I see them all the time on other social medias and I guess LinkedIn is no different but it surprised me anyway.

There was one post where someone put a telegram link looking like it was Justin Welsh. IE Join my telegram channel, posted from a fake Justin Welsh LinkedIn account - one I recall clicking through too and it looked identical.

Once I got to the telegram account it also looked legitimate. It had all the usual branding associated with Justin.

The posters tone was also pretty good for the first couple of days. I was to be part of a 200 person cohort that Justin was going to personally coach to get up to 20,000 followers in 10 weeks.

He was doing it for free for the purpose of a case study.

It was when the fake poster started coming across quite arrogantly (like how lucky I was to be working with him) and asked for 2-3k (not for himself but his publishing team) that I simply emailed Justin directly on his website to check whether I was actually talking to him or someone else.

The poster also kept referring to a PUB team (the publishing team) and I'd have felt pretty stupid paying 2 grand to a pub team. Those readers in the UK can probably relate! 😂

Justin's assistant replied that they had nothing to do with the fake service at all. Therefore what I was witnessing was quite elaborate phishing.

A few things that raised flags.

1. Justin's website had no telegram link and there was no mention of this program anywhere supposedly being sold on his official website.

2. Also we had to correspond over email and it was a Gmail address which raised a flag. Why would anyone communicate over Gmail if they have their own domain (in their own name)?

3. Finally there was the money ask. It was a big ask for a team I'd never heard of, even though Justin was going to "personally oversee" the case.

However the imposter was quite clever. When I refused to pay without further proof of who I'd be working with (at this stage I already knew it was a scam) the poster said. "No Problem, we'll withdraw you from this cohort", which if you didn't know would probably mean your FOMO would kick in.

Scumbags!

So be careful out there.