Taiwanese woman gets busted for landing a managerial job by posing as a graduate of a prestigious university

台灣女子因冒充名校畢業生擔任管理職位而被抓包

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—A Taiwanese woman has got herself into legal trouble by using a counterfeit prestigious university diploma to successfully land a managerial job at a technology company for the second time, which she worked for 10 months before getting busted in April this year due to insufficient ability, a Central News Agency report said.

Huang is being sued by both her former employer and National Tsing Hua University for alleged forgery.

The 43-year-old woman surnamed Huang, who is a single mother raising a daughter, graduated from a private university, the report said. In order to find a good job, she used a fake Tsing Hua University diploma to apply for a job at a tech company in two separate occasions in 10 years, and successfully landed a job at each company, according to the report.

According to police investigations, in August 2008, Huang applied for a deputy business manager position at a semiconductor company at Hsinchu Science Park by posing as a Tsing Hua University graduate and successfully got the job. When the company’s human resources department asked her for the diploma, she gave them a counterfeit Tsing Hua University diploma she bought from the Internet. The company checked on the diploma with the university and found out about the forgery. Huang had to leave her job after working at the company for just about one month, according to the investigations.

Using the same tactic in July last year, Huang searched for samples of Tsing Hua University diplomas on the Internet, changed the wording, and then printed out a fake College of Science master's degree diploma, according to police. She used the fake diploma to apply for a job at a tech company and was successfully hired as the deputy sales manager, police said.

Huang worked until April this year when the tech company management considered her work ability insufficient and began to question her education, according to the CNA report. The company checked into Huang’s diploma with the university and found out that it was fake. Huang resigned after the revelation, but the company decided to sue her, the report said.

Huang confessed to police that she had used the fake diploma because she was a single mother and needed a good job to raise her child.

However, Tsing Hua University also took legal action against Huang as the school held that she had severely damaged the school’s reputation by twice posing as the school’s graduate.