NOVEMBER 20258IWHY RECRUITERS ARE STRUGGLING TO SPOT FAKE FOUNDERS ON LINKEDIN Columnn the hyper-competitive talent scramble of 2025, where Indian SaaS startups alone raised $18.4 billion in the first half, recruiters are drowning in a sea of digital doppelgangers. These are not crude bots selling forex signals they are surgically crafted 'founder' personas with 10+ years of fabricated exits, polished pitch-deck language, and 500+ curated connections.As of now cybersecurity audit of 12,000 recruiter interactions revealed that 28 percent of profiles claiming founder status were entirely fictitious, up from 18 percent in 2024.The cost? Over $2.4 billion globally in wasted screening hours, delayed hires, and damaged employer brands.LinkedIn's 1.1 billion users now include a shadow army of imposters exploiting the platform's trust architecture to infiltrate pipelines, poach talent, and launder credibility.The Silent Scriptwriter behind the MaskGenerative AI has democratized deception. Tools trained on public pitch decks, YC applications, and founder interviews now produce bios in seconds.Harnath Babu, CIO, KPMG - India, says, "Mitigating ethical and regulatory risks is paramount, necessitating the establishment of guidelines to address issues like bias, copyright concerns, and misinformation".Bootstrapped a no-code SaaS to 7-figure ARR in 18 months, exited via strategic acqui-hire. Now advising seed-stage AI plays.These narratives aren't keyword-stuffed they're contextually coherent, laced with 2025 buzz like 'edge inference' and 'zero-trust onboarding'. A forensic analysis of 5,000 suspicious profiles found 65% contained AI-generated syntactic patterns perfectly balanced sentence lengths, recycled metaphors from TechCrunch archives, and emotional arcs mimicking · 28 percent of LinkedIn founders in 2025 are AI-crafted, blending real data and buzzwords to appear authentic.· Speed hiring and surface checks let fake profiles slip through undetected.· Forensic tools and verified hiring are redefining credibility in the digital talent race.WHY RECRUITERS ARE STRUGGLING TO SPOT FAKE FOUNDERS ON LINKEDIN
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