Varnished truths

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Michael Swann.

In three years tracking CV fraud, Craig Gubbins has heard it all - from the man convicted 30 times for falsely claiming to be a chiropractor to the Auckland employment agency representatives who bought fake degrees from the United States.

There was the unqualified Qantas engineer who signed off on the safety of more than 1000 international flights without having a licence to do so, and the former Australian federal court judge who not only perjured himself over a $77 speeding ticket - claiming he'd lent his car to a friend who was dead - but who also bought bogus degrees.

But Mr Gubbins' personal favourite is the taxi driver in England who bought a PhD and posed as a psychiatrist, earning more than 1.5 million treating patients and often appearing in court as an expert witness.

A former SIS officer and manager of the Government's security vetting programme, Mr Gubbins now runs Personal Verification Ltd, an Auckland company that specialises in background recruitment checks.

He estimates a third of job applicants lie, embellish or omit important information when writing their CVs.

And he expects this will increase as the economic recession bites and there is more competition for jobs.

CV cheats omit criminal convictions, overstate salaries and change dates to cover employment gaps. Some people inflate their former job titles, so the assistant to the managing director (otherwise known as a secretary) suddenly becomes the assistant managing director.

Online "universities" selling fake qualifications often have a telephone verification service with people to confirm that the candidate does indeed have a degree from them.

There are also websites that tell how to create false references and how to lie at a job interview. As one such site, fakeresume.com, says: "Everyone else is doing it. Why shouldn't you?".

Many employers either don't do checks or rely on recruitment companies who receive a commission when placing candidates and therefore have a vested interest in the outcome, Mr Gubbins says.

When you consider the sums involved in theft by employees, which is even more significant financially for companies than CV fraud, those checks look like time well spent.

"If you look at our news archive on New Zealand cases of theft as a servant, you will see that in the last 12 months alone, we have reported on employee theft involving losses of more than $27.5 million . . . None of the companies used a pre-employment screening company to verify the background of their candidate before employing them."

Certainly no CV check was made on ODHB fraudster Michael Swann.

Detective Neville Aiken, of the Dunedin police, says fraudsters are not hardened criminals who would mug someone in the Octagon on a Saturday night but clever, calculating people who live otherwise normal, decent lives.

And that allows some to get away with offending every week for 18 months before raising suspicions.

"They're not covered in tattoos and unemployed. These are the 'pillars of society' and for greed or gambling or whatever reason, they find a way to obtain funds dishonestly."

One Dunedin salesman netted more than $40,000 by falsely claiming customers had returned goods and been given refunds. In fact, he used his own credit card to transfer the refunds into his account.

Other dishonest workers take money from the cash register to spend during their lunch hour playing the pokies or use the boss' online banking system to pay their mortgage.

Another common scenario is an employee suddenly leaving a job in which they have been performing well, worried that their offending is about to be detected, Mr Aiken says.