In 2019, a nurse signed off sick from a hospital in Merseyside. Six months later, she quit after having missed a string of welfare appointments with the Merseyside Hospital while ‘on sick leave’. Unbeknownst to her manager, she had begun work as a staff nurse at another hospital just 9 miles away. She landed the new job by providing false references during the screening process for this second role - all the while continuing to pocket a salary from the first employer.

The fraudulent references enabled her to secure employment despite her ongoing employment with the first hospital, highlighting vulnerabilities in the hiring processes of the organisations involved. After her deceit came to light, legal proceedings were initiated against her.

This story was published on the Daily Mail last week, read the full article here.

This is by no means an isolated incident. Reference fraud is more prevalent than ever; at Konfir we’ve been made aware of numerous similar instances of people buying references online, fabricating documents, and even setting up entirely new entities to deceive employers to land a job, to defraud them financially, or worse. 

Employers are increasingly waking up to these risks - a major reason we’re seeing HR and Security teams leverage Konfir to protect the integrity of their organisations. Understanding the facts through Employment Verification technology means eliminating key types of fraud, even if not used as a complete reference replacement. 

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What risks does Konfir protect against?

1. Fake References: Fabricated endorsements and fictitious employers are used to embellish experience and deceive hiring employers Konfir only verifies data through direct-to-authoritative source integrations, meaning that data cannot be tampered with by candidates or their allies posing as referees.

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2. Fake Application Documents: Fraudulent bank statements or payslips are submitted to mislead employers through the screening process Document fraud detection technology used by employers is improving steadily, but the technology used by people creating fraudulent documents is improving just as quickly. Konfir doesn’t accept any documentation to ensure fraud risk is completely avoided.

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3. CV-Based Fraud: Manipulating employment dates on resumes, not disclosing associations with certain employers, or concealing gaps to misguide the screening process Konfir provides visibility of the facts for any employments within the period you need to verify, including undeclared employments. We also provide discrepancy analysis, so you know right away where there might be differences in the details verified versus those originally provided by the candidate.

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4. Dual Employment (like the nurse above): Sometimes referred to as ‘Moonlighting’, people engage in secondary employment without disclosure to their employer, which can lead to conflicts of interest and potential legal repercussions With both the cost-of-living crisis and evolving flexible-working environments contributing to the surge in people holding multiple concurrent jobs, employers are increasingly turning to Konfir to check for undisclosed employments held by current employees.

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But wait, there’s more… and you can help

Konfir already provides a robust suite of fraud safeguards through compliant integrations with source-of-truth data sources, visibility of undeclared employments, and discrepancy analysis. Recently, we’ve turned our attention to proactive identification of suspicious employers through our Employer Database.

Screening teams can leverage Konfir's Employer Database to report any suspicious employers or activities, contributing to a collective effort to create a safer hiring environment for the whole country. In return, you’ll get access to the database too so you can easily identify risks without relying on the human eye.

Read more on how you can help combat reference fraud, and sign up to our fake employer mailing list below

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