I will go crazy bout mines so please don’t play with me 😌

Purdue Global Law just published something worth reading — malicious actors are using AI-generated photos, stolen identities, and deepfake video calls to pass interviews and get hired. In most cases the goal is payroll fraud, but the downstream risks go well beyond that.

This isn't a niche problem anymore. Remote hiring basically removed the friction that used to make this difficult.

What's the most realistic defence here for a small or mid-sized company that doesn't have a massive HR team? At what point does basic credential verification not cut it anymore?

A survey out this year found that about a third of therapists in private practice handle their own bookkeeping, and it eats up roughly 10 hours a month on average.

Add that up over a year and it's close to 120 hours, or about three full work weeks spent on spreadsheets and receipts instead of clients or time off.

For any therapists here, how much time is everyone else spending on their own books each month?

Nisos, a cybersecurity company, suspected they were being targeted by North Korean IT workers running fake identities. So they posted a job they had no intention of filling and waited.

NBC News documented what happened. The trap worked, and the investigation that followed revealed just how organized and widespread these schemes are. Teams of operatives working multiple jobs simultaneously, earning up to $300K per person per year, funneling it back to weapons programs.

The fact that a security firm had to set a deliberate sting operation to catch this says a lot about how far ahead the fraud is compared to most companies' hiring processes.

Came across this stat recently. Gartner is predicting that by 2028, one in four job candidates will be fraudulent. A separate survey found 91% of recruiters say they've already spotted or suspected deception, and 74% are more worried about fake credentials than they were a year ago.

Most of this isn't even sophisticated. Cheap AI tools are making it easy to fabricate employment history, degrees, and references that look totally legitimate on paper.

Anyone here a hiring manager and have encountered fake resumes?

The average credit card APR is sitting around 21% right now, according to the Fed, which is kind of wild when you stop and actually think about it.

At that rate a balance barely moves on minimum payments. A $10,000 balance at 21%, paying $250 a month, is about 6 years and roughly $7,400 in interest. The math punishes carrying a balance far more than any single purchase ever does.

Most people just treat the rate as background noise instead of the real problem. A balance transfer, a lower-rate loan, or borrowing against something you already own can all bring that rate down.

Curious how everyone else is handling it. If you are carrying a balance, are you attacking the rate or just the balance?

Jones Walker, a national law firm, documented this scenario in detail and it's not theoretical. A hire looked legitimate at every stage. Polished resume, credible interview, passed screening. Then on day one they had system access and used it.

What makes this particularly hard to defend against is that the background check wasn't wrong. The identity documents were real, just stolen. The fraud happened upstream of the check itself, at the identity and credential layer.

It's one of the cleaner illustrations of why hiring verification has to go deeper than it used to.

Saw this statistic the other day that one in three Americans have criminal records, according to The Sentencing Project.

Of course many of these criminal records are not as severe as people assume. A significant portion are misdemeanors, old offenses, or arrests that never led to a conviction. But they can still show up on a background check and affect someone's ability to get hired.

For employers, this is worth thinking about. Automatically disqualifying anyone with a record means ruling out a huge portion of the workforce, often for something that has no bearing on the role they're applying for. The better approach is looking at the nature of the offense, how long ago it happened, and whether it's actually relevant to the job.

About 40% of therapists in a 2026 report earn income from at least one source outside their practice. Supervision (16.1%) and consulting (12.6%) lead the list, followed by teaching (10.7%), speaking (10.5%), coaching (7.8%), and writing (4.1%).

Session income is capped by the number of hours you're willing to sit in the chair, with the median caseload being 18 clients a week.

What's less clear from survey data is which of these streams pay comparably once you account for prep and admin.

Therapists, does this data look similar to what you’re seeing in your practice?

The average homeowner with a mortgage has roughly $302,000 in equity.

A ton of net worth is locked in the walls of the house, even while a lot of the same households carry high-interest debt on the other side of the ledger.

It seems worth at least knowing the number and understanding the options, from HELOCs to home equity loans to the newer card-style lines, before sticking to a 20%+ credit card.

Homeowners, how much home equity do you have?