CNN – A woman who lied on her resume and faked “glowing” references to land a high-paying job with an Australian regional government has been sentenced to at least a year in prison.
Veronica Hilda Theriault, 46, was convicted Tuesday of deception, dishonesty, and abuse of public office, relating to her 2017 application for the chief information officer role, which came with an annual salary of 270,000 Australian dollars (US$185,000).
Theriault worked in the position with South Australia’s Department of the Premier and Cabinet for over a month and earned about 33,000 Australian dollars ($22,500) before being fired. She pleaded guilty to all charges and received a 25-month sentence with a non-parole period of a year.
The court heard that she submitted a fraudulent resume to the department with false information relating to her education and prior employment. After she was granted an interview, she also posed as a previous employer during a reference check, in which she “gave glowing feedback” about her own performance.
This is BULLSHIT. As someone who somehow stumbled into the position of hiring and firing actual adults, even I have to admit this is 100% on the company, not the woman. I don’t care if it was for a role as the Chief of Medicine at a hospital; it’s quite literally the company’s job to vett the candidate’s experience. If they sneak one past you to land a cushy six figure job, thats on you. Did they even bother sitting down with this woman to ya know, maybe ask her a few questions about the role?
I imagine her interview went something along the lines of Chuckie sitting in for Will Hunting.
RETAINERRRR
You wanna know why this is bullshit though? Because of things like this:
But the lies didn’t end there. In earlier submissions, the court heard that Theriault used a photo of supermodel Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile photo, according to CNN affiliate 7 News.
And after starting the position in August, she was found to have hired her brother, despite him lacking the qualifications to perform the role.
So the hiring manager didn’t even bother to look at the LinkedIn profile of someone he was hiring? Well thats a bright, glowing, red flag right there. And then after hiring the woman they let her then hire her BROTHER without any qualifications?
If you think a little jail time is gonna scare some hustlers out of trying this again, you better think again. Pocketing $22k in a month like this woman did is more than worth the risk of going to the pokey for a lot of people.
Nice work, Australia.