Not every horror story is without some small measure of humor. Some time ago we were contacted by a large medical facility. They were concerned that their new director of physical therapy wasn’t living up to their expectations, and they wanted us to verify, at least, his academic credentials. Eventually, we were supplied with an actual copy of his diploma from a college in Wales in England, which began in the usual way: “To all who shall see these presents, greetings: This is to certify that so-and-so has met all the requirements for such-and-such degree…”
We transmitted the copy of the diploma to the registrar of the college asking for verification. Soon we received a somewhat terse reply that began, “First of all, had this been a diploma from our college, it would have been written in Latin, not English. We hope your client takes an equally dim view of this sort of prevarication.” The total cost of not checking prior to hiring exceeded $100,000. Had we done a background check before the hiring decision was made, the cost of verifying the authenticity of the academic credentials claimed would have been less than fifteen bucks!