The fake vacancies I had in mind are not so malicious. But for the candidates, in aggregate, they are a waste of precious time and energy.
- Company has still opportunities on their website, in order to look healthy, when they are in fact laying everybody off (as is the case in the OP)
- Company publishes an offer for legal reasons, but in fact wants to hire a cheaper resource from abroad once they've "proven" that they "couldn't get any local talent"
- Company publishes non-urgent offer, in the hope to fish for resumes, and/or waits for years for the "perfect" talent to knock on their door
- Company forgot to take down vacancy, someone got hired 3 months ago
But of course, they didn't start doing it like that because they had a huge workforce already trained on their own process and the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. I'm not sure how I would actually exploit a rival's meeting minutes even if I had them and no scruples.