in our project. This may not be true, but the agency sees the position as theirs, not the recruit's. So they typically don't the issue with putting recruit A in front of the interviewer and then slotting recruit B in after the position is secured. I've seen this done with A talking while B moves their lips on camera. Now with chatGPT (and earlier to some degree with just Google Search) we just see applicants eyes focused on something they're reading when we ask questions. All of this is just as easy as an AI generated applicant (if not easier) and quite likely to get the recruit hired.

A lot of this narrative is pointing the finger at China, North Korea and Russia/Ukraine. The best candidates I've fielded have been Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese. These are countries well known for their tech sectors. North Korea has executed the largest crypto heists in history. These are not groups who need to fake it.

So who does this narrative serve? It serves the RTO CEOs. This makes CEOs scared to hire remote workers and lets the ones who demand it have a reason.

If anything the panic around AI should reinforce the need to think critically about these things.

A LOT of people are far worse at interviewing than they think they are. And so, a bullshit artist can get hired. Technology now allows these bullshit artists to propagate more, and do more damage than would have previously be possible. AI in the workplace is a similar problem. Can you tell the different between someone who really just leans on ChatGPT all day but is actually incompetent? Probably so, but someone who was that incompetent just wouldn't have previously been able to hang on for quite as long, or deceive so many people.

A LOT of interviews are one-sided bully sessions, so people don't jump through the hoops they are expected to.. especially in hazing-friendly cultures like the security and finance sectors

reality is way more messy and worse. There are multiple actors involved in each part. Eg 2-3 "actors" for visual screen are ready for each call, 2-4 "audio" knowledge only experts on the call, 1 dedicated speaker, 1 person coordinating answers from audio folks to actor folks.

they are even ready for once in a while visit to offices in us, so they have actors there on the field as well ready to attend calls (probably 1 to 1 mapping after first visit)

and the work assigned is assigned to a completely different set of people, not involved in any of above. those folks and these folks dont interact.

i have worked part time as one of the "audio" person in above interviews. also involved on work side. ama.

Out of curiosity, what tech sector does Ukraine have? I don't remember ever hearing of any large successful Ukrainian SW compony or unicorn.

I am not saying it's not happening. But we haven't seen it happen on HN.

I'm getting whiplash from how quickly this article jumps to conclusions. Most corporate cybersecurity is quite strong. Why is this the very first conclusion they come to? Not even that the fake profiles collect a salary, just.. "virus!!!"

Except the "them" who've been wasting applicants' time for decades is not the same as the "them" who are facing the flood of fake job seekers.

It's generally preferable that "justice" treats innocent parties and guilty parties quite differently.