A Free OSINT Lesson: Go Job Hunting to Find Your Target
Get a haircut and get a real job...
I love a job board — a collection of possible futures. They’re this place on the internet where a person could find a role or career that would change the course of their lives. There is a strange sort of beauty about them. They have that feeling that just warms my heart. Something like hope… you know?
Anyway, I used one to find the personal email and home address of an oxygen thief involved in some nasty illegal shit, scamming immigrants.
Unofficially, and with great sacrifice to my personal well-being and free time, friends occasionally call me to help them find information. I know, I know. I'm a true paragon of charity and altruism.
Ok, not really.
But my friends and I all have two things in common: an extreme sense of justice that verges on the perverse and a hungry tenacity to eat anyone who does bad shit to decent people.
I was informed of one such person.
I got a message via Signal and was given a name and the situation. Now, because this is active, I'll just say that this genuine asshole targets new immigrants, plays off their anxieties and fears, fills their heads with false hope, and ends up making boatloads of cash in the process.
From a reliable source, we had a name and some basic operational details regarding his criminal "business model." What was needed were actual selectors, personal information, phone numbers, addresses, known family and friends, social media, photographs, associates, and names of people he may have scammed.
"Dope," I responded via Signal.
My friend then texted the sentence I hate the most:
"We can't pay you."
Followed by the two worst words ever.
"Pro bono…"
I let out a verbal "Ugh."
I typed back, "So, I have to Miracle Max this shit?"
"lol yeah…but if you do this…humiliations galore!"
Hmmmm… countering my Princess Bride reference with a direct quote from the movie. I was now duty-bound to act.
Running through the investigation, I was beginning to find some business records and one social media account tied to the target. Now, this individual does not live in the United States, and the privacy laws of his particular country are far more strict. You can't just find people via simple Google search or by using those people-finding tools. It's a bit trickier.
I also found a business email or two, but they didn't tie to anything personal.
With a lot of investigations, they flow. With this one, I had to actually use my brain. And I wasn't being paid. The absolute worst…
I got up from my desk, waded through my kids' toys because they don't clean up after they play, stepped on a Lego and yelled out, "Ouch! Shit…" as my youngest looked up at me from his deep dive into the Blippi universe…
"…iitake mushrooms!" I concluded my sentence half a second later.
He looked at me. Chuckled a bit. "Mushrooms. You're silly daddy." And went back into the orange and blue haze of "the Blip," as we call him in our house.
I grab the usual Coke Zero and one juice box and sit down next to the boy. I hand him the juice box, and he hands it back.
Right, he needs help with the straw. He’s pretty young.
I give him the “strawed” juice box.
”Thanks,” he says.
“What Blippi is this?”
“Construction.”
”It’s always construction with the Blip, hey bud? Doesn’t he have any other jobs?”
My son looked at me like I was a fucking idiot. He then turned back to look at the TV.
I took a sip of my Coke. There was a brief moment of clarity. I watched as Blippi was driving an excavator. How did he get the excavator there? Does he just hire a construction firm? Rent it? Is that his job? Or his producers? That would be a weird job posting, I thought… and then it hit me.
”Shiitake mushrooms!” I yelled out.
My son looked at me, then chuckled. “Mushrooms. Silly…”
As an aside, I take no issues with Blippi. Yes, he did defecate on his friend for the purpose of creating a viral video back in his pre-Blippi days.
Here’s a quote from a Buzzfeed article about it.
”In a hard R–rated twist, in a 2013 video that BuzzFeed News has viewed, Stevin "Blippi" John takes an explosive diarrhea shit on his nude friend’s ass in a truly shocking rendition of the “Harlem Shake” meme.”
To be honest, I can appreciate his dedication to the craft.
I ran back to my computer, shotgunned the Coke Zero, and then began Googling job-hunting sites in the country and local area where my target lived.
What is one of the first things a new immigrant needs and will search for?
Jobs!
I could feel the cold “fucking idiot” look from my youngest. I know. I should have thought of it sooner.
I began running searches on the sites and via Google for the various names of his companies. Oddly enough, there was nothing on the larger sites like Indeed and Talent. Once I started to get to the smaller local ones, the free ones, and the ones catering to new immigrants, the company names began popping up. Ads for various low-paying and early-entry jobs. The types of work anyone could do. He was fishing for recent immigrants to the country with limited knowledge of the local language, hoping they would apply and that he could hook them.
I began going through the postings. I could find about a dozen but no new selectors.
Then, I got an “Administrative Assistant” job posting. I opened it, and as I got closer to the bottom of the post, it hit my eyeballs like Blippi taking a shit on his buddy.
An email I had never seen before, “his name” and a gmail.com.
It was an old post from 2019. He fucked up.
I ran the email address through various tools, and there it all was.
Social media accounts, Nike, Fitbit, all of it. Even a domain record. And you’ll never guess what I found via that Domain record: his name, a disconnected phone number, and a residential address.
Moreover, all those fake job postings show a repeated pattern of behaviour that implicates him in some seriously nefarious shit.
I sent a PDF to my friend.
”Sent you the report,” I messaged via Signal.
”That was quick,” he responded.
“It’s my job.”
“You mean you don’t just sit at home and drink all day?”
"That too.”
After about 8 hours total, from an email slip-up on an old job board post, I could find his associates, various emails and social media accounts, and even his ties to various community groups. His personal life and “work” life were quite disconnected, but they provide a wealth of data into how he spends his money and who he spends it with.
And, if the couple moves are successful, he’ll be calling a lawyer from a cell. Humiliations galore!
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