When applying for a job, you might feel the temptation to ‘embellish’ your CV a little, in order to make your accomplishments and work history look a bit more impressive.
While we all know that dishonesty is wrong and could be risky if you got found out, you may have never thought that it could actually be against the law, or that anyone could be facing a prison sentence for faking a CV.
But this is exactly what happened to 46-year-old Andrew Flanagan.
Granted, he did a little more than just up-selling himself, but the man now faces very serious charges.
In an elaborate attempt to get a highly paid job, Flanagan invented his entire career history.
He created a spectacular CV complete with an impressive employment history, and false names, numbers and references of people were actually his buddies posing as senior executives.
Flanagan applied for a job paying $400,000 per year at Myer, for which he was nowhere near qualified.
And he got the job!
But it wasn’t long before suspicions began mounting.
Unsurprisingly, he was caught out because of his poor performance and was sacked less than one month after being hired.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg, and the truth gradually became exposed.
Employers that he purported to work for were contacted by Myer and declared that Flanagan never worked for them.
One such employer was the boss of popular retail chain Zara.
Flanagan had brazenly used similar tricks at another retail chain, Rivers and Mills, and to get the CEO position at the Australian Arab Chamber of Commerce.
He even managed to obtain a position as a TAFE lecturer for a while.
But the jig was up.
Myer contacted police and Flanagan was charged with nine separate counts of fraud, including obtaining financial advantage by deception.
Not only was his CV highly incriminating, but so were his verbal assertions of his work history and references.
It is also alleged that he even stole a laptop from a former employee.
While Flanagan is facing these charges in Victoria, fraud is a serious and highly prevalent offence in NSW as well.
According to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (‘BOSCAR’), there were 49,291 recorded criminal incidences of fraud in NSW between June 2013 and June 2014,
For fraud under section 192E of the NSW Crimes Act, the prosecution must prove:
- That you acted dishonestly or deceptively
- That your deceptive or dishonest conduct allowed you to either obtain someone else’s property or a financial advantage, or cause another person to suffer a financial disadvantage, and
- That your actions were either intentional or reckless
Fraud can lie undetected for years, and in many cases can be difficult to prove.
But when it is proved, courts can hand down harsh sentences – especially if the conduct went on for a long time and involved large sums of money.
The courts have found that fraud involving a significant breach of trust should attract harsh penalties so that other people are deterred from committing them.
An example of a breach of trust is where a worker develops and implements a scheme to steal money from an employer, and does so over a long period of time before being detected.
Larceny by employees is punishable by up to ten years in prison, according to the NSW Crimes Act, and many other fraud offences also carry the maximum prison term of ten years.
Those maximum penalties apply if the case is decided in the District Court.
However, the penalties are lower if the fraud case stays in the Local Court where the maximum penalty for any single charge is two years in prison.
A good criminal lawyer will often be able to persuade the prosecution to keep your fraud case in the Local Court – so that you are much less likely to be sentenced to prison.
They will also know how to get fraud charges dropped at an early stage or thrown out of court if the evidence against you is not strong enough.
If you wish to plead guilty, an experience criminal lawyer will know how to control the damage and get you the lowest possible penalty.
Lying on your CV is unlikely to get you prison time, unless you manage to do so to an astronomical extent, like Flanagan did.
But even if you don’t end up facing fraud charges, being caught out lying during the job application process may hurt you in the long run.
