Is your company regularly verifying the information listed on candidates’ resumes? You should be. In today’s competitive job market, resume fraud is more common than many employers and investors realize.
Case in point
A client recently hired Gryphon to conduct due diligence on an individual. The individual had listed on their LinkedIn profile and their company bio, that they had been awarded a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from a university in the United States. However, when we ran the information through a third-party verification site, the university was not listed. This was unusual as most U.S. universities are represented.
The bigger picture
Here is where the initial red flags started to appear. After searching the school’s website, we could not locate a registrar or any contact information. There was a general e-mail that noted there would be a guaranteed response by staff within 24 hours. Furthermore, the address of the university listed on their site was in Delaware; however it was an address for an office building, rather than a school.
A 2023 survey by ResumeLab indicated that 70% of job applicants admitted to lying or considering lying on their resumes.
After not receiving any response from the general e-mail, Gryphon’s experienced investigators decided to dig deeper into this university:
- We identified media that indicated that this school was possibly a “diploma mill” school, which was listed as a “university” affiliated with a Pakistani-company that offered diplomas and degrees through hundreds of American fictitious schools.
- This company was part of an investigation in 2019 in which its CEO and other executives had been sentenced to prison.
- Further research into the school identified that the school’s website had contained fake photos for their “faculty” that were stolen from other university websites.
The bottom line
Surface level checks would not have uncovered this detailed information surrounding the fake degree the individual self-reported to have received. When organizations are considering a new hire, an investment opportunity or a new partnership, Gryphon is the trusted partner that provides them with the deep, actionable intelligence they need to assess and appropriately size risk, and make confident, fully-informed decisions. To learn more, contact Gryphon at [email protected].
