Ex-Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson And Seven Other Cases Of Resume Fraud

From the Fiscal Times:

The latest victim to fall from grace due to resume fraud is Scott Thompson, who was named Yahoo’s chief executive in January. The former president of PayPal graduated from Stonehill College in Massachusetts with a degree in accounting – but he also claimed he had a degree in computer science. Turns out the college didn’t offer that degree until several years after Thompson claimed he earned his.

“Holding these credentials seem(ed) very plausible for someone with Thompson’s job history,” Melinda Blackman, a professor of psychology at California State University in Fullerton, said on CNN this morning, “and since he was a well known and successful executive, a background check was probably put on the backburner.”

After being exposed by a Yahoo shareholder, Daniel S. Loeb, however, Thompson apologized for the misrepresentation and has now stepped down. (He’s also reportedly told the board that he’s been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.) What’s clear is that he’s not the only high-profile business or government leader to have been caught fudging the details of personal credentials. Plenty of folks before him have gotten away with it. Click on our photo gallery of seven others who have “creatively enhanced” their resumes over the years – and then paid a dreadful price.

Here are eight famous cases of resume fraud:

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• Scott Thompson

  It's a shake-up that's still reverberating through the business world: Thompson, 54, has lost his chief executive's position at Yahoo while also reportedly telling the board he's been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Thompson apologized to employees of the troubled Internet company last week and has now been replaced at Yahoo, on an interim basis, by Ross Levinsohn, who was formerly Yahoo's executive vice president of the Americas region.

• Frank Abagnale

  Made famous by the novel about his life, Catch Me If You Can - later a film starring Leonardio DiCaprio - Frank Abagnale forged a law degree from Harvard, passed the Louisiana State bar, and worked for awhile in a state attorney general's office. He later forged a degree from Columbia University and taught school. The fibs were clearly a pattern: He had also impersonated a pediatrician and pilot earlier on. He served three prison terms.

• David Edmondson

  The former chief executive of RadioShack Corporation claimed that he held diplomas in psychology and theology from Pacific Coast Baptist in San Diego, California - but there was no evidence, as it turned out, that Edmondson ever graduated from the college. He was finally terminated from his CEO position - or, as Forbes put it, "Busted for faking his college degree."

• Rob Kalin

  Considered a visionary but also eccentric, Rob Kalin co-founded the profitable e-commerce startup Etsy. He's since stepped down twice from the chief executive role. He dropped out of high school with a D-minus average but gained admission to a studio program at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts on the strength of a portfolio, according to degreescout.com. He later forged graduate credentials so that he could attend design classes at MIT. Kalin does have a legitimate degree in Classics, apparently, from NYU.

• Marilee Jones

  The former admissions dean at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claimed she was a "scientist with degrees in biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Albany Medical College," and that she held a doctorate. She resigned from her job in April 2007 after officials learned of her fabrications - which she eventually admitted. "I did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since," she said then.

• Ronald Zarrella

  Talk about bluffing and puffing your way through academic credentials. Zarrella, former CEO of Bausch & Lomb, asserted for 10 years in his biography that he held an MBA from New York University's business school. In reality, he had begun the program - but never actually finished it. He was forced to return a $1.1 million bonus from Bausch & Lomb and left as CEO of the company in January 2008.

• George O'Leary

  Former Notre Dame head football coach O'Leary said he held a master's degree from NYU-Stony Brook University, though such a school does not actually exist (they're two separate institutions). His resume also said his undergraduate alma mater, University of New Hampshire, gave him three letters in football, but he never played a single game (he did graduate in 1968). O'Leary resigned from the Fighting Irish after admitting to "resume padding" and eventually landed at the University of Central Florida as head football coach.

• Jeff Papows

  The former CEO and president of Lotus Corporation, Papows (far left) was found by The Wall Street Journal in 1999 to have exaggerated his military record (he was a lieutenant, it turns out, not a captain) and to have faked his educational credentials (he did not have a PhD from Pepperdine University, as he claimed). He eventually resigned from Lotus and told staff in a memo, "I would like to once again lead an independent organization."

Comments

[21stCenturyThinker]

03:18 PM on 05/15/2012

The Globe finally threw granny under the bus...she has no claim...

[lele215]

02:07 PM on 05/15/2012

They could do the job. In fact, the woman from MIT was awarded numerous rewards for the work she did. It just shows you someone can have the credentials and suck at a job while others don't and excel. It really shouldn't matter.

[EasyZee]

01:22 PM on 05/15/2012

I was never a CEO or a millionaire, I'm an animator. When I first started my animation career I embellished my resume... a lot. A drawing for a homemade CD for my friend's garage band was made to sound like I did an album cover for more legit band. A painting my friend paid me to do for him, was simply called "commissioned work', sounds more legit than 'a painting for my friend'. And so it went. As my career took off, I would remove the embellished credits each time I earned a legit credit. After about 3 years, there were no more embellishments on my CV. Now I have credits on a dozen television series, video games, short films, and web cartoons.
I never lied about my work on my resume, I just worded it in such a way as to sound more impressive than it actually was. That's like an art form in itself.

[mdsman]

02:47 PM on 05/15/2012

Fine...but, he outright lied

[ny1989]

03:22 PM on 05/15/2012

Everyone does that... i think its par for the course on resumes or job titles(just look at garbagemen... sorry, "sanitation engineers"). A few articles in the student paper and you're "on staff." Secretarial work becomes "office management tasks." Putting employment in terms of years instead of years and months and voila, that summer job you held down in high school sounds like nearly full time employment.

Saying you earned a degree when you didnt, however, isnt euphemistically describing an accomplishment or a slight embellishment; Its a straight up lie. You are claiming to have done something you did not do. Unlike those embellishments, additionally, it can be easily checked on.

[EasyZee]

09:22 PM on 05/15/2012

I completely agree. I was not defending a flat out fabrication. I just wanted to share my story.

[JC2009USA]

01:15 PM on 05/15/2012

I do employment verifications for a living. The three biggest areas of cheating/lying are criminal history, employment history either fabricating jobs/skills and reason for leaving, and education.

Hundreds of executives fudge/lie/exaggerate skills/titles and education. They think companies aren't really going to check or that companies use online data which miss so much data.

[Val Mercy]

01:14 PM on 05/15/2012

Why continue with the silly academic lie? It's inconsequential after a while...makes no sense.

[treemonkey]

01:07 PM on 05/15/2012

So where will corporations get CEO's in the future if we eliminate all of the cheaters and liars? Catching them in their lies has just got to stop. Can you imagine the carnage if we also applied those same standards to Wall Street and to Political Office Holders. Oh, the horror.

[Richard Gates]

12:56 PM on 05/15/2012

Also left out was Vice President Joe Biden who, when running for the democratic nomination for president, inflated his academic prowess to fit a plagarized speech.

[Val Mercy]

01:15 PM on 05/15/2012

Never heard of speech writer, huh?

[hoperequired]

12:48 PM on 05/15/2012

They left out Joe Biden, our VP, and Elizabeth Warren, the new face of Native American!

[84BADGER]

12:25 PM on 05/15/2012

They left out the former Chairman & CEO of MGM:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/34924614.html

[ny hot mic]

12:05 PM on 05/15/2012

Was POTUS's resume up to snuff?

[jesthefaxman]

01:05 PM on 05/15/2012

Whose actually seen it?

[Mr MOTO]

01:51 PM on 05/15/2012

Present!

[spottery2k]

11:46 AM on 05/15/2012

What I find most interesting in all of this is that each of these individuals not only bluffed their way into high-profile positions, but also proved that a degree isn't necessary to succeed in those positions. There was a time in this country when merit mattered. Academic background was not a necessary condition for consideration in higher offices, although it was sometimes a sufficient and contributing condition. If a person managed to attain a high office and make competent decisions, then their academic background no longer mattered. They put on the shoes and if the shoes fit, nothing else was said. Nowadays, academic background is a required condition, and that's scary, because it rests all power into the hands of academic institutions and their administrators, like priests or even the Ayatollahs who prop up president Ahmadinejad in Iran. It turns schools into churches or mosques. We're always told that you MUST have a degree to be qualified for certain positions, but then these frauds prove that's all political, serving to divide people by wealth and class and reserve the highest posts for those with the means of entering and completing an indoctrination program.

[ema123]

02:14 PM on 05/15/2012

Yeah, once they have proven capable and skilled I would think they would count more than eductation credits, ive known Ivy league grads that didnt perform as well as state college b/c students once in the work field

[ny1989]

02:46 PM on 05/15/2012

Your post brings up a number of interesting points and, while I agree with parts of it, I have a few qualms. College may not be necessary for many types of jobs, but for many others, it is extremely valuable. A doctor needs to understand biology, an engineer or an architect needs to understand physics, and a teacher needs to understand math. For these types of jobs, the skills necessary are acquired simply through graduate work or experience.

For most people, however, I do agree, as do a large portion of labor economists, that a college education is not necessary for adequate performance in many fields. In fact, things like high school, business school or even law school, could be seen as unnecessary from the perspective of jobs, since most of the skills required to fill most positions in those fields are largely learned on the job.

The value it does serve, however, is proof of some level of intrinsic ability that can be seen as objective. Known as a signaling effect, employers are able to ascertain that someone who graduated from a good school was a) smart enough to get in, b) diligent enough to finish the work on time and c) dedicated enough to graduate. Unlike references, which can be unreliable or faked, a college degree is from an external organization independent of intricate personal interaction with the student, allowing their assessment of a person's competence to be relatively unbiased.

(cont.)

[spottery2k]

05:19 PM on 05/15/2012

I agree that the value of a college education should not be trivialized. I also agree that businesses like the idea of resting their decisions on the condition of a degree, since it makes that decision easier. But it begs the question as to objectivity and the culture it creates. We are told there is a connection between higher education and greater financial success, but its important to understand that with greater financial success comes greater political leverage among those who have it, which highlights an inherent bias and sharpens the contrast between the very wealthy and everyone else. Both private business and universities collude to create a system of compliance over competence designed to filter whistle-blowers and "loose-canons" who only meet competence requirements and are less willing to distinguish themselves from their colleagues. It produces a form of cultural inbreeding (ie. cult, mosque, church).

[21stCenturyThinker]

11:46 AM on 05/15/2012

Pocahontas Warren checked the minority box as a fake Native American for thirty years to get her prestigious job at Harvard.
BUT
Progressives don't care. They "love" her.

[EasyZee]

01:47 PM on 05/15/2012

That is a flat out lie. Maybe you didn't read the news last week. That rumor was exposed as being wrong. I'd offer you a link, but it's so easy to find with a simple google search. She never checked herself as anything other than "white".
And YES, we do love her.
What actually happened was this; The University Of Pennsylvania put out a report in 2005 called the “Minority Equity Report’’. Warren taught there intermittently from 1987 to 1995. When the University put out the report they highlighted her name in bold, which was the designation for Minority Faculty. Why was Warren listed in Bold? Obviously a mistake since there is nothing to be gained by this and she is clearly not a minority. Or maybe the school had to have a quota of minority faculty and they were short, so they put her name in bold? It's possible. But she had nothing to do with that.
She may have Cherokee in her blood line, but being 1/38 Cherokee doesn't make her a minority.
And once again, yes we do love her. And so should you.

[21stCenturyThinker]

01:51 PM on 05/15/2012

They put her name in Bold because for twenty years in Martingale Hubble, she had claimed to be a minority... a Native American.
They simply took her at her word in HER bio in the Lawyers handbook.

[mdsman]

02:52 PM on 05/15/2012

See, that is why there is such angst. She admitted listing herself as a minority. She stated she did this so she could meet people.
The school used this and listed her the same.
This doesn't mean she got special treatment or anything else.
It just means that she listed herself as a native american.

why would you argue otherwise....you just look foolish.

[ema123]

02:15 PM on 05/15/2012

All you need to be is 10% of a minority so how do you know what her great great great grndpa or grandma wasnt native american

[21stCenturyThinker]

02:19 PM on 05/15/2012

She claims to be 1/32... that is 3% for you Progressives.
So even if her claim were true, which it is not, she has NO claim on any affirmative action which has received for thirty years.

[Sundialsvc4]

11:09 AM on 05/15/2012

You know: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

I don't care what a young guy named Scott Thompson did or didn't do when he went to college, or even if he did. (Steve Jobs, for example, didn't. Bill Gates did but didn't finish. And so on.)

What I =would= care about, if I were a Yahoo shareholder, is: how good this person is and has been at the very difficult job of being Chief Executive Officer.

When you =are= a successful Chief Executive Officer, schools of leaning do interesting things. They give you honorary doctorates. They also put you on their faculty. Because, in the end, you are out there =doing= =it.=

To me, it absolutely does not matter whether or not there really is a piece of sheepskin buried in someone's closet, =unless= of course that degree is required for licensure e.g. of a medical doctor. If the degree is merely an indication of someone having completed a course of study before he or she embarked into the real world, my opinion is purely that of Rhett Butler.

[Bklein153]

11:02 AM on 05/15/2012

The greatest resume flaw ever: Being a community organizer and one term Senator makes you qualified to lead the US. :)

[monilove42]

11:53 AM on 05/15/2012

or an actor.

[Richard Gates]

12:47 PM on 05/15/2012

He was also a governor.

[69superbike]

12:59 PM on 05/15/2012

Was any of that a lie? Sounds like your upset your side didn't win. Put a person out there that wants to make the whole country a better place and maybe your side will be in charge again. If you keep putting these silver spoon trust fund babies out there to tell us the rich pay too much taxes and insist we need to be at war to make frighten T-Partiers safe you won't win. But hating is so much easier than checking out facts isn't it?

[Bklein153]

01:10 PM on 05/15/2012

Enough with the tokens!

[Bklein153]

04:07 PM on 05/15/2012

Yes the stereotype of the Food Stamp black president. Yep voters got that too :)

[VoteThemAllOut]

10:55 AM on 05/15/2012

There is a very large fraud missing - Obama presented himself as a presidential candidate that people could trust to right the wrongs of Washington DC.

Boy did he sell a crock of mis-information.