A twin faked identity to take her dead sister’s place at an organisation.

All our clients send a detailed job application form to the newly hired employees. This is an exhaustive document and requires extensive details – educational qualifications, previous employment details and personal particulars of the employee.  Based on this and other supporting documents AuthBridge researchers conduct their Employee Background Verification.

The Case

On her job application form, Navneet cited two previous employers, though she provided documentation from only one of them. We started by contacting the earlier of the two job references.  The contact person in the HR department confirmed that the proof of employment furnished by Navneet was authentic with one exception – the employment dates. These appeared to have been altered. The genuine dates of employment were January 19, 2005 till October 2005. This was changed on the document we were provided, to read as June 19, 2004.What really left us stunned was that this employer told us that Navneet had died a year after leaving their organisation! He further added that she had been married.

The second employer, on being contacted, denied ever hiring Navneet. He did, however, provide us with a piece of information that put us on high alert. Another lady with the same father’s name and address had been employed with them. This employer hinted that the two ladies might be sisters.

This case had now become a riddle that we were keen to solve.

The Procedure

AuthBridge’s field staff visited the residential address given by Navneet and spoke to her mother, who stated that she had two daughters. One was married and lived in Chandigarh and the other was employed by our client. AuthBridge then contacted Navneet’s brother via telephone. He stated that one of his sisters, who had been married, had died and that he lived with his mother and Navneet. We now had two pieces to put together this puzzle – one of the sisters was dead and married, the other one lived with her mother and brother.

AuthBridge researchers found the final piece by sending the latest available photograph of Navneet to her first employer who apprised us that Navneet died a year after having worked for them. He stated the girl in the photo was not the one that had worked for him.

The second employer who had hinted the two might be sisters was also shown the photograph. He did a comparison check with the photo in his records. His observation was that though there were similarities they were not the same girl. The AuthBridge Research Team also carefully examined and compared the photographs and come to the same conclusion.

How AuthBridge helped the client

AuthBridge then sent in a report to the client organization giving details of the investigation, its revelations and our understanding of the entire situation. When presented with conclusions of our report, Navneet confessed (after initially denying everything) that she was impersonating her sister. She was able to get away with it for so long because the real Navneet- her sister -had died of pneumonia just before she was to take up her job and no checks or documentation were required at the time of joining.

This case serves as a timely reminder to all organizations just how easy it is for fraud and identity theft to occur and that gender is not necessarily a bar to deceitful actions. Businesses need to make the effort and take that extra step to carry out thorough background checks and verifications of claims by new appointees.

 In fact, it makes sense to conduct periodic background screening of current employees as well. AuthBridge has just the right solution for this – Post Employment Risk Watch-AuthXtend™.