By: Aniqa Bukhari “Honest is the best policy.” There is no doubt this old saying should be followed by anyone applying for a new job. Unfortunately, there are cases in which applicants are less than truthful during the hiring process, and the boss discovers discretionary information through some other resource. Such deception is occupational fraud, and represents a valid reason for denying employment. But what if it is an employee already on your payroll- and doesn’t have the qualifications for which he was hired? To stop and think about this possibility- unqualified employees working in sensitive positions at your organization – can be alarming indeed. To look at it another way, which is scarier: imagine that you are waiting for takeoff in an airplane operated by fake pilots with forged licenses? Either of these realities would be frightening, and unfortunately, this is not just an abstract question. Unqualified employees with forced qualifications have penetrated even the highly prestigious aviation industry. A recent, shocking case that highlights this type of fraud involved a worldwide airlines, a National Flag Carrier in Southeast Asia, that dismissed four pilots who logged thousands of air travel hours for owning forged degrees. According to the news reports, one of the dismissed pilots of that State run Airline had flown over 25 years, and two of them had piloted special aircraft utilized by renowned individuals throughout the regime of Country’s former military ruler.
