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Mortgage groups have been warned to be alert to candidate fraud after one recruitment agent said he had never seen such high levels.
Cherry Solutions managing director Floyd Nangreave said he had had seven fraudulent candidates reach shortlist or offer stage in the 30 days before he spoke to The Adviser.
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Those were candidates who had forged their police or credit checks in order to apply for broking, BDM or financial planning roles, he said.
“We’ve been in business for 16 years and I’ve never seen it like it’s been in the last two months – to the point where we’re professionals and we’re getting caught out.”
Mr Nangreave assumed that some of the fraudulent candidates had probably gotten away with similar behaviour in the past.
“These people are very brazen, they’re calculating, they’re cunning and they have no shame in their ability to try to misrepresent who they are to employers – and recruiters are falling for it,” he said.
Mr Nangreave said the candidates’ referees had been shocked when he told them they had vouched for frauds.
“These referees are upstanding members of the aggregation, broking and financial planning world,” he said.
“This is a case of buyer beware. Don’t take anything on face value. It’s not a case of being paranoid, it’s a case of doing the due diligence and not just doing it with one avenue.”
Mr Nangreave told The Adviser that some firms make the mistake of allowing candidates to start before the police check is complete only to then have to fire the new recruit.
Another mistake is to fail to conduct regular checks in the following years, he added.
“You can go and work in a bank and the bank might not do it for 12 or 24 or sometimes 36 months. A lot can happen in that timeframe.”
Mr Nangreave also warned mortgage groups to do reference checks on landlines rather than mobiles so they can verify that the phone number actually belongs to the company.
“We’ve had some candidates who have provided referees where they’ve either been relatives or friends masquerading as managers of previous employment,” he said.
[Related: ASIC reference check may be flawed]
