From: CEO Daily | Fortune - Wednesday Jul 02, 2025 10:33 am
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Wednesday, July 2, 2025
1 in 343 job applicants is now a fake from North Korea, this security company says


In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan.
The big story: Trump says there’s a peace deal for Gaza.
The markets: Gains held.
Analyst notes from UBS on Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, Goldman Sachs on softness in the hotel sector, and Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report on Tesla.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.


Good morning. As someone who recently interviewed her own digital avatar on stage at a Fortune event, I know how fast the technology to mimic humans is evolving. But even I was stunned by some of the tales from the frontlines of workplace fraud, per my recent conversation with Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan.

His company has expanded beyond voice security to employee protection and verification. Even at Pindrop, a security startup generating more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue, they’re finding that 16.8% of job applicants are fake—and the number is growing fast. He noted one recent call where the interviewee forgot to disconnect from Zoom and asked his handler to send a fake resume referencing Texas where he was supposed to be living but didn’t know anything about. It’s taking up a big chunk of time for his human recruiters to catch such scammers.

Election interference and money scams, we get. Why create a deepfake job candidate?  Corporate espionage may be one factor: “We’re finding one in 343 applicants is from North Korea.” The biggest motivation is money. Balasubramaniyan points to candidate farms in places like Pakistan, India, and other spots where professional interviewers act on behalf of people who are just trying to get a job.

Balasubramaniyan estimates that in-person roles get about 100 applicants, hybrid roles attract 200 and fully remote jobs attract more than 800 applicants. Once those remote workers are on board, the challenge doesn’t stop. Deepfake coworkers—especially IT staff calling for a password reset—are becoming more common.

Of course, Pindrop is in the business of selling software to screen for such fakes, and  Balasubramaniyan himself has made fraud detection part of his daily activity. He advises watching how someone’s mouth moves—and says to be skeptical of anyone who uses a microphone to cover their mouth. I talk to other CEOs who now have code words they give friends and family to check whether a phone call is from them or a scammer. Expanding regulations like the recent Take It Down Act may make platforms more accountable for fraud, but in the meantime CEOs and everyone else—beware.

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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Top news

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Powell: It's the tariffs that are the problem

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Meta recruitment 

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The markets

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From the analysts

UBS on Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill: “Markets are not likely to react to squabbles over details—unsustainable US fiscal policy is well understood, and the economic effects of redistributing from lower income to higher income households will take time to emerge,” per Paul Donovan.
Goldman Sachs on softness in the hotel sector: “We think the decline in consumer sentiment has weighed on hotel bookings, in line with recent management commentary, where soft demand in Q2 even after a partial recovery from April's poor levels was a recurring theme … Second, travel volume at large has cooled on the heels of rising geopolitical risk and negative sentiment around tariffs and immigration. Domestic travel has also moderated based on daily TSA checkpoint volumes,” per Vinay Viswanathan and team.
Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report on Tesla: “Tesla’s brand positivity is broadly declining across partisan lines, with no clear recovery in sight. The “Trump-Musk feud” has specifically undermined Republican positivity for the brand, leaving Tesla with a -10 net positive view among all consumers, the lowest we’ve ever recorded. There is substantial public support for government intervention regarding Elon Musk’s companies and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology. Consumers support ending government contracts with Musk’s companies by 10 points, and there’s overwhelming support for stricter FSD advertising rules (net +58) and mandatory accident reporting to NHTSA (net +77).” Read the data here.


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