EmployeeScreenIQ Blog

Widespread marketing and misrepresentation have resulted in a glut of phony degrees, and you should check any alleged accreditation against the US Department of Education Database. Sometimes though, it is not only the phony college who benefits, as the list below will reveal.

Craig and Alton Poe formed the Trinity Southern University (TSU) in January 2004 and offered “degrees” in a variety of subjects for a fee between $299 and $499. They hacked into 60 Pennsylvania businesses to distribute over 18.000 spam emails advertising the scam. Using a bogus résumé for the deputy attorney general´s cat, investigators were able to acquire an MBA degree for “Colby” with a 3.5 grade point average. In March 2005 the brothers were fined a total of $131.000 for their fraudulent actions.

Trenda Halton of Peoria, Arizona defrauded the government of nearly $540.000 by recruiting 136 people to pose as students and enrolling at the Rio Salado College in Tempe over a 15 month period from July 2006. By having her recruits participate in online “classes”, Ms Halton received federal student loans and Pell Grant money. The scam came to light when handwriting on application forms was found to be similar, and Halton, plus 23 other defendants, have now been ordered to repay $793.073.

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I think this chart helps to explain the explosion of and prevalence of diploma mills and other misrepresentations of academic credentials.  In 2010, those without a high school degree are nearly four times more likely to be unemployed than those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.  Those with a high school diploma, but no college experience are twice as likely to be unemployed than their counterparts with college degrees.  And even those with some college experience, but no degree are nearly 38% more likely to be unemployed.

Remember, the best way to determine the authenticity of ones’ claimed academic qualifications is to conduct an education verification as part of your employment background screening program.

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We’ve written extensively on the prevalence of diploma mills and the harm they can do to unsuspecting employers.  We recently found a great blog post published by Online University Degree on things employers can do to recognize and avoid them when conducting employment background checks.  Check it out this excerpt.

How to Recognize and Avoid Diploma Mills

The only way to recognize a bogus degree program is to do a little legwork yourself. The following list contains tips and information about known diploma mills as well as search engines that can help with your search and a few articles that may help you to recognize the diploma mill:

1. Search for Accredited Colleges and Degree-Granting Programs: In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education formed a search engine for citizens to learn more about the colleges they want to attend. Each of the postsecondary educational institutions and programs contained within the database is, or was, accredited by an accrediting agency or state approval agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education as a “reliable authority as to the quality of postsecondary education” within the meaning of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA).
2. Search for Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies: This information will back up what you learn from colleges that claim accreditation. This list, provided by the U.S. Department of Education, provides the names of accrediting agencies that are both recognized and legal.
3. Learn About Unaccredited Colleges: This short list is provided by the State of Oregon, and covers colleges in California, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah.
4. Learn about Diploma Mills and Accreditation: The Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) covers the gamut from federal recognition of college, accrediting organizations and a list [PDF] of known colleges that are not accredited by CHEA.
5. Learn about Fake Accrediting Agencies: Although this article dates back to 1999, many reputable agencies continue to point to it to show agencies that are not recognized under GAAP, or the Generally Accepted Accrediting Practices. Additionally, the accrediting agencies on this list are not recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation in Washington or the U.S. Department of Education, nor by UNESCO or by the education departments or ministries of major countries.
6. Get Information about Unaccredited Degree-Granting Institutions: This list provides a state-by-state resource to learn about unaccredited degree-granting institutions.
7. Learn What a Fake Degree Looks Like: This document [PDF], provided by the United States General Accounting Office, shows degrees ‘earned’ (rather, paid for) from diploma mills.
8. Learn the Tell-Tale Signs of a Bogus Degree: The Federal Trade Commission (FTA) offers a document that outlines the issues you need to look for when researching colleges. They also provide another documentthat outlines more issues.
9. Research Private Colleges: Because a college is private, that does not mean it is legitimate. use the National Association of State Administrators and Supervisors of Private Schools Web site (NASASPS) to research any private school.
10. Research Online Colleges: Online colleges may prove most problematic, as not all online degree-granting programs originate from a reputable source. Use search engines such as OEDb (Online Education Database) and eLearnersto learn more about online college degree-granting programs that are accredited by reputable accrediting agencies.

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While not really news to us at this point, we’re seeing an emerging trend of job applicants with fake job references.  We highlighted this issue a few months ago, referring to organizations that will sell fake references as “Employment Mills“, the evil twin to Diploma Mills.  To review, an applicant can pay these fake references providers to confirm employment, salary, dates of employment, etc.

I found a great Q&A highlighting this problem in the Anchorage Daily News and not to be glib, but you know this problem is spreading when it is hitting all corners of the country.  A local management trainer was asked by a company who was taken to the cleaners by an employee what more they could have done to prevent the bad hire, particularly after they checked her stellar references.  See response below.

A. I’ve learned never to trust reference letters.

Some employers write honest recommendations. Others write falsely positive letters out of guilt or to stem potential problems from laid-off or terminated employees. Some conflict-averse employers take the easy road out when departing employees press for a glowing recommendation. Further, an astonishing number of applicants “borrow” company stationary and write their own letters.

If you want to hire a solid employee, you need to personally call each reference listed and then call references not provided you by the applicant. In this Internet-accessible age, you can search for a former supervisor by name even when the company has dissolved or the supervisor has left the company. While we urge our clients to conduct background checks to uncover criminal and civil legal problems and phony educational histories, background checks don’t replace personal reference calls.

After hearing your story, I did an Internet search for phony references and foundCareerExcuse.com, one of several newly birthed Internet sites offering fake work histories and references. These services provide job applicants hard-to-see-through fake references from live receptionists.

Those using CareerExcuse.com can develop a completely fake yet validated resume with prompts such as “choose your career history”; “pick your start and end date”; “get rid of” a 3-year resume gap” and “choose your salary.” According to the site, it provides “a real company with a real address and a real 800 number” with “operators standing by” to field prospective employer calls. The site’s home page claims “bankrupt companies make a great previous employer” and offers that their “management company” has “dozens of bankrupt companies …ready to provide any inquirer your desired reference information.”

How can employers defend against resume and reference fraud? — by making extensive reference checking calls and exploring all danger signals before and after hire.

For example, your applicant badmouthed her most recent employer and then asked you not to contact him. By complying, you missed the other side of the story. Was it only bad luck that your applicant worked for three companies that bankrupted? Did she potentially speed these companies on their downward spiral with costs from a business manager who used antiquated work methods and piled up a fat overtime expense? And if you make a mistake — admit it.

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I really didn’t mean for this title to rhyme, sorry!   Two great articles caught my attention this morning on resume lies!  One will really make job seekers sweat because in the end the employee had to pay wages back to his employer.  The other captures the essence of one of my favorite books; Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt.  The themes in both are the same, a lot of people lie on their resumes, many get caught and the penalty could be huge.  Here is a wake-up call folks, a thorough background check is going to be done and your misdeeds will be uncovered!

First we have a “Doctor” who misrepresented himself to have not only a PhD but also a BSc and MSc. Are you kidding me? Didn’t he read our white paper on diploma mills and resume lies? Insead of lying at least he could have done a better job and bought a fake degree on the internet!!

“Doctor” Richard Clark applied to join Coopers Lybrand’s consulting practice in Ottawa to head its management section. Coopers required professionals to have university degrees. In a resume provided to the firm and later sent out to potential clients, Clark purported to hold a BSc, MSc and PhD.

Two years later, Coopers Lybrand learned he held none of these degrees and immediately fired him. He sued for wrongful dismissal. Not only did he lose the case, which proceeded to the Ontario Court of Appeal, but he had to reimburse the firm $47,000 for lost work when clients discovered Clark was not who he said he was.

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The second story kicks off with another war story.  Again, her employer began to do a bit of due-diligence and found out she had lied on her resume.

When a woman we’ll call Mary was offered a high-level student-services position at a prestigious college, she was thrilled to accept. But two years later, Mary was fired despite strong performance reviews and a reputation as a rising star at the college. The reason? She lied on her resume – and got caught.

An HR initiative requiring employees to furnish college transcripts revealed Mary lied about having a master’s degree. It wasn’t the lack of a degree that cost Mary her job; it was her dishonesty. Unemployed and with a blown reference to boot, Mary demonstrates what can happen when you lie on your resume.

In this article they use a lot of refernces to the book Freakonomics.  In it Levitt talks about how widespread resume lies are.  Levitt also refers to the W.C. Fields quote “Anything worth winning is worth cheating for.”

His examples and correlations couldn’t be more accurate.  In fact, as you will see below, his hypothesis on how many people lie is pretty accurate.  Maybe Steven Levitt has read our various studies on how many people lie on their resumes!

“The best lies will be those that mirror reality,” Levitt says. “My hunch is that the reputed 50 percent of resume cheaters are mostly making little cheats here and there, for instance, to cover up times when they were out of the labor force for six months.”

And what about the damage cheaters do to themselves? “Even if you are never caught, you will have to live in constant fear that someday you will be caught and punished and with the guilt of knowing what you did was wrong,” Levitt warns.

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Our good friends from the UK, Verifile Ltd are clearly the international authority on all things related to diploma mills.  EmployeeScreenIQ has been working hand in hand with them to highlight the problem and give employers the tools they need to ensure that their job applicants are not misrepresenting their educational background.  They have exposed more than 3,000 fraudulent institutions across the world and are adding new ones every day.

They just released a product called Accredibase, which is a global database of unaccredited education institutions and unrecognized accrediting agencies, as a commercial product. We invite you to check it out.  They have also published a report designed to give an insight into the operation of diploma mills, the risks they pose and their global reach, and to propose solutions for tackling this important issue.  This report can be downloaded at www.accredibase.com/report

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Make no mistake, the use of diploma mills and other fake academic credentials is on the rise.  We recently highlighted this epidemic in our recent white paper, Smoke, Mirrors and Resumes: The Growing Threat of Diploma Mills (download your free copy here).  If the facts we presented weren’t enough, check out some of the real world examples shared by George Gollin, a board member of the U.S.-based Council for Higher Education Accreditation in a recent interview with CNN.

Among the examples cited in “Uncovering the Multi-Million Dollar Fake Degree Industry” are  the following:

• “According to a story in Wired Magazine, his interest turned to outrage after he stumbled upon news of a forensic psychologist who had purchased her degree. ‘Here’s this person who’s untrained doing therapeutic interventions,’he told Wired.”  “I thought, ‘Jesus, this is really bad.””
• “Gollin gave the example of one American who bought a Bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering, and who’s now working in the control room of a nuclear power plant.”
• “He also cited a U.S. degree mill that sells fake PhDs to real medical doctors for $10,000, and added that unqualified doctors have been jailed in the U.S. after attempting to practice medicine with a medical degree bought online.”

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It goes without saying that employers have to be ever-vigilant in their employment screening practices to ensure they have all the facts when it comes to hiring employees.

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Law.com just posted a nice article about the importance of doing thorough background checks on Lawyers.  It appears taht Mark Villeneuve, a CT Licensed lawyer lied on his resume.  We have heard this story a million times before but if you read on you will see how a few lies can create a snowball effect!

Bending the Truth Can Break a Legal Career

It’s a difficult economy and you’re a job applicant looking for any edge. Better give a long second thought to padding that resume or fudging the truth on an application, especially if you’re a lawyer.

Consider the case of Mark Villeneuve, a Connecticut-licensed lawyer who lives in Augusta, Maine. His professional standing is under attack because Connecticut grievance officials believe he lied multiple times when he e-mailed his resume and application for a staff attorney position to the state Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Villeneuve did far more than embellish a job title or try to cover up a period of unemployment. He claimed to have graduated cum laude from Western New England College School of Law in 2004 and to have served as the law review’s assistant note editor. Yes, he was a WNEC grad. But he was neither cum laude nor a law review editor.

Villeneuve also stated that he was employed at the Law Offices of Jean Smith in Meriden, Conn., a firm that Villeneuve said handled all types of workers’ comp matters. Turns out that no such firm exists.

State officials say the inconsistencies on the job application were revealed after Villeneuve had interviewed in person for the Workers’ Compensation Commission position. But Villeneuve is claiming that he never applied for the job and never appeared for that interview in February 2008; he says someone must have stolen his identity and pretended to be him.

The Statewide Grievance Committee isn’t buying it. They want the Superior Court to dole out the appropriate punishment. Villeneuve, who has responded to the grievance complaint in writing only, has moved to dismiss the case.

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If you lie about your education credentials in the U.K., you’re not only out of the job – you’re going to court too!

An HR Manager re-applying for her position after a company re-organization was found to have falsified her academic accomplishments.  She had claimed to be in the process of a completing an HR training course, hold both a HRM degree and a marketing certificate from Oxford Brookes University as well as an advanced marketing certificate from Swindon College.  Turns out this wasn’t the case and she has now been given a six month suspended prison sentence, 150 hours of community service and is forced to pay £9,600 in compensation.

I’m guessing a thorough background check wasn’t conducted when she was hired which is why she was able to get away with her lies for the three years she worked for the company. 

This story teaches us two things:  First, it is important to screen ANY person that may work for your company – high and lower level positions.  Dishonesty isn’t exclusive to those with little to no work experience.  Second, continually screening your employees is vital to making sure they are keeping on the straight and narrow.  You never know what you may find the second time around!

HR manager sentenced for lying about qualifications

Employers reminded that risk of staff fraud can exist in all layers of management

By Claire Churchard, People Management – January 6, 2009   

Employers have been reminded of the risks of employment fraud after Kerrie Devine, an HR manager in Devon, was given a suspended prison sentence for lying about her qualifications.

Devine, a senior NHS human resources manager from Lympstone, was found guilty of lying about her qualifications to Devon Primary Care Trust (PCT) in the course of reapplying for a post after a reorganisation.

Devine was HR manager at East Devon PCT between 2003 and 2006, but when East Devon PCT was dissolved into newly-formed Devon PCT, staff were required to submit expressions of interest in new posts at Devon PCT.

Devine, who was on a lengthy period of sickness absence at the time, was found to have submitted a dishonest application in her expression of interest in March 2007.

She falsely claimed to be part way through a CIPD course and to hold a degree in HRM from Oxford Brookes University. She also falsely claimed to hold a certificate in marketing from the same university, and a Chartered Institute of Marketing advanced certificate from Swindon College.

Exeter Crown Court gave Devine a six-month suspended prison sentence and ordered her to pay £9,600 in compensation. She must also carry out 150 hours of community service. The investigation was carried out by the NHS Counter Fraud Service (CFS).

Debbie Lloyd, south-west operational fraud manager of the NHS CFS, said: “This positive outcome to our investigation is a reminder that fraud against the NHS can be committed by people in well-paid, senior positions.”

David Chernick, senior manager at KPMG Forensic and chairman of anti-fraud body PREFIT, added that the case also illustrated the value of secondary checks on people who had been employed for some time.

He said a second opportunity to check credentials often comes when there are changes to employment contracts. “I predict that many employers will find dishonesty the second time around.

“Credential checks are an important thing for HR to do and if they don’t carry them out then the security guys will increasingly have to take over the responsibility.”

Greg Allen, director of human resources and workforce development at NHS Devon, said: “We believe that the publicity surrounding the court case sends a clear message to people that if you defraud, or attempt to defraud the NHS, you will face the full force of the law.

“Kerrie [Devine] purported to give professional HR advice on the back of qualifications that she did not have. She also went out of her way to cover the tracks of her deception.

“No one should be in any doubt about the message. If you try to deceive the NHS you will be found out and dealt with appropriately.”

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The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that University of Notre Dame is asking all the right questions, performing thorough background checks and exercising careful due diligence as they search for a new football coach (Is Brian Kelly the Right Fit for Notre Dame).  Everyone recalls the embarrassment the school faced after their newly hired head coach, George O’Leary admitted to lying about his academic qualifications.  It appeared that their leading interested candidate was University of Cincinnati head coach, Brian Kelly, but that they may have had second thoughts after looking at his present and his past.

Let’s start with the past.  According to the Sentinel, “When Kelly was coach at Central Michigan in 2004, a fight involving at least four of his players outside a bar left a 26-year-old man dead. Kelly then seemed to defend some of his players, who may have perjured themselves in trying to protect a teammate.”  Should this give Notre Dame pause for concern?  Maybe.

I have also seen other reports that suggest the catholic school might have concerns over his ‘right to choose’ stance on abortion.  I can’t believe that the school would publicly admit to this, but we’d all have to fools to believe this won’t play a role.

Now on to some lighter things, Kelly’s present.  The fact is that Kelly is a great offensive mind, but his defense leaves much to be desired.  Cincinnati is among the lowest ranked defenses in the country.  Sound a little like Charlie Weis?

Okay, that comment might not have sounded like it had anything to do with background checks, but it certainly does.  Any thorough background check will include on the job performance as well as potential adverse information from the past.  Remember, it’s not just criminal records and resume fraud that determine whether someone is a good candidate or not.  It’s the whole picture.

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