I Went Full Jackson Lamb on a Recruitment Scam

I have been rewatching season 5 of Slow Horses recently. Season 6 is on its way and my partner and I wanted to refresh the story in our heads so that we are ready to go in just under 2 weeks time when the season 6 trigger is pulled. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb as a man who appears to be actively decomposing in real time. He wears his own indifference like armour, yet is always somehow twelve steps ahead of everyone who thinks they're smarter than him. He makes being written off as an agent and as a human being his biggest weapon. Nobody in that show ever suspects Lamb of paying close attention. He lets people underestimate him, then quietly takes them apart.

After an episode the other night, I found myself channelling a small fraction of that energy into taking on a "recruiter". Not those who legitimately (for want of a MUCH better word) utilise the unemployed to make a living. But those who make up a name, a LinkedIn profile, a job and some very expensive "essential documents" that candidates need to provide to get the made up job. I went down that hole. It was a choice. But a choice I made because I REALLY wanted the made up job that was being sold to me.

On the evening of 3 September, I received a LinkedIn message from this recruiter. Aaron Barnes was his name. He (I assume he, but probably better to go with they) was promoting a Director of Community and Developer Advocacy role at Tines . A real company, a decent reputation, and an interesting product. I looked into them and the impression I get is Zapier for Agents (apologies if that is not 100% on the ball Tines). Apparently they were offering $180K to $280K and they were willing, keen even, to hire someone from the UK. "Aaron" had found me on LinkedIn due to my history with Talend and made several references to my history that showed that they had put some effort in. It was a well written message. His profile listed a plausible career across Hays, Ibotta, Chipper Cash, Varis and Wells Fargo, which looked entirely like the sort of route a recruiter may have taken. On a first glance there was nothing there to make me think that there was anything dodgy. I actually got quite excited that this was taking place. It has been a LONG road looking for a new role and this recruiter had leapt into my messages with a role that could have been written for me…I didn't know at this point that it was written for me.

But, even though I so desperately wanted this to be "the one", I paused, thought "hang on, is this too good to be true", and decided to look deeper. It didn't take long. I've discovered that a really useful and incredibly quick way of getting a good idea about fake recruiters is to run their profile picture through Google Lens. Every single fake recruiter that I have interacted with has decided to steal a photograph from someone else. This entity appeared to have used a face with dozens of names. I found several profiles from different networks all sharing this image, all with different names. Fuck! Seriously! Not THIS role! I was SO cross, partly because there was nothing I could do but accept it. Then I made my Jackson Lamb decision. Not to walk away looking sharp and vindicated. To slump into the chair, grab a whisky (but a single malt, not blended…sorry, not sorry Jackson), look like I'd stopped paying attention, and let them think they were dealing with someone much slower than them. A day later I had three bank accounts, 3 names, four crypto wallets, a fake web page, two email addresses, and 2 email conversation streams that link the fake recruiter to the "Career Branding Strategist" who wanted to charge me to prepare "essential" career branding material.

The CV nobody actually wanted

After I had replied to Aaron to let them know I was in, they requested my "most recent resume". I sent Aaron my CV, lightly altered, phone number and address changed, because handing real details to someone who was clearly out to con me felt a bit silly. This recruiter's email address also gave the game away. Seriously, did they really think people are stupid enough to believe aaronbarnesgtr@gmail.com. That's the email address they used. Feel free to sign it up for any and all gated marketing assets moving forward. He confirmed receipt at 12:04am on 4 September and, in the same message, told me the CV alone wasn't enough. The Hiring Manager review required three additional documents. An "Interview Debrief Synthesis". A "Candidate Intelligence Brief". But most memorably, a truly ridiculous one, the "50-Second Impact Hook". Why not a full minute?...was my first thought. Three utterly ridiculous document names, but the sort of names that might just sound plausible if you really wanted the role and have been around for long enough to see some of the ridiculous requirements that truly do exist in this world. 360 assessments? Really? But that is for another article.

Did I have these documents? Of course not. Could I create them myself? I could, apparently, but they were needed immediately and this job, while I would be a perfect candidate, was not going to wait for that. However, Aaron had someone who could help me out. My CV and these truly urgent documents were not really mentioned again by Aaron. I was introduced to the "Career Branding Strategist".

The handoff

Aaron referred me to a "Career Branding Strategist" at careerbrandingstrategist@gmail.com. Again, feel free to do horrible things to that address. He gave me a script for what to say. I wasn't sure whether this was to trigger some automation powered by n8n, but I played along. I sent an email and got a response pretty promptly. They asked for my CV and target role job description. They quoted senior-level pricing of £222, and when I asked for a website "for credibility", they sent me to https://career-advisor-39fu.b12sites.com.

B12 is a platform that lets anyone build a free, templated one-page website in about the time it takes to boil a kettle. The site listed a US number +1 (682) 396-4266. I tried it on WhatsApp out of curiosity. Nothing. Either it's fake or has not been added to WhatsApp. I wasn't about to ring a US number from the UK to test this out.

Anyway, I asked a few questions to make it look like I was not being too easy a catch, but at the same time strongly giving the impression that I was the sort of person who might have believed that they were the son of the deposed king of Nigeria (...I actually think that they might have been from Nigeria based on names I acquired later). We got on the question of cost.

The negotiation neither of them quite agreed on

The price that "Career Branding Strategist" (who I ended up calling Noah… explained below) offered me was £222. At this point I went back to Aaron and said that I was really keen to go for the role, but £222 was too expensive and could I not provide the documents myself. He said probably not, but that I could negotiate. At this point I had an idea. I figured that this scam could be made "safe" for the money taker by shifting the "con" to the recruiter and leaving the money taker as "just someone carrying out a service". I needed proof that they were in this together. So I told Aaron, directly, that £125 was my absolute ceiling for this. Not Noah, Aaron. I told him that I would negotiate and see if I could get the price to £80 but my ceiling was £125. If the two were genuinely unconnected, there was no route for that figure to reach Noah except through me.

I then went back to Noah and negotiated as though starting fresh. £222 down to £180, down to £150, eventually landing at £100, once I sweetened it by offering to send other job-hunting friends his way. I was hoping that the lowest that Noah would accept would have been £125. But I guess either they were not connected OR £100 was enough for them to be happy. I was convinced that they were either talking or the same person. But this test didn't prove anything. Oh well, worth a try.

But now we had a price. How could I pay them?

Playing dim on purpose

After we'd agreed a price, I said that I needed some sleep and would get back to Noah the next day. To say goodnight Noah sent me his bank details (this is how I got the name Noah)…

Account name: Noah Ayomide Aremu

Bank name: Clear Junction Limited

Account number: 43153781

Sort code: 041307

IBAN: GB63CLJU04130743153781

Bank address: 307 Euston Rd, London, NW1 3AD

I wasn't expecting a name, an account, and a bank name. I was expecting a link to Stripe or similar. Wow! But I said I would make payment in the morning and went to bed.

The next day there was an email waiting for me, asking if I had made the payment…and I thought that I could have some fun and see where it led me. The bank transfer failed. Every bank transfer failed. I didn't make any attempts to transfer anything. But they all failed. When I told Noah that a transfer had failed, I followed up by asking whether the account was personal or business, a plausible-sounding detail that gave my fictional failure enough texture to hold up. It worked better than I expected. Rather than question it, I was simply told to try it as a personal account, and when I claimed that failed too, a second account appeared under a completely different name.

Nobody suspects the person who sounds confused and slightly out of his depth of running an interrogation. That's the whole trick. Over roughly sixteen hours (not solidly…I'm not that dedicated) I collected three named account holders across two banks and two countries, and at no point did Noah seem concerned about my ineptitude with sending money. This really does raise questions about the sort of people who do fall foul to these scams.

But during my time speaking to Noah, I acquired the following additional bank details…

Account name: Olabintan Tayie Lukman

Bank name: Clear Junction Limited

Account number: 43308953

Sort code: 041307 IBAN: GB43CLJU04130743308953

Bank address: 307 Euston Rd, London, NW1 3AD

Account name: Abdulsamad Abdulwahab

Bank name: Lead Bank, Kansas City

Account number: 219634512753

Routing number: 101019644

Bank address: 1801 Main St, Kansas City, MO 64108, USA

Two named individuals at the same UK bank. A third at a US bank, reached via a transfer app, all for a fee that never exceeded £100. If you're struggling to think of a legitimate reason a freelance CV writer needs three named bank accounts on two continents, so was I. This sort of international financial agency I was not expecting.

But none of these accounts were working. I felt I was taking a bit of a risk by making out I could not make a payment to any of these accounts, but I wanted to go further. I thought, "What about crypto?". It got really interesting when I did.

The crypto detour, and the wallet that gave rather more away than intended

Having exhausted accounts I never actually tried to use, I claimed my bank was now blocking transfers entirely and asked about crypto, mentioning I held XRP. What followed was four addresses across three networks inside ninety minutes: a Tron address, two Ethereum addresses, and a Bitcoin address. Obviously not all at the same time. I had to go through the same awkward process. I thought it would really fail this time. I mean, how does someone who cannot send a transfer using bank account details work with crypto? It really didn't seem to phase them. So I played the crypto game. It got to the point where I was curious as to how far I could go with these payment failures.

They sent me a TRON address first. Of course, that didn't work. I made up some excuse about my exchange not being able to handle XRP/TRON pairings. They accepted that. We went to Ethereum next. For some reason my XAMAN wallet couldn't interact with the wallet (which I could see was freshly created). I very much could have sent crypto there, but I wanted another wallet with transactions so that I could follow them. So I took a risk and said that XAMAN would not allow that transaction. I thought that was a bit of a ropey reason…but they bought it and sent me another freshly generated Ethereum address. I wasn't having that. So I made up a totally ridiculous excuse about XAMAN requiring Ethereum to have existing transactions connected to it to authenticate the account. This I thought was a leap. But they bought it. We went to Bitcoin. But another newly created account. I could see what they were doing. But the first account they gave me was a TRON account. This had transactions.

The TRON address is the one worth lingering on. I looked at this wallet properly. I used tronscan.org (https://tronscan.org/address/TJnjAs9wmt6jnFRVLeDciq3s4gmSbnMxFq/transfers) to investigate this account. On-chain analysis of TJnjAs9wmt6jnFRVLeDciq3s4gmSbnMxFq shows what very much looks like what is known as a layering wallet. Not an account with any independent life of its own, but an account designed purely to put distance between where money comes from and where it ends up.

The wallet was created on 14 July 2026. Eleven payments in from TCQZ5n9u5Pey54FPvg7qFVhpv6GdZNokEZ, totalling 2,630.624611 USDT. Nine payments out to TPn7n1HKYyHLydBbAKwjD6KfZScPYqtib4, totalling exactly the same amount, to six decimal places. Every inbound payment was forwarded on within minutes or hours. The wallet never held a balance, never traded, never did anything except pass money straight through. Both wallets either side of it go on to interact with thousands of other addresses in the same brief receive-and-forward pattern. That's not what a hobbyist's wallet looks like. It's what laundering infrastructure looks like.

This was handed to me, without too much effort, as a simple way to pay a document fee. My suspicion is that whoever runs the Aaron and Noah side of this sits fairly low down in something considerably larger. Low enough down the chain that nobody had ever pushed hard enough on their payment setup to make them wary of giving away this layer. They take the money and then use this TRON account to push it into the system. The volume of nonsense I put them through for a possible £100 is, in hindsight, somewhat troubling. While they are the actors contacting people and ripping them off, are these actors just, essentially, ignorant mules in a much more orchestrated idea. Would my actions in wasting so much of their time actually lead to them being punished? They kept chasing that £100 for a long time. Never once suspecting the slow, confused-sounding man on the other end of the emails had this all planned out.

If all else fails, go with an Apple gift card

I thought that we had come to a natural end after the last of the crypto addresses had "failed". I couldn't bring myself to believe that they would have believed I was still truly trying. But, given the virtual distance between us, I felt that I could try again. Would they accept another attempt at paying them? Probably not. I sent a mail to Aaron to say that I felt it was a bit weird that Noah could not take any of my payments. Was there someone else he could recommend? I thought that maybe I could get more bank details that way. Aaron got back to me pretty quickly and said no. But, I could send him a screenshot of an Apple gift card! He could send that to Noah. I felt that was enough to link the two addresses, or at least make people strongly suspect that these two accounts were linked. I sent emails to both email addresses to try to make this as clear as I could (that they were likely connected), then I said I was off to buy a card. A couple of hours later I got emails from Aaron asking about the card…not Noah who needed the payment. I said to Aaron that I had, in the meantime, been offered another job. I thanked him for the interaction and said goodbye. There was another, somewhat blunt, follow-up from Noah. I believe this account was just tying up loose ends. The exclamation mark after "I'm expecting your response" told me that the writer of this email already knew the situation, but needed to play their part. I don't think they felt their day was well spent. Maybe, as I questioned earlier, this is more serious a matter for them than I understand. I hope not. If they are just the "mules" grifting the money, I can't help but feel a little sorry for them. But I felt I had to go down this rabbit hole to see what I could find.

Where the thread ends, for now

Two email addresses. One vanished LinkedIn profile, gone entirely the morning after I stopped replying. One free website. Three named bank accounts, two banks, two countries. Four crypto addresses, three networks, one of them a demonstrable laundering layer. All of it produced, without hesitation, for someone they believed was unemployed and chasing a role worth up to $280K.

I never sent them a penny. I stayed in the chair, looking like I wasn't paying attention, for just over a day, because I felt the information was worth considerably more in public than me just walking away.

If you're job hunting right now and someone tells you the perfect role requires the hiring manager to receive an Interview Debrief Synthesis, or asks you to pay via gift card, crypto, or an account belonging to someone you've never been introduced to, you already know how this ends. Stop. Screenshot everything. Also, if anyone ever underestimates you because you look like you've stopped paying attention, let them keep thinking that for as long as it's useful.

A note to the banks named here

Clear Junction, you hold two of the three named accounts documented in this piece, under two different names, both used within hours of each other to solicit payment for a fictitious job requirement. Lead bank, Kansas City, you hold the third. You now have almost everything you need: names, account numbers, sort codes, an IBAN, a routing number. If you require, I can give you the email chain that shows that a scam is taking place using these accounts. Do the responsible thing.