[baxtr]

> Jin-su spent most of his time trying to secure fraudulent identities which he could use to apply for jobs. He would first pose as Chinese, and contact people in Hungary, Turkey and other countries to ask them to use their identity in exchange for a percentage of his earnings, he told the BBC.

"If you put an 'Asian face' on that profile, you'll never get a job." He would then use those borrowed identities to approach people in Western Europe for their identities, which he'd use to apply for jobs in the US and Europe. Jin-su often found success targeting UK citizens.

"With a little bit of chat, people in the UK passed on their identities so easily," he said.

Interesting. I was under the impression that most large employers perform basic background checks on new employees?

[apwell23]

> basic background checks on new employees?

yes background check is done on UK person's identity and then Jin-su shows up to the job.

This is a happening a lot for regular tech jobs. Person who interviews and person who shows up for job are completely different ppl. we had to start taking screenshots of faces in interview so we can compare. This is happening big time.

[miki123211]

And, at least as far as I've heard, those people often target small-ish companies, something like 20-100 employees. Large enough where you can stay unnoticed, small enough that you don't have strict policies and background checks.

[baxtr]

Ok makes sense. So only once you see his face in the interview you realize it’s not the UK person?

[heelix]

We've had people interview remarkably well, get hired, and when they showed up on the team - they did not know the stories/experiences they mentioned in the interview. Realized the person we screened was not the same that showed up to work. Back when we were doing a lot of hiring, this sort of scam worked.

[ManuelKiessling]

Over the past years I was approached multiple times with innocent sounding emails that clearly had the goal to use my identity in the way described here.

I‘ve always simply ignored these.

Is there a better way?

[carstenhag]

Germany: I don't know of anything a normal company could do as a "background check". Some sectors can ask for a criminal record which the future employee has to provide. Of 3 companies I was at, 0 required (or were allowed to require) this.

Military/government jobs with secret data have their own, through clearance checks of course, but a random IT company would never have this.

On the other hand, you have to submit so many tax, social security, insurance-related IDs which are cross-checked, I don't think it's feasible to impersonate someone here. It's also a reason why over-employment is not possible.