Someone went through an extraordinary amount of work to make this superficially credible. If this is fake (and it sure smells fake), it's pretty impressive; there are literally hundreds of different accounts, all of them sharing basically only the same endorsements (though not exclusively)--and some of the profiles are
exceedingly random.
For example: One "Steven H. Arps" is listed as "Senior Financial Associate" at EIG-Europe, with 118 connections--small, but not out of the question. The only visible non-EIG reference on his page, however, is a reference to "Patel Partners" in Mumbai, whose "Owner" (Harij Patel) endorsed Arps in
2008. Aside from that endorsement, however, I can find no record that a "Patel Partners" exists in Mumbai, nor any record of "Steven H Arps" anywhere.
Or take "Leslie Newton", apparently the CEO of EIG-Europe. She endorsed Arps on the same day she endorsed Ryan, saying "As EIG expands globally, you'll no doubt have the opportunity to lead a foreign corporate office, probably in India." (Can you imagine a boss saying that? Anyway.) According to her LinkedIn page, she has never worked anywhere that isn't EIG... which makes sense, considering I can't find any indication of her existence in the real world, either.
(Side-note: The page for Retired Banker, aka
Rick Christenson, is equally untraceable.)
Or look at
Rob Hernandez, reportedly Senior Finance Associate here in Minneapolis. Same deal as everyone else (nothing on Google! nothing at all!), but the details are so random: under Honors, he bothers to write that "In college, my economic team took 2nd place honors."
My personal favorite is
Olav Lundgren, supposedly the head of an (impossible to find on Google) finance firm in Oslo. His endorsements are identical to others in the Ryannet.
I've never seen anything like this.