Chapter 1: Intro All of these people want to make $100,000 from a year. This is inside a global multi-level marketing company with thousands of members paying to join. All with the promise of making money. What if I told you this grew so big thanks partly to job listings that look real but are fake? We apply to suspicious job listings, follow the digital clues to uncover a web of travel companies leading to the same pitch.
We have a 10-day money back guarantee. So, let's see who's ready to come on board. Let's go. This is disgusting. I think it's deceptive. I think it's predatory. And we confront the people behind it. We're working on a story about Evolution Travel. Not affiliated with that at all. You're not affiliated with Evolution Travel? No. Chapter 2: The rise of fake jobs Okay.
So, something weird is happening on job sites. A job offer that seemed almost too good to pass up. Job scam recruiting texts and fake job postings are on the rise. The problem's gotten so bad, LinkedIn says questioning whether a job posting is actually real has become a routine part of the search. Authorities have started to crack down on fake jobs.
In Ontario, the government has changed the law, so companies have to say if the job opening really exists. And in the US, the Texas Attorney General is investigating LinkedIn for advertising fake and misleading job opportunities. But we want to see for ourselves what it's like out there and if we can find out who's behind some of this.
So we go looking for a job. Chapter 3: Exposing misleading job ads We start our search on LinkedIn. Pretty quickly we come across hundreds of listings for a company called Wanderell Collective, a travel focused professional community, all remote, no experience needed. So this is either a massive company we've never heard of or something else is going on.
We find tons of similar postings for travel related jobs and not just on LinkedIn. Some listings promise salaries of up to $75,000 a year. And a lot of these job listings had over a hundred applicants. So we apply for eight of these jobs. Some don't require a resume. And for those that do, we attach a blank document.
That doesn't seem to matter because within minutes we start getting automated emails inviting us to information sessions over Zoom. And it turns out they lead to the same pitch. It's not a job and there's no salary. We don't advertise this as a job interview here. We advertise this as an informational meeting to learn about the company. They pitch us to join something called Evolution Travel.
They promise to teach us how to start our own business and become independent travel agents as long as we pay them first. The bundle is only $299. This is worth over $1,299. And in their contract for members, we even find a hidden $50 annual fee. There's a $50 annual fee which is not disclosed until you click all the boxes and you're about to sign up.
Hidden, not good. Seems deceptive, seems deliberate, taking advantage of job seekers who may also have a certain element of desperation or fatigue as well. Now, let's be clear here. Making misleading job posts like this is strictly against LinkedIn's policy, which says, "Do not create postings for business opportunities that require payments." This is disgusting. It's deceptive marketing. This is Jay Jones, by the way.
He goes by the nickname the profiler. One vigilante is on a mission to take down recruitment scammers. And he calls himself the profiler. He documents and investigates misleading job postings and scams on LinkedIn. It's a massive problem. I've taken down 58,996 fake jobs because there is no barrier to entry. Anybody can claim they work at whatever company they want.
It's not just a job scams issue. It's economic terrorism. Why do these platforms allow this to happen? Revenue. There's money to be made. Yeah, unfortunately. But all money isn't good money. And here's the thing. The pitch session for Evolution Travel didn't tell the whole story. We keep digging and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Chapter 4: What is Evolution Travel?
The founder of Evolution Travel is this guy, David Makovi. The amazing thing about the pandemic is it did a lot of devastation to the world, but to our business like it sent us to the moon. You know, from that point to now, you know, we're rapidly approaching 30,000 agents. His partner is Ron Archer. He runs Archer Travel Services.
His bio and Evolution Travel's website says his company is well established in the world of MLMs. Archer Travel's website says Evolution Travel is its recruiting partner and calls it a network marketing company. Another way of saying multi-level marketing. So, it's not just about booking travel, but recruiting other people to join. You take a 10% cut of their commissions and the more people you recruit, the more money you make.
This is called your downline. I had a nice commission check. Okay. And some of it was from me. Yeah, I had a few bookings pay out, but a lot of that was 10%. This is not clearly laid out in the info sessions we attend. And when we ask about it, we're told to talk to the person who invited us.
So, we go back to our emails and notice something weird. For the jobs at Wanderwell Collective and Professional Travel Hub, we get email responses from different companies, Destination Not and Island Abroad. And the emails are all signed by someone named D. We plug the phone number D-lists in her email into Dark Side, a tool that searches for data breaches.
And it leads us to this Instagram account, Dedra Norton. She uses another alias, Why Not Travel. She's a platinum member of Evolution Travel. As she consistently is leading the leaderboard with 18 for the month of July, DJ Jordan, congratulations. Videos on her YouTube channel reveal her Evolution Travel dashboard.
It shows her network of recruits is over 300 people. I mean, I have over 300 agents right now. Today has 345 agents in my downline. And she even talks openly about using job boards to recruit people. You guys can see some of the things that I have like this is for team building job boards. Now, it turns out people have been complaining about D and Evolution Travel's misleading job postings online for years.
That's how we found Garrett. It looked like a legitimate part-time remote position for a human resources role. And so I had applied. I immediately recognized that I'd been scammed. There was no no form of a job there except unless you wanted to pay them money. This came up a lot as well in our research. A person named D, which turns out to be a person named Dedra.
Oh, okay. There were two names that came up constantly in my interview process and application process, and that was Dedra Norton and somebody who worked for her. And honestly, I'm shocked that this can go on for so long on a platform like LinkedIn that's obviously, I would use the word predatory that is specifically geared towards people that are going to be gullible, that are going to be in a prime vulnerable state to be taken advantage of.
We called D's number and get her voicemail confirming it's her. Hello, I'm sorry I missed a call. This is Dedra with Why Not Travel. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message. We call back and she says this. Hello. Hey, is this Dedra? You have the wrong number. Oh, okay. I apologize. Do you Sorry. Is there someone is do you know Dedra?
No, I don't. Oh, okay. I'm a journalist from CBC News in Toronto and we're working on a story about Evolution Travel. Not affiliated with that at all. Not affiliated with Evolution Travel? No. With why not. Now, this isn't just about D. We find more evolution travel agents talking about using job postings to recruit. Megan, actually, is this how they got me?
I replied to a job posting she had up there, but it was not worded as a travel agent. Oh, no. All right, guys. Does anybody else have any questions before we hop off? We have quite a few different trainings on how to post on LinkedIn. So, we need to get in touch with the leaders of the program.
We email Ron Archer and he tells us we do not condone illegal job postings and address them when we are made aware. Chapter 5: Reining in fake jobs So, Evolution Travel is clear. They don't accept Canadians. But this is a global problem. And while it's not illegal to run an MLM, posting fake and misleading jobs could be a different story.
Section five of the Federal Trade Commission Act in the US prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. Do you think there's a potential violation here? Oh, I do. If they're asking me to rely on this, to use my time to pursue a certain path, and they don't tell me that this is going to cost me something, cost me more than my time, that's an important fact that I ought to know.
I would consider a misrepresentation that would invite enforcement by the either by the FTC, the state governments, or other federal enforcement agencies. In 2021, the FTC sent letters out to over a thousand companies threatening legal action if they made misleading or deceptive representations about a money-making opportunity. And guess who got one of those letters? Evolution Travel. If you are still at the FTC, would you be looking into this?
Yes, I would. We flagged these posts to LinkedIn and they said, "These jobs were misleading and violated our policy, so we removed them. We'll continue to remove any others and the companies behind them will no longer be able to post jobs on LinkedIn." What type of harm, what type of damage do you think seeing all this stuff out there has on job seekers has on the job marketplace?
It causes great depression. It makes them no longer believe in their own abilities. It makes them not be able to have confidence that they can actually be a positive contributor to society again. We have to come to terms with the fact that job application is only going to be done online going forward. And if they are allowing these kind of deceitful and predatory job ads to poison the well, you are corrupting the space to the point that it's going to be unusable and it's going to be a failed business model at the end of that as well.
If there's anything you want us to investigate, email us at biccbc.ca.
