20 out of 2,000 job applicants in Malaysia use bogus degrees to apply for jobs

With the employment market becoming increasingly competitive, many people are using bogus degrees, diplomas and certificates besides telling outright lies to secure jobs.

A company specialising in pre-employment screening has detected an average of five applications with forged degrees or certificates every week while a fraud-investigation firm found that 10% to 15% of applications it scrutinised had fake paper qualifications, some of them from non-existent universities.

Verity Intelligence Sdn Bhd managing director Mark Leow Boon Kuan, whose clients are mostly multinationals and finance companies, said many of the documents were cleverly forged and could fool anyone.

He added: "Of about 2,000 applications we check each month, about 20 are found to have fake degrees or certificates. That's five a week. We have detected 130 forged documents so far this year.