Australian Woman Sentenced To Prison For Falsifying Resume, Job Paid $185K A Year

After falsifying aspects of her resume to land a high-paying government job, an Australian woman has been sentenced to prison for deception, dishonesty and abuse of public office.

Veronica Hilda Theriault, 46, was convicted Tuesday and sentenced to 25 months in prison with a one-year non-parole period.

Theriault used the dishonest resume to apply for the position of chief information officer with the South Australia Department of the Premier and Cabinet in 2017. The position offered a salary of 270,000 Australian dollars a year, which roughly equates to $185,000.

Theriault was fired after working in the position for only a month.

Theriault’s resume featured false information about her education and previous employment. She also pretended to be one of her old employers and gave herself a rave recommendation for the job. Bizarrely, she was also to have used a photo of model and actress Kate Upton for her LinkedIn profile page.

“You fraudulently obtained employment for which you were paid a large salary and in the course of which you may have had access to sensitive material,” Judge Michael Boylan said while sentencing Theriault.

During her time in the role, Theriault used her authority to hire her own brother for a position he lacked the qualifications.

The department began to question her qualifications for the role after her mental health started to suffer shortly after starting the job. It was also found out that she had used similar deceitful tactics to obtain two other positions in 2012 and 2014.