
A woman lied on her resume to land a $185,000-a-year job. Now shes going to jail - LinuxBender
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/australia/australia-woman-jailed-fake-resume-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
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GuB-42
As expected, it goes way beyond a simple misleading résumé.

\- The position is in a public office

\- She impersonated former employers

\- She hired her brother, who wasn't qualified for the position

\- It is not the first job she got by lying on her résumé

~~~
whack
It's about time white collar crimes are taken as seriously as other crimes. If
you break into someone's home and steal $10,000, no one bats an eye over
imprisonment. But if you steal $100,000 from taxpayers, you suddenly become a
lot more sympathetic.

I wonder to what extent this is because burglary is committed by people who
are poor and not well educated, whereas white collar crimes are committed by
people who look just like your friends and colleagues.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>It's about time white collar crimes are taken as seriously as other crimes.
If you break into someone's home and steal $10,000, no one bats an eye over
imprisonment. But if you steal $100,000 from taxpayers, you suddenly become a
lot more sympathetic.

Breaking into a home is a violent crime whereas white collar crime is
nonviolent. You can often return property, you cannot make someone un-
experience a burglary. Don't get me wrong (i.e. "I know that if I don't
include this disclaimer someone will try to) white collar crime and corruption
like this should certainly be prosecuted but there's a reason we generally
don't punish it as severely as violent crime since we generally consider
property less valuable than life and health.

~~~
jjeaff
Exactly. Almost anyone would much prefer to lose $100 to a scammer than
someone who breaks into your home and takes it. The latter is far more
violating and scary.

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windexh8er
I know a particular individual in my locale that has lied up at a relatively
young age. They're now a C-level for a major security vendor. They were fired
from two major companies (F100) for failure to abide by corporate policy. The
second firing was due to trying to get the parent company to buy services from
a company they were attempting to start and double dipping hard. They
constantly lie about having a PhD (they don't and as they were getting it from
University of Phoenix in something not related to what they stated it was in).
They've misrepresented themself when giving public talks stating they led a
team of 50 when their team was 5 (I was on the team). They're just a cancer on
society who is very extroverted and innately good at social engineering
others. I ran into them at a local food establishment a month ago and they
wouldn't make eye contact. I'm likely one of the few who they know knows the
truth. The point I'm trying to make with this is I wish there was a way to
expose people like this. They're a charlatan through and through and it's
disconcerting watching them provide no value other than acting as a talking
head who appears confident in the BS they're spewing.

~~~
mgolawala
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should
look on and do nothing" \- John Stuart Mill.

Often quoted as "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
men to do nothing".

The world needs people like you to speak up, to keep people like them in
check. Do it anonymously if it suits you, but please do it.

------
everdrive
This is a modern trope used to headline news articles:

[A thing occurred. Here are the consequences.]

Usually, both the fact and the consequence are intentionally vague. The point
seems to be to entice you want to read further.

As far as clickbait titles go, this is probably acceptable, but nonetheless
it's getting pretty annoying. It's almost always a guarantee that the full
details of the story will be more nuanced, and therefore will not carry the
emotional weight of the headline, and the reader will be slightly
disappointed.

~~~
jccc
I don't mean to be argumentative but I think this example is worse than that,
as are most clickbait heds.

It intentionally misrepresents the truth to get you to click. It is designed
to create a false picture in your mind. That to me puts it right up there
alongside the worst of the worst, particularly when coming from one of the
biggest journalism organizations in the world.

[J-School survivor -- apologies if I'm a little touchy on the subject.]

~~~
everdrive
I think that's fair. I was trying not to be very inflammatory and also meant
to refer to the general trend instead of this example solely.

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Zaheer
This Lite version of CNN is great. They have a lite homepage as well:
[http://lite.cnn.io/en](http://lite.cnn.io/en)

~~~
tarr11
It is not secure though.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Secure from what?

~~~
greenyoda
From your ISP or the WiFi access point at your coffee shop injecting
JavaScript into the HTML pages that the site sends back to you, since it's not
https. (Yeah, I know, you should use a VPN if you're at your coffee shop, but
not everyone bothers.)

------
danso
It doesn't seem outrageous that there are criminal penalties for lying when it
comes to certain public jobs, especially one as high-ranking as chief
information officer.

Tangentially, though, I can't help but wonder about the staggering
incompetency of the hiring committee. Not only did they seem to fail routine
background confirmation, but how did this get past them:

> But the lies didn't end there. In earlier submissions, the court heard that
> Theriault used a photo of supermodel Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile
> photo, according to CNN affiliate 7 News.

(Unless the defendant looks very similar to Upton)

------
incahoots
Sounds EXACTLY like what Mina Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the
State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations did.

The difference is Ms. Chang claimed to be on the front cover of time magazine.

Speaks volumes on the process to get into these positions. Might as well save
the hundreds of thousands spent on college and pickup a copy of Adobe
Photoshop to supercharge your resume to get those high paying gigs.

Begs the question, how many top positions are filled with completely
unqualified individuals?

------
AcerbicZero
I'd be a little harsher on the people who hired her honestly. It sounds like a
systemic organizational failure, and while I certainly don't think the lady is
blameless here, the failure of those entrusted with spending public money and
hiring her should be facing some serious criticism.

~~~
munk-a
The system worked this out with minimal damage (22k was paid out before the
fraud was discovered) why should more labour be dedicated to detect such a
trivial and rare error? If this sort of thing is rampant in australia then
it'd make sense, but the detection of her fraud definitely cost less than
beefing up reference checking to be in depth on everyone.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _why should more labour be dedicated to detect such a trivial and rare
> error?_

What is the data indicating this error is "rare" in the organization in
question?

~~~
munk-a
It was news worthy and neither the article nor anything I've seen described
this as a common or repeated occurrence, the article is pretty poor in quality
but I think it's reasonable to read it as implying that this was a rather
outstanding event. It is somewhat hard to judge but it seems a reasonable
reading.

------
davidwitt415
Good for them, this is as it should be handled. Someone should send this
article to the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) board,
as their CEO, Marcy Wheeler was found to have lied about her background in a
similar manner, yet they have declined to take any action for some mysterious
reason.

[https://macro.economicblogs.org/naked-
capitalism/2018/08/smi...](https://macro.economicblogs.org/naked-
capitalism/2018/08/smith-calpers-ceo-marcie-frost-misrepresentations-
education-work-history-hiring/)

~~~
topspin
> for some mysterious reason

Privilege isn't mysterious.

------
marcus_holmes
I imagine the head of HR is going through a few difficult conversations, too.
This is huge fail for them (also a huge learning experience - I don't think
they'll ever make this mistake again).

------
tannerc
(Avoiding the pull to reference US politics here.)

What would the implications be if a similar event occurred at, say, Google?
Would it even be possible?

It seems that the onus for verification and in-depth analysis of a candidate
falls onto the business. Is this just a case of poor decision making from the
leadership group who hired the candidate? Is it uncommon to call more than one
reference, or to simply Google a candidate and see what shows up? For such a
high-level, government role... I'm sure there's more than just Google to
reference as well?

~~~
oh_sigh
I was hired at one of the FAANG companies, and it turns out there was an issue
with my college diploma where my college wouldn't release the records. My HR
person hounded me for like 2 months until I got it sorted out(most of the time
spent waiting on hearing back from my college administrators). I'd imagine I
would have been fired if it appeared I couldn't prove I graduated the college
I claimed - even though I've been in the work force for 15 years and assumed
my college experience was largely irrelevant to getting hired.

~~~
munk-a
If your college degree was described in your resume and was a differentiable
factor in your hiring they may have been forced to confirm it's accuracy or be
open to fair hiring lawsuits - for instance if you are white and another
candidate black with him having a 2 year degree against your 4 year degree and
all other things equal - if you lied about your 4 year degree then the black
candidate would be more qualified for the position and, if preference absent
any factual difference is given to white candidates often enough that can
violate the equal employment opportunity act - if that happens often enough,
the government can come down on the company hard.

Additionally, a four year degree might qualify your employment for grant
subsidies for research while a lack there of might make it harder for the
company to justify - I've worked in a few places now where my employment has
been government subsidized since I've worked on novel research.

Basically, HR is stupid complicated and I'm sorry the experience was negative,
but they were probably compelled to make sure they got that information to
insulate the company from various legal exposures.

~~~
oh_sigh
It almost certainly wasn't - I went to a no-name tiny state school with a
crappy CS program and had a mediocre GPA. The most relevant thing which
probably got me an interview was merely being employed at another FAANG
company when the other FAANG company contacted me.

------
Zekio
Well this makes me glad I've never lied on a resume or similar stuff

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zaphod12
though certainly not what she should/would go to prison for, the claim that
she "used a photo of supermodel Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile photo,"
does seem the most bold to me.

~~~
United857
At least in the US, most companies will discard any photos on resumes (or just
reject them outright) to avoid unconscious bias. I'm surprised Australia
doesn't do the same.

------
DeonPenny
I'm confused as to why the lying matters. Yeh she should get fired but jail
seems overboard.

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mlindner
Note: This is in Australia, not the United States.

------
Simulacra
This reminds me of the director of information security for Equifax. No
experience in cyber security whatsoever, but she did have a degree in piano.

~~~
detaro
The storm about that was so stupid. Tons of good and high-ranking people don't
have degrees in the field, and somehow working for other IT companies suddenly
didn't count as experience because it was just too funny to drag the music
degree out. (It's quite possible she wasn't qualified for what they'd actually
needed or bad at the job, but "LOL music degree" isn't a reason to assume
that)

------
topspin
Criminal conviction for lying about qualifications and rigging references? I
imagine this story is creating a _lot_ of anxiety.

~~~
nsenifty
For a government job. Lying to the government is already a criminal offense in
many countries.

~~~
crispyambulance
It's OK, it's just a CIO position. Their job is to be the suit that gets fired
spectacularly when there's a colossal data breach, right?

~~~
markstos
No, they are supposed to provide actual leadership and expertise to lead an
effort to protect the data.

~~~
topspin
In theory. In reality 'they' nearly always lack to the power and budget to
actually accomplish anything, so they do in fact devolve into being the fall
guy when something gets compromised.

------
sh87
Fake resumes, fake experience, fake references; common practices among most
small tech recruiters and consultancies.

