ISJ hears exclusively from Pierre le Jeune D’Allegeershecque, Associate Director and Ursula Radu-Fernolend, Head of Central and Eastern Europe of Aperio Intelligence.
The article explores how remote recruitment opened passage ways for fraudulent job applications and criminal organisations to access confidential corporate data.
A man no one had met in person walked into a European company’s systems and walked out with its intellectual property only a few days later. His name was fake. His résumé was written by software. His salary went to a hostile state.
Cases like this are becoming more common.
However, while state actors naturally receive most media attention, fraudulent job applications are a tool also used by criminal organisations to gain access to confidential corporate data, which they can then hold for ransom or sell on to hostile state or non-state actors.
We worked on one emblematic case for a German automotive supplier. Among the company’s new cohort of trainees, one stood out as being particularly hard-working and eager to learn, even staying in the office after normal close of business to meet deadlines.
He was a student from China, with outstanding skills and commitment. What his colleagues did not suspect was that during the voluntary late shift, the trainee was pulling data from the company systems, leaving every day with a USB stick full of proprietary industry intelligence.
Recruitment has gone digital. Interviews are conducted remotely. Contracts are signed without a meeting, a handshake or any real sense of who’s on the other end.
What once relied on human judgment now often runs through platforms and automated checks. Even as human oversight of recruitment processes and in-person vetting is decreasing, remote working means employees are given access to huge amounts of company data once they are onboarded.
The potential risk from even one minute of access to systems is almost unlimited for an individual company.
At Aperio, we have seen a 55% rise in requests for deeper pre-employment vetting this year.
While some of our clients already have solid background check procedures in place, many of the companies who contact us have been caught out by relying on automated recruitment systems that were built for speed, not certainty.
Platforms now filter applicants by keywords. AI tools can generate polished cover letters in seconds.
Some candidates use software that listens to live interview questions and feeds them real-time answers.
Even after an offer of employment has been extended, criminal or hostile state actors can spoof the reference stage of the hiring process should this consist of basic document checks or even reference calls.
Fictitious referees can be provided who can answer a phone call confirming the candidate’s purported tenure at their organisation; while local co-conspirators in the schemes can provide the fictitious documents required for identity confirmation.
The risk isn’t over after an offer is extended. Referees can be invented. Qualifications faked. With the right coordination, a career history can be fabricated in full. If no one is checking for inconsistencies, they won’t be found.
The appeal of remote hiring is obvious: lower overheads, faster timelines, a wider candidate pool, but that same convenience also lowers the bar for entry and hostile actors know it
The answer isn’t to scrap remote work or halt digital hiring, it’s to reinstate scrutiny where it counts.
If a job suddenly receives hundreds of near-identical applications, that should prompt review.
Clusters of applications with similar language, strange timing or the same metadata may indicate coordinated targeting.
An algorithm won’t always raise a flag but a human might.
The interview should be more than a checkbox. It’s one of the few points where judgment can still be applied.
Does the person’s story make sense? Do they speak to their experience with insight or repeat pre-learned phrases?
Reference checks must go beyond dry confirmation of employment. Companies should be asking about the person’s previous role, their contribution and how they were perceived at the company as this will help identify a fraudulent reference.
For roles with access to sensitive systems, commercial data or IP, deeper checks are worth the cost. That might mean verifying credentials, reviewing digital footprints or commissioning such pre-employment background research.
These aren’t excessive steps, they’re proportionate to the insider risk presented by the position being hired for.
In-person interviews remain the best safeguard. When that’s not possible, companies can still create hiring processes that resist deception. Pre-employment background checks into candidates can provide a cost-effective measure to minimise risks.