Your Fraud Team Is Leaking the Playbook — and LinkedIn Is the Attack Surface

In this episode of Fraud Forward, host Hailey Windham sits down with Jared Gruenberg to unpack a growing fraud vector hiding in plain sight, fake LinkedIn companies using Easy Apply and “pre-interview” screening emails to extract operational intelligence from fraud, AML, and compliance professionals.

Jared walks through how it started, a too-fast response from a “Marriott Bonvoy Group” role, a suspicious follow-up questionnaire, and the signals that exposed the fraud ring: newly registered domains, fake employee rosters, zero posting history, and hiring volume that didn’t match headcount or geography. But the real issue isn’t the impersonation. It’s what attackers can learn when candidates share tools, workflows, and investigative thinking during what looks like a normal interview process.

Hailey and Jared break down why fraud resumes are unusually valuable, how “legitimate” technical screening questions can become playbook harvesting, and why LinkedIn’s low-friction onboarding makes it an attractive attack surface. They also get honest about the conditions that make this work, burnout, job pressure, layoffs, and an industry culture where fraud teams share intelligence far less aggressively than fraudsters do.

The takeaway is practical: protect knowledge like you protect systems, document what your team learns, and build safer ways to share patterns across teams and peers, without handing attackers a free blueprint.

Guest lineup:

1. Jared Gruenberg: Fraud investigator and author of “Your Fraud Team Is Leaking Your Defense Playbook Right Now”
2. Hailey Windham: Host of Fraud Forward and Community Banking Lead at Sardine