Let’s say a hypothetical person who is totally not me made it to the last interview and was promised an offer letter but then the next day, the hiring person asked for 2-3 references. Now let’s say this person has literally no professional references, including former coworkers because they used to work for a very tiny place (less than 10 people at the company) and they were fired. Plus they are too far out from university to use professors.
If this person were to ask a friend to fake a reference, which would be better 1) having that friend (who has no LinkedIn account) give their real name and lie and say they worked for the same company 2) have that friend pretend to be a real former coworker or 3) fake everything (name, job title etc.)