How to catch candidate fraud: Lessons from Linktree

SJ Niderost

Content Marketing Manager

Posted on

February 18, 2026

Articles

Blog - How to catch candidate fraud Lessons from Linktree

Candidate fraud has become a daily reality for recruiting teams. At its peak, fraudulent applicants accounted for 30-40% of Linktree's interview pipeline, forcing the team to become detectives while still maintaining the human connection that makes great recruiting possible.

Nathalie Grandy, Director of Recruiting at Linktree, recently shared how her team navigated this challenge. Her insights reveal the tactics fraudsters use and the strategies recruiting teams can adopt to protect their companies without sacrificing candidate experience.

Fraudsters are stealing real engineers' identities

What started as obviously fake profiles quickly evolved into something far more sophisticated.

"We noticed that a lot of people were applying that had really new LinkedIns and no connections, and a lot of these candidates had incredibly strong profiles. I mean, they were from Stripe and Airbnb and, you know, like really a lot of the big tech companies that you would naturally want to hire engineers from."

The red flags seemed minor at first: candidates only applying for remote roles, refusing to come into the office even for a single interview, claiming extended travel plans. But the situation escalated quickly.

"They started to kind of up level in terms of how crafty they were getting. They were using real engineers' LinkedIns. They were changing the email. They would apply under their name, so if it was John Smith, John Smith would apply, they would have a great resume, it would match their LinkedIn, and I would be connected to 4 or 5 different people."

The financial and security risks became impossible to ignore - particularly for startups where a single bad hire could compromise sensitive company data and cost millions in damages.

How email verification accidentally exposed a fraud ring

One of the most revealing moments came through an unexpected Gem workflow.

Grandy was working with a candidate whose profile seemed legitimate: strong LinkedIn, mutual connections, impressive background. But something felt off.

"I looked up, you know, you can do like the pro email lookup on Gem? I was like, let me see what other emails are floating out here, and it brought one to the top, which I didn't realize at the time. So when I rejected the candidate for being fraudulent, it actually emailed the real person."

The real engineer responded, confused. After verifying each other's identities over FaceTime, the reality set in.

"He had to file a police report because his identity was stolen. And we saw this popping up more and more in LinkedIn's where candidates were saying, if you've received an application from me, this is not me."

What Linktree's fraud prevention system looks like today

Grandy's team developed a multi-layered approach to fraud detection without destroying candidate experience:

Created a dedicated Slack channel. The team established "TA FBI"— a separate channel where recruiters could flag suspicious candidates and gut-check each other without letting paranoia seep into their regular conversations.
Implemented interview intelligence tools. They introduced Metaview to record and review conversations, helping identify patterns and reduce bias.
Added verification checkpoints. The team introduced government ID verification through Persona at the final onsite stage, along with coding assessments designed to detect LLM usage.
Built in disqualifying questions. Linktree added application questions that automatically filter out high-risk candidates.

"If you are not local to one of our offices, we do require folks to come in for their first week in person for onboarding. Are you comfortable with this? Yes or no? And we automatically reject people that say no."

Leveraged sourcing as verification. When recruiting through Gem, the team found more confidence in candidates they actively sourced.

"If we source someone, we were often sourcing real people because they would respond via their LinkedIn, which is connected to the email that Gem was generating for us."

What other recruiting teams should know

Grandy's biggest advice for recruiters facing similar challenges? Don't wait to escalate.

"I wish I didn't take so long to escalate it to our executive team. I thought fraudsters were going to go after the FAANG companies. They're not going to go after the startups. And I think because we had never experienced it before, I think we felt a little immune to it."

She also emphasizes the importance of community:

"I encourage them to reach out to their recruiters within their networks. I mean, I have text chains of recruiters at previous companies where we just kind of keep in touch and we'll share information."

Most importantly, protect your team from carrying the burden alone.

"I made it very clear to my recruiters, if someone gets past all of these checks, kudos to them. But you will hold no responsibility for that because we have done X, Y, Z. We have flagged it up every single chain of command."

Fraud volume drops when detection improves

Linktree's fraud volume has decreased significantly from that 30-40% peak.

"It's gone down a lot, and I think it's because they know that we are not passing them forward. We've gotten smart to their ways and so they're not going to waste their time applying."

But the challenge hasn't disappeared entirely, and recruiting teams need to stay vigilant. As fraudsters continue evolving their tactics, the key is balancing necessary verification with maintaining the human element that makes recruiting work.

"At the end of the day, we're still human beings. It was important for our brand that we upheld that regardless of whether they chose to be inauthentic with us or not."

Candidate fraud is a growing challenge across the recruiting industry. Learn how Gem's Fraud Detection Agent helps teams identify suspicious applications early in the process — without adding manual work for recruiters.