What would really annoy those scammy LinkedIn recruiters?

I get about ten recruiting offers a week on LinkedIn for “opportunities” that I’m perfectly suited for. These offers all have the following things in common:

• They’re from people I don’t know, often from other countries.
• If they talk about my qualifications at all, it’s clearly ripped off directly from my LinkedIn bio.
• They are extremely vague about the opportunity, the type of company, the type of job, the level of compensation, the job title, and anything else.

I’m pretty sure these are opening gambits in a typical recruiting scam. The next step is always for them to ask you to share a phone number or WhatsApp profile (why is it always WhatsApp?) after which they’ll do some hanky-panky that results in your paying money, getting your bank account drained, or who knows what.

My favorite was the guy who mentioned an AI company and said he would introduce me to the CEO because “she” was personally interested in me. I looked the company up and the CEO was not a woman. Oopsy.

I’ve tried blocking and reporting them (as effective as Whac-A-Mole), saying I’m not interested, even changing my profile picture to say “NOT Open To Work.” The flood keeps coming.

A better plan: have them pay me

I’ve wondered how best to troll these folks. For example, here’s one message I got yesterday:

Exploring Professional Opportunities

Hi, I’m currently supporting recruitment for a major project expected to launch in approximately three months. Your leadership background and experience managing teams stood out to me, and I believe your profile could be a strong match for what we’re looking for.

In case you’re wondering, I haven’t managed a team in 30 years and recently wrote about what a bad manager I was.

I thought, hey, why don’t I get these guys to pay me? That might be fun. So I wrote this:

Thanks for your inquiry. Due to high levels of interest, I require an earnest payment of $150 before working with new clients — and this must be paid before any further interactions. You can make the payment here:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/[redacted]

The payment will be credited towards our work together should we sign a contract. Thank you.

Do you think that worked?

Surprisingly, the guy got offended!

Are you seriously asking me to pay $150 before we can even discuss a potential professional opportunity. I reached out regarding a recruitment opportunity not to purchase consulting services, so requesting an upfront payment before any further interaction raises some obvious concerns. Are you actually interested in discussing the opportunity or is this simply a request for payment

I guess I hurt somebody’s feelings.

Here’s my LinkedIn message inbox, showing my latest responses to these folks. Do you have any suggestions?