If you were just looking at his LinkedIn page, you’d certainly think Mai Linzheng was a top-notch engineer. With a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua, China’s top university, and a master’s degree in semiconductor manufacturing from UCLA, Mai began his career at Intel and KBR, a space tech company, before ending up at SpaceX in 2013. Having spent the past eight years and nine months working in the human race to space, he’s now a senior technician.
Except all is not as it seems.
Upon closer inspection, there are plenty of red flags: Despite having been in the US for 18 years, Mai has written all his job titles, degrees, and company locations in Chinese. His bachelor's degree is in business management, even though his alma mater, Tsinghua, only offers that degree to student athletes, and Mai was not one. Besides, the man in his profile photo looks younger than Mai’s stated age. The image, as it turns out, was stolen from Korean influencer Yang In-mo's Instagram. In fact, none of the information on this page is true.
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