Australian woman sentenced to 2+ years prison for faking her CV/resume

bcla

On our rugged Eastern foothills.....
Joined
Nov 28, 2012
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12...-12-months-jail-for-lying-to-get-job/11761316
Where to start? I guess that she inserted a photo of Kate Upton into her LinkedIn profile,and it goes downhill from there. Faked education, experience, and also had her brother serve as her reference giving a glowing review for a job she never had. Also pretended to be a fake reference for herself. I guess it was especially illegal since it was a government job where there are specific laws that were broken. She faked a paystub to try and extract higher pay, and even arranged for that brother to receive a government contract. Plus faking a doctor’s letter saying she was fit for work after receiving medical treatment.

I won’t go into details, but we had a similar issue in the US government with someone declaring padded credentials.
 
I am not sure that faking a resume alone deserves prison time, but there could be other issues involved that we don’t know about. Of course, I do not know all the laws that might come into play since I do not live in Australia. But I have seen many a resume in my time, and I take everything on them with a grain of salt. She certainly deserved to be terminated from her position, that’s for sure.

I think it’s on the potential employer to vet the candidate properly. It sounds like they only “checked” two references for a six figure position. They found out after she was hired that she hadn’t worked where she said she did, so they could have found out before. If I mess up and am not diligent in making sure the person is who they say they are, and that they have done what they claim to have done, that’s on me.

While I think what she did was very wrong, I don’t think she should have ever been hired in the first place. I bet they are reviewing their hiring processes after this.
 
I am not sure that faking a resume alone deserves prison time, but there could be other issues involved that we don’t know about. Of course, I do not know all the laws that might come into play since I do not live in Australia. But I have seen many a resume in my time, and I take everything on them with a grain of salt. She certainly deserved to be terminated from her position, that’s for sure.

I think it’s on the potential employer to vet the candidate properly. It sounds like they only “checked” two references for a six figure position. They found out after she was hired that she hadn’t worked where she said she did, so they could have found out before. If I mess up and am not diligent in making sure the person is who they say they are, and that they have done what they claim to have done, that’s on me.

While I think what she did was very wrong, I don’t think she should have ever been hired in the first place. I bet they are reviewing their hiring processes after this.
Strictly speaking, lies and misrepresentation constitutes fraud. We don't often hold one another to the legal standard; lots of us get scammed in big and small ways, both personally and professionally. I'd imagine when the losses are of great consequence, it's not difficult at all to build a criminal case.
 
Strictly speaking, lies and misrepresentation constitutes fraud. We don't often hold one another to the legal standard; lots of us get scammed in big and small ways, both personally and professionally. I'd imagine when the losses are of great consequence, it's not difficult at all to build a criminal case.
I agree. But if I am interviewing someone and find out there is something untrue on their resume, I usually don’t think about turning them over to law enforcement. I just won’t hire them. I think it’s the fact that she was hired due to the lies, and what she did after she was hired, that raised it to the level of a criminal offense.

it would be nice if people were honest 100% of the time . . .
 


I think it is great that she was properly punished for malfeasance in office. I believe that punishments for things like this should be more serious when the job is civil service.
 
I'm perfectly fine and actually very happy she's getting some prison time and not just a white collar slap on the wrist. It's not like she lied to get a job at McDonald's, she was the CIO for a Government Agency. I think it sends a good signal to others about committing fraud like that.
 


Shouldn't the people that hired her be held to a hire standard as well? I'm in HR and have picked up on quite a few resumes that were noy truthful.

There are a lot of things that aren't necessarily truthful. I remember a remote interview where the interviewer insisted on using a video conferencing program. He said that the company requires that because there have been people have used ringers to do the remote interview, and they want to be able to match the face to the person with an in person interview.

Now I did mention the earlier case of a US government employee. Just to be complete, look up the name "Mina Chang". I don't really consider it all that political since there's no news about her particular political affiliation. She was just someone recommended for a mostly non-political role at the State Department. But she claimed to be graduate of an unaccredited university (as well as a real university) and claimed to be an alumni of Harvard Business School when she took a leadership course without any admission requirements. Also claimed to be a graduate of the Army War College, had a fake Time Magazine cover (which had the same photo as her official State Department bio), and claimed to have been a featured speaker at both major political conventions. Basically she pulled a fast one on all the people who recommended her, and her background checks apparently didn't uncover any of that. I remember applying for a federal government job once, and I had to send copies of my college transcripts.
 
Shouldn't the people that hired her be held to a hire standard as well? I'm in HR and have picked up on quite a few resumes that were noy truthful.
I agree. Hard to know if employees that did the hiring were disciplined or if they relied on an outside service for checking reference, degrees, etc. I would hope that if they are taking this type of action that they would have addressed the internal issue. But sounds like she faked things pretty good, though the degree is a pretty simple thing to check.
 
I agree. Hard to know if employees that did the hiring were disciplined or if they relied on an outside service for checking reference, degrees, etc. I would hope that if they are taking this type of action that they would have addressed the internal issue. But sounds like she faked things pretty good, though the degree is a pretty simple thing to check.

Not sure what the rules are in Oz. In the US academic records are protected by FERPA, but schools can verify degrees and dates of attendance. I guess the biggest problem would be shared names. At least when someone obtains a transcript it’s probably going to be theirs because of specific identifiers like an SSN.
 
Not sure what the rules are in Oz. In the US academic records are protected by FERPA, but schools can verify degrees and dates of attendance. I guess the biggest problem would be shared names. At least when someone obtains a transcript it’s probably going to be theirs because of specific identifiers like an SSN.
I'm not sure about their lawseither, there are verification services available such as DegreeVerify through National Student Clearinghouse and other background check companies. It's become fairly common to lie about having a degree so the background check is important for key positions.
 
I'm not sure about their lawseither, there are verification services available such as DegreeVerify through National Student Clearinghouse and other background check companies. It's become fairly common to lie about having a degree so the background check is important for key positions.

I've never actually had an employer or potential employer ask me for college transcripts, but I do remember applying to grad school. Back then I could only get an "unofficial" transcript for myself on a piece of plain paper. I needed a copy in hand for professor recommendations. The instructions for official transcripts made it clear that they were to be sent directly to an admissions office or employer. Since then I've been able to obtain my own official transcript, which I've used a few times.

I don't know that much about background checks done directly by potential employers other than I've signed agreements to allow it. There's only particular company where I've applied for jobs and their background checking service has sent me a form to fill out with a requirement for DOB and SSN. They claim that there's a strict firewall between disclosing that specific information to the potential employer (i.e. worries of age discrimination).
 

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