BY MONSY ALVARADO
Board of education members statewide will be fingerprinted in the coming weeks to comply with a new state law that requires they undergo a criminal history check.
The state Department of Education has sent procedures to school districts, and is urging trustees to get the digital fingerprints done as soon as possible, said Faith Sarafin, spokeswoman for the department.
Social Media background checks are here to stay, approved by the FTC and increasingly adopted by corporations as a way to screen applicants. The good news is that you need to be a pretty big jerk to flunk one.
A social media background check is a little more sophisticated that checking your Facebook account, but not much. Basically, after you apply for a job at a company, the company–with your permission–hires another company to check you out on the web.
Having the third company check you out on the web is an important part of the process. Employers can’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, age, sexual orientation and so forth. But if the company does the background check on the web itself, that photo of you with your church group marching in the Gay Pride parade is going to put them in a seriously bad position. If they don’t hire you, you can claim it’s because of that picture.
by Blake Forrester
Most employers can easily grasp why running a quality background check is important, but unfortunately there are many myths floating around about background checks that could get even a well-meaning employer in trouble.
One myth is that there is some kind of national database to which private employers have access which contains all the information an employer could ever need to ascertain a potential employee’s criminal history and to confirm the education and employment information they have claimed. If only it were that easy.
Doing a thorough background check necessitates a lot of legwork and attention to detail. You have to know where to look, and you have to look in a lot of places. For a criminal background check, for instance, there are over 10,000 courthouses in the United States that have relevant records. These courthouses must be visited in person; they do not combine all their records somewhere for the convenience of employers.
A related myth is that to do a proper background check you need only consult commercially available databases.
Unfortunately while such commercial database services might seem attractively inexpensive, you get what you pay for. How likely do you think it is that the folks who compiled these databases went to all 10,000 courthouses and checked and double checked everything to minimize false positives and false negatives? Not very.
A third myth is that as an employer it’s really not too hard to do a background check that’s “good enough” so that if anything does go wrong you can’t be blamed.
In fact, the due diligence that is required of you can be quite stringent, not to mention unpredictable since it may boil down to what a given jury decides on a given day would have been a reasonable effort on your part to investigate a potential employee.
A fourth myth is the common belief that employers can disqualify an applicant based on a criminal conviction without a business justification.
Once a person has “done his time” the law does not allow him to be indiscriminately penalized the rest of his life by being rendered unemployable. If the nature of the job, the specific offense he committed, the amount of time that has elapsed since the crime, etc. indicate that he would be a substantial risk, then yes, you are within your rights as an employer to deny him a job. You are not required to hire a convicted sex offender to work at your day care, for instance. But if he smoked marijuana 25 years ago, that’s not sufficient grounds to rule him out for employment repairing clocks in your shop.
Prospective caregivers for some of Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens may soon be subject to extensive criminal record searches, thanks to a $3 million grant to establish a comprehensive statewide system for thorough background checks.
“The Commonwealth of Kentucky is very pleased to participate in this critical initiative that is designed to help long-term care facilities and providers avoid hiring individuals with certain criminal histories by conducting federal and state level background checks on prospective job applicants,” said Gov. Steve Beshear. “This falls directly in line with our ongoing work to address elder abuse and improve patient care in long-term care facilities.”
Currently, state law requires long-term care facilities to conduct only name-based background checks for their prospective employees. This grant, however, will help the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) purchase equipment to conduct digital fingerprint background checks, which will ultimately enhance patient safety.
The grant enables the state to purchase live scan equipment to secure digital fingerprints that will be used for both in-state and FBI criminal background checks, according to cabinet officials.
Kentucky is home to 590 long-term care facilities, 101 assisted living facilities, and roughly 600 other providers who employ direct patient access workers.
Once established, this new statewide system will allow officials to perform more in-depth screening of applicants seeking employment at nursing, intermediate care and Alzheimer’s facilities; personal care and family care homes; home health agencies, hospice care providers, long-term care hospitals, personal services agencies, adult day care providers, assisted living facilities, intermediate care facilities for individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and other entities that provide long-term services.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is charged with administering the National Background Check Program (NBCP), created under Section 6201 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This agency is under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Last year, Beshear ordered a multi-agency review – coordinated by the CHFS – that resulted in a comprehensive report on the protection of nursing home residents. The Cabinet has implemented many recommendations included in the report. Additionally, the cabinet has revived the state Elder Abuse Committee to continue the vital collaboration between agencies and stakeholders in an effort to enhance measures aimed at protecting Kentucky’s seniors.
The state also joined the national Elder Investment Fraud and Financial Exploitation Prevention Program. In the program, states work with medical professionals to detect cases where older Americans are being scammed.
On the heels of these actions, Beshear supported and later signed into law two pieces of legislation targeted at protecting adults and the elderly from abuse and exploitation. The laws, which specifically addressed guardianship of adults, bar individuals convicted of felony abuse or exploitation of an adult from serving as that victim’s guardian, executor or power of attorney. The other measure makes the guardianship process more accessible for those who are dealing with more than one state.
“The Cabinet for Health and Family Services is committed to our mission to protect Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens,” said CHFS Secretary Janie Miller. “We are pleased to take part in the National Background Check Program and commend Beshear for his continued leadership and support of issues that safeguard Kentucky’s seniors.”
As the state begins to implement the grant, it seeks input from the provider community and public and private stakeholders on the development of legislation designed to expand current background check policies. For more information or to provide input on the new program, contact the Office of the Inspector General at (502) 564-2888.
THE MASSACHUSETTS Community College Executive Office says it has no plans to change procedures in light of an incident involving a student carrying a handgun at MassBay Community College. The general belief is that community colleges are often places for students from struggling and troubled backgrounds to earn a second chance to educate themselves. Forcing students to disclose criminal records, many community colleges say, will discourage students from applying at all.
“I don’t think a [criminal records check] or even asking students to disclose necessarily makes anyone safer,’’ Bristol Community College spokeswoman Sally Chapman Cameron told the Globe. “I don’t think the research is there to support that.’’
I am sure our community college leaders do not intend it this way, but that almost sounds like the National Rifle Association. All around the nation, gun rights advocates, often boosted by the NRA, are pushing for concealed-carry policies on college campuses. Most efforts have so far stalled, although a challenge to the ban at the University of Colorado has reached that state’s supreme court.
They have stalled because sanity so far is prevailing. In Idaho, for instance, a leading voice against campus carry is Republican Senate majority leader Bart Davis. He lost his 23-year-old son eight years ago at an off-campus beer party when he was shot by a Boise State University student carrying a concealed weapon. When supporters of campus-carry laws claimed students with guns would not be “drunken frat boys,’’ Davis retorted, “This is not an intellectual exercise for me and my family.’’
If guns on campus are not an intellectual exercise in Idaho, they should not be in Massachusetts. As much as our community colleges should be a place where people can find their callings and even rescue themselves, the real world of what young people can do with semiautomatics, from Columbine to Virginia Tech, mandates a tightening of disclosure policies.
The case at MassBay involved 18-year-old Darryl Max Dookhran. He was arrested at the registrar’s office in February with a loaded semiautomatic 9mm handgun in his book bag and additional rounds. He started at MassBay in January, after earning his high diploma in jail while serving time on a variety of juvenile offenses, including assault with a firearm.
A fellow student saw what he thought was a gun in Dookhran’s pants and told a professor. Dookhran was arrested and is back in the criminal justice system. The professor who turned in Dookhran’s name said it was sad because the young man was clearly “between two worlds,’’ knowing he needed an education, but not quite ready to completely let go of his past.
But that should not mean community colleges should be stuck in between these worlds, as sure as you can say the name of Jared Loughner, the alleged assailant in this year’s Arizona massacre who scared students at his community college with his behavior. The policy of not asking questions about a student’s past struggles is a noble idea, but histories of gun violence should not be part of that policy.
That does not mean a school should automatically block a student with a prior firearms record. What it does means is that the school is obligated — on behalf of all the students — to go through a process to determine whether the student has given up violence. Massasoit Community College says it is considering the disclosure of disciplinary actions. The police chief of Quinsigamond Community College told the Globe that such disclosures might help anticipate problems.
That is the direction the community colleges should go in. Had such disclosures been in place, MassBay would have asked Dookhran if he had given up guns. It may have helped him give up that world for one that centered on education.
Education verification is an important part of your general employee background check. If you believe that this has lesser importance than a criminal background check, consider the case of Laura Callahan who resigned as Director of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004.
It was established that Laura Callahan’s doctorate was obtained from Hamilton University, a known ‘diploma mill’. That is a so-called educational establishment that offers diplomas and doctorates to students after little or no study. Subsequent investigation discovered that a minimum of 28 other senior employees had obtained their qualifications from diploma mills. In other words, they were not suitably qualified for the jobs they were holding.
Diploma mills are commonplace, and Columbia State University, for example was shut down in 1998 after an advertising campaign offering degrees within 27 days! That was another diploma mill, and that is one of the reasons for education verification being so important.
The requirement for qualification has become very widespread, and it is little wonder that so many job applicants are tempted to at least overstate their qualifications if not downright lie. Most company positions now require an education qualification of some form or another, and if you search for ‘fake degrees’ on Google you will find several pages offering them. It’s a problem.
The temptation to provide false educational credentials is overwhelming since the rewards for success in fooling your potential employer can be high. The General Accounting Office reported in 2004 that up to 200,000 federal employees had falsified their resumes. These are the ones that were detected. How many more are there that were not detected, and how many in all occupations are involved, not just federal employees? So do not think that you are immune to this; you probably already have employees on your payroll that have falsified their resumes.
This is a serious problem, and a breach of faith on the part of the employees who do this, especially where the knowledge provided in studying for a degree is necessary in the job, and its absence could affect all of the other employees in the company. It is also a serious error on the part of the employers who offer them employment without carrying out suitable education verification.
As more and more qualifications, diplomas and degrees are requested for more and more jobs where previously they were not required, education verification becomes increasingly important. Candidates are highly motivated to provide degrees, obtained by whatever means they can, and up to 20% of employers in the USA now require verification of diplomas and degrees from the college or university that awarded them.
Some universities offer an online verification service that involves providing the student with a password that they can pass on to a prospective employer. This provides the employer with a portal into the student’s records that confirm the qualification awarded. Although this does not address the problem of diploma mills, it at least provides some security. A list of accredited educational facilities would help reduce the need for full education verification and the issue of not knowing what is and is not a diploma mill.
Diploma mills may be breaking the law if they offer these diplomas to students in the knowledge that are being used for job applications, and the applicant is committing a criminal offense in many jurisdictions by presenting them. A federal law is required on this issue, and that would possibly help employers with this problem.
In the meantime, employers must not overlook education verification when carrying out employment background checks. It is easy to omit this essential factor of employee screening, but the employment of an unqualified nurse or doctor can be just as damaging as that of a shop floor employee with a record of violence. The cost to the employer could ultimately be considerably higher.
It should not be assumed that any qualification is genuine, and if a specific diploma or degree is required for a job, it should be verified that the candidate does indeed possess that, and that it has been awarded from a recognized educational or training establishment.
Education verification should be included in the employee screening that all companies should carry out, preferably by hiring a professional investigator to carry it out. It is too important and skilled a job to try yourself unless you have employees trained in how to carry out background checks, and the penalties for failure can be very high.
When we talk about quality employment and best employee, then the first thing which came up in any employer’s mind is that their incumbent would be highly qualified and his qualification is legitimate.
Legitimacy of education is becoming a very intense issue these days as there are many people trying to get their credentials faked out to get their desired job. As the recession hit all around the globe and the job market is so scarce, and the qualified employee needs are so high, so many people are using bad means to get their education.
There are number of diploma mills and degree mills, offline and online which are providing the best criminal services to the people and making money like never before. They are actually selling fake degrees, diplomas and certifications. Which have no worth as now every single employer is running a comprehensive education background check to vet their education authenticity.
Verifying the education credentials of a potential candidate can be an important part in identifying if they have the suitable skills set for the position. Educational success reveals a great deal about an applicant’s credentials and motivations; and through education background checks, an employer can get an accurate depiction of their qualifications.
Many employers view particular educational qualifications as a key factor in seeking new employees. Moreover, education is a prerequisite for many positions because it ensures applicable knowledge of a subject matter, or more importantly, a required license for the position.
Studies show that approximately 30% of all applicants puff up information about their educational background, ranging from made‐up degrees from legitimate schools to insignificant degrees from diploma mills.
In 2004, the general Accounting Office revealed that nearly 200,000 federal employees had at the very least exaggerated education credentials on their resume.
SHRM(Society for Human Resource Management): More than 53% of job applicants falsify information on their resumes; one in four candidates misrepresents his educational attainment.
ADP Hiring Index: 49% of employment, education and or credential reference checks reveal discrepancies in the applicant’s information.
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners: 41% of applicants lie about their education.
The above trend indicates an increase in the likelihood that employer’s who don’t verify education will hire unqualified personnel. Hiring unqualified personnel, in turn, leads to higher employee turnover, forcing the organization to incur expensive recruiting and replacement costs.
Online Degree Scams: Diploma Mills and Fake Degrees
It has also become exceedingly easy to access an authentic looking, knock‐off diploma from any school in America; all you need is a credit card and a computer. Diploma mills and degree mills as well as various websites, advertise very realistic, physical diplomas and transcripts, which have been found to deceive many employers.
Therefore, with the striking statistics of resume fraud, employers should think twice about using physical diplomas as proper evidence of a degree. Because the requirement for education qualification has become so demanding, education fraud is becoming more prevalent, as are the establishments of diploma mills.
Consequently, in order to combat education fraud, laws have recently been passed in which companies who manufacture fake degrees and diplomas are considered to have committed a Misdemeanor, unless the degree explicitly states, “for novelty purposes only.”
Current Systems of Education Background Checks and Degree/ Diploma Verification and Why They Are Not Enough!
The biggest issue with targeting these diploma mills is that they frequently move around. Many diploma mills are constantly changing their names while others are sprouting up sporadically. There are currently hundreds of diploma mills on the internet that offer fake degrees and diplomas.
When posing as legitimate institutions, diploma mills will use catchy phrases to attract potential buyers:
• Here is an opportunity to get ahead
• University diplomas
• Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power, and the admiration of all
• Diplomas from a prestigious university
• Based upon your present knowledge and life experience
• No required tests, classes, books or interview
• Bachelors, masters, MBA, and doctorate (PhD) diplomas available in your field of choice
• No one is turned down
• Confidentiality assured. Call now to receive your diploma within days
• Furthermore, these “schools” have no faculty, no classes, and no course catalog and only have one address or email in which they can be contacted.
Concluding Remarks:
If you think that performing a background check is only suited for criminal investigation, then think again. It is now a common step taken by members of online dating sites on individuals that they are interested in getting to know more of. This is an important process in protecting yourself from online scams and also to ensure the person’s background before you think about divulging personal information or deciding to meet with them.
Doing a background check on a person you meet via an online dating site is a step taken towards protecting your own safety. Focus on certain information such as their real name, their location or hometown, and most especially their criminal history. The worst thing that could happen is for you to interact with a personal with criminal background and you willingly share your information with them thinking that they are someone who is interested in building a genuine relationship with you.
Performing a basic online dating background check will also give you more confidence with someone, especially if you are interested in them and would want to take your relationship to another level. When you perform a background check, you can focus on key information that will provide you with what you need to decide on whether a person is trustworthy or not. These information include social security number, past employment, driving records, character references, criminal records, educational records, court records, incarceration records, and sex offender registration status, to name a few.
Many have put their full trust on someone they have met online before and so there are a lot of people that are wandering through these online dating sites in search for their next victim. There are therefore online dating sites that offer backgrounds check facility for its members, just in case they are suspicious about certain people they meet through the site. Thus, they can easily perform a thorough background check on the person in question and provide useful information that one can use in deciding whether to cut ties with that person or not.
If possible, perform an extensive background check on every single person you meet on a dating site for the internet. You cannot afford to let your guard down at anytime because that is when these malicious individuals will try to take advantage of. It is also one way for you to stay one step ahead of them. While online dating sites offer many wonderful possibilities, there are also dangers lurking around and only you can protect yourself from them.
Knowing Background of an Employee can help protect your company against Employee Theft.
Crime is the LOUDEST word that we have heard in past decade. Inflation in business crime has increased like never before. Open up your daily newspaper on just about any given day and there’s a very good chance you will see an article about one or more employees caught stealing in some form from their place of employment. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates employee theft to be $40 BILLION annually. Some portrayed stories are underlined as references to let you know, how employee theft is hurting our businesses;
“A New York newspaper has reported that a woman who allegedly claimed her ailing boyfriend as her husband in order for him to receive medical treatments (it cost her employer over $100,000 in out-of-pocket costs)”.
“Another newspaper revealed that two employees at a retail establishment who supposedly stole and sold store merchandise for profit on eBay. Thus far but still counting, stolen merchandise is already valued at over $50,000”.
And the most daunting story is still to come, when a business owner attempted to teach a fraudulent worker a lesson; he ended up learning a few things himself.
“A business owner in England found out one of his trusted employees wrote a company check to himself for £845 ($1,375.66 US) and then cashed it.
Enraged, the owner decided to practice a bit of street justice. So he placed a sign — which read “Thief. I stole £845. Am On My Way to Police Station” — around the thieving staffers’ neck and marched him through town before eventually handing him over to the police.
But the police let the thief off with just a warning, and then he sued his boss for humiliation, false imprisonment and lost wages. In the end, the business owner was forced to settle the lawsuit for £13,000 ($21,164)”.
Employee Theft is the Biggest Problem for All Sort of Businesses:
From corporate giants to small-medium businesses, all are affected by this crime. In the current scenario when the world has already seen a biggest halt in economy interims of recession, there is darn need to stop and prevent employee theft.
Although it can be tough to pin point the problem, some telltale signs of thieving employees may include; unusual behavior, such as defensiveness, irritability and suspiciousness, missing documents, frequently used names and addresses for refunds, unbalanced ledgers, inventory shortages, and merchandise frequently shipped to P.O. Box numbers.
But the point is that, why a company would let anyone enter their peaceful crime free environment? They never want that, because it can not only damage their reputation but it can also give them a financial loss over hiring and then to employee theft, fraud and embezzlement.
So the first and foremost line of defense against employee theft, fraud and embezzlement is to adopt strict pre employment criminal background checks and credit history background checks before hiring anyone into the organization.
8 Best Ways to prevent Employee Theft, Fraud and Embezzlement:
Conclusion:
We like to think the best people with whom we work or who work for us. However, it can be costly to naïve about employee theft and fraud. As the insider threat entry noted, your employees are a source of risk. They have the access to and knowledge about your organization to steal variety of organizational assets, including equipment and money, or to commit fraud.
Those employers are wise who initiate their hiring process by proper pre employment criminal background checks on their job candidates. And this first on process is making difficult for criminal employees to enter a safe secure peaceful environment of any organization, because every criminal possess a past and they can be pointed out during their pre employment criminal background checks.
A former college instructor was recently arrested in Maryland following a fraud investigation of his falsified degrees, military experience and other personal details, according to TBD.com. Bill Hillar had been teaching, leading workshops, giving speeches and conducting training for at least a decade based on his fabricated biography.
Hillar instructed at Middlebury College on drug trafficking, human trafficking and other college summer classes to hundreds of students. An investigation was launched when student veterans who were taking Hillar’s class challenged his credentials as a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel and holder of a doctorate, saying he did not exhibit the mannerisms of a high-ranking army officer.
When Middlebury tried to verify his credentials, they found he did not have the Ph.D. he claimed and his military experience was substantially exaggerated. In reality, he’d served for eight years as an enlisted sailor in the Coast Guard, but did not serve in any of the locations or hold the ranks or conduct any of the duties he claimed.
A college official told the FBI she’d hired Hillar based on his resume and website biography and that a background check hadn’t been conducted since Hillar was not a formal employee.
Middlebury’s mistake is a very common one made not only by higher education institutions, but by a wide range of organizations as well – not conducting a background check on contingent workers.
Even organizations that have an extensive background checking program in place often can miss this major security gap and neglect to screen consultants, contractors, partner and vendor employees, and temporary workers. This workforce, however, can represent considerable risks for organizations – as they can serve in highly responsible positions, and have access to personnel, facilities and sensitive data.
It’s a best practice to ensure that the background screening policies cover contingent workers, to avoid both security and business liabilities. By performing a background check including education and employment verification on Hillar, this incident likely would have been prevented.
Organizations should implement the same background screening procedures and requirements for the entire workforce, including contractors, consultants and vendor employees. Background screening requirements should be explicitly laid out in contracts, conducted and enforced through regular audits.
Source: Hire Right
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