While it might give off “works for an intelligence agency,” there are really quite a few professions that require background checks. This means that there are countless folks out there who have to look at in depth files about the less known parts of different people’s lives.

Someone asked “People who do background checks (either HR or a 3rd party), what are some NSFW/WTF things you’ve discovered that have disqualified a candidate for a job?” and netizens share their wildest stories. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own experiences in the comments below.

#1

Former p**n star. She put herself through college (before OF) as a s******r, and had done a few movies. We found this out, and hired her anyway. She was a great employee, never a problem. She did have a picture at her desk of her and Ron Jeremy, but there was nothing NSFW about it. It was kind of funny when people were trying to figure out where they knew him from.

Image credits: SaveFerrisBrother

#2

We were trying to hire an accountant, had one lined up with amazing credentials, then he disclosed he had gone to prison for funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his previous company’s books.

Image credits: Jobo50

#3

Not a background check as much as just being nosy. Company couldn’t get new employees so stopped doing background checks. New guy was giving me creepy vibes so I looked him up he’s a registered s*x offender. He’s still employed because there’s nothing they can do about it now. .

Image credits: Frequent-Spread-9927

Bored Panda got in touch with the netizen who asked the question and they were kind enough to share some more details about their thought process and what they liked. Naturally, given just how specific the question was, we wanted to know what inspired them to ask it in the first place.

As it turns out, the answer was pretty simple. “It was a question that hadn’t been asked for a while,” they shared. Still, it had thousands of comments, but when asked, the netizen didn’t have much of an idea why it gained such attention. “It was popular because people have good stories to share,” they said. We did at least find out which was their favorite from the bunch. “I liked the one about the washed up actress arrested for m*th possession.”

#4

Woman dropped off a resume at the retail location I worked at, on the cover letter it said “Google me!” She was a minor actress back in the 80s, coworker Googled and the first thing that pops up is her recent m**h arrest.

Image credits: verminiusrex

#5

I’m the candidate.

I have a very uncommon last name (my username is my pen name) and I have a cousin with a very similar first name who is about the same age as me. Sean vs. Shawn kind of deal. It wasn’t intentional.

I’ve had some legal issues in the past from being homeless, but nothing crazy.

My cousin was found guilty of accessory to murder and a bunch of other lesser crimes from a d**g deal gone wrong and will be in prison for the foreseable future. When you google “Shawn Warner” you get “Sean Warner found guilty on 12 counts including murder and racketeering”

It doesn’t show up on background checks but googling me is a doozy.

Image credits: shawnwarnerwrites

#6

Not HR, but when I was hired into a management position at a previous job, one of my employees informed me that he had worked with one of his newer teammates at a previous job and that this guy was super sketchy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t really anything I could act on, but I quickly saw exactly what he was talking about. My team did field work, and this guy would routinely fall off the radar, never answered his phone, and frequently had to take time off work because, according to him, he had been working as a cop before my predecessor hired him and he said he was being called to testify in court. A few months later, the same employee who warned me about this guy brought me a news article detailing how this guy had been tried and found guilty of writing and cashing fraudulent checks on behalf of an elderly person in his care. The court had nothing to do with his time as a cop; he was the defendant, not a witness. I took everything to HR and we ended up terminating him.

Image credits: tacoman1287

#7

We had our IT guy marched out of the building in cuffs for running a CP server on the company HW. Didn’t catch that in the background check.

Image credits: Eeeegah

#8

Not quite a background check. But I was helping do preliminary interviews for entry level position. One of the questions was have you ever done this type of work before. She said she had, and elaborated that she was fired because she slept with her manager and when he wrote her up for something she went to HR to get it taken off her record using her relationship with the manager as leverage. When I told her we have a strict policy regarding relationships within reporting management, she put her hand on my knee and asked *if there’s anything she can do to convince me to hire her*. Hard pass. That kind of not so subtle unprofessionalism isn’t what we do here miss.

Image credits: dadbod9000

#9

Not in HR, but we Googled his name and up comes his photo in a news story about him and his wife in a fraud court case. He interviewed great, but we knew he would never pass a background check after that search.

Did not disqualified, but up popped her page for dominatrix services with her photo in a skimpy leather outfit with a whip. Interesting side gig.

Image credits: a1ien51

#10

I do a ton of background checks for different things including people applying to be foster parents.

For all of the other checks, I almost never have anything to send back. For people applying to foster, it can be up to 75+ pages of “police contact” I have to send in.

It’s incredibly disheartening and a lot of the s**t I’ve seen in their criminal histories has made me sob. I wish I was just allowed to stamp a giant *NO* on some of them.

Literally nine out of ten applicants have police contact that is serious enough to be included in the background.

Image credits: detectivebureau

#11

Email addresses on applications and resumes: LeatherGoddess@, SpankDaddy@,.

Image credits: QuislingPancreas

#12

Not HR and not a background check; I handled social media. I found WTF social posts roasting the company from 2 new hires.

The CEO had held a meeting in the company lobby. We basically had a long company lunch and went back to work. 

Later that day, I was going back to my desk from a bathroom break when I swiped my phone open to check on social posts. I opened LinkedIn, and I had several messages in my inbox, which was unusual. 

It’s important to note here that the company lobby doubled as a demo room for products, and when the doors were closed to the lobby, we knew that a demo was occurring. The lobby had no windows to verify. After the company meeting, the doors had been shut. Turns out, it wasn’t because of a demo.

Most of the messages I had received contained no text; just links to other posts. Filmed and photographed in the lobby, the videos, captions, and still images included the employees in provocative poses, twerking, mocking the CEO’s earlier words, standing/sitting atop expensive products, dancing around like a strip tease atop the products, and overall s******g on the company’s employees & leadership. The posts also included the company name and the CEO name, both intentionally misspelled multiple ways. 

It just so happened that these new employees were connected with friends of friends with several company employees, but not me. It traveled via DM like a grapevine. My coworkers had sent the info to me because the HR director was not trusted, but they knew that I handled socials. The posts were all public, so when I opened the links, I screenshot them. There were nearly a dozen posts. On LinkedIn. Why??

Instead of going to my desk, I went to HR, who immediately went to the executive team. 

The newbies were canned fast after that. I never saw them leave, but I did later find out that:
1) The posts were required to be removed.
2) They were temp workers from a 3rd party, which had rules about social media. They lasted 7 business days at our job and likely lost their positions at the temp agency, too.
3) They were personally fired by the CEO in his office.
4) Some tellings of the firings (office gossip) included that they left crying from the tongue lashing they got while others said that the CEO said little more than expressing his disappointment.

Image credits: EscapedTheEcho

#13

At my friend’s company, a new guy got hired and HR sent out a welcome email with his name and info. Someone googled him and found out he was in the middle of a trial for stealing identities of clients at his last company.

He was fired within an hour of the welcome email being sent out!

Image credits: Veritas3333

#14

Literally anything you can imagine. The ones that surprise me the most, however, are the ones that are so relevant to the job that I can’t believe you even applied for that position. Applying for an accounting or fund management position? Credit card fraud, theft, and embezzlement. You want to work in child care? Child abuse and negligence. You want to be a kids photographer? Lewd and lascivious acts with a minor. A job that that requires lots of plane and international travel? FBI no fly list. Yet, these people are the MOST heartbroken when I tell them why they didn’t get the job. They’re also the ones I feel the least bad about.

Image credits: 1dayaway

#15

This didn’t happen to me as HR person, but to a friend who applied for a job. She was a prolific fan fiction writer, back before Fanfic became a common thing. She wrote NSFW fics for a couple of very popular fandoms, and used her “real” email, which included her “real” name – despite several of us warning her that this was a baaadddd idea. She blew off our warnings, and pooh poohed the idea. So, her husband dies, and she goes back to work, or at least starts looking for a new job. She applies for a job with the city, and gets an interview for a great position. She gets to the interview, and the interviewer pulls out a stack of print outs, and asks her if she is the author. She looks at the stack, gets up and walks out… She eventually got a decent job, and took down her website with all of her fics, although you can still find them if you know her email.

Image credits: Secret-Afternoon-645

#16

I own a small business and will usually just google applicants. In the last couple years I’ve had some of the craziest results actually.

One popped up as attempted bank robbery

Another one was caught as part of a group that were scamming people with phone calls and emails.

Image credits: alphalegend91

#17

I was HR in a unionized environment working directly with vulnerable people. One of the frontline workers referred her grandchild’s baby mother. Resume looked adequate, interviewed really well, references were good. At time of verbal offer I mentioned it was conditional on a background check. (We don’t require clean as long as it isn’t a crime that puts vulnerable people at risk). She mentions she has something on her record, I assume something non-violent like theft under $5000.00. She tells me it was for smuggling d***s across the border. She loses her s**t cause I had to rescind offer. The person that worked for us and referred her was pretty pissed as well.

Image credits: ScotnCan

#18

I’ve been a background investigator for almost 10 years I’ve seen a lot. One that really gets under my skin is a guy who applied to work with the Boy Scouts as some sort of IT. He had 15 separate charges of SA’ing children under 12. He served 20 years and I guess he thought it just fell off his record.

Image credits: MalaEnNova

#19

Assistant recommended a candidate while I was on bereavement. Passed the background check, but when I returned I had asked if anyone had looked this candidate up before sending the offer letter. Turned out the background check didn’t catch that they were named in an active grand jury trial for r*ping and impregnating several minors in a juvenile detention center a while back. They were given a hush plea deal by the state because they were turning in other councilors who were in on it with them with many victims over the course of 2+ decades, and for some reason this information was not discovered by the company we use for those checks. We no longer use this company.

Image credits: WildDumpsterFire

#20

A new hire was using/abusing fent and her newborn died from ingesting it. She was a top candidate too for the position as a project manager, was hired, and then offer rescinded. She want to jail, and is now out working in a*******n recovery. You would never have known looking at/meeting her.

Image credits: Sad-Yogurtcloset3581

#21

I don’t do background checks for my company currently, but two things:

– BORING ANSWER: even if prerequisites require you have a degree, unless your position is academia-based OR part of hiring out of college, it’s possible your background check will not include double checking your degree. if you have the practical experience, and are the best person for the job, it’s worth pursuing regardless of degree requirements.

– FUN ANSWER: one time during an interview where a candidate was asked about learning from a professional mistake, they told me about how they were involved in a judicial s*x scandal. Maybe she thought it would come up in the background check. I can assure you I wouldn’t have known if it did. But boy, did she answer a lot of follow up questions I sure didn’t ask.

Image credits: disicking

#22

Not HR, IT. We had a new guy start a few months ago while HR ran the background check. The guy failed and I had to disable all his access. HR wouldn’t tell me what they found but HR said that anyone could “Google his name” wink wink. I went to lunch and googled his name. He got busted in a child s*x sting in 2019 and spent some time in prison. He got busted along with 20 other guys. Bye Felicia!

Image credits: HumpieDouglas

#23

This isn’t me, but a former coworker….

Lives in an area with lots of Italian-American immigration 100 years ago.

Another guy from his town, same first and last name, but not even related, is a low key criminal, lots of minor arrests for things like thefts.

If you google law abiding coworker you will get all the news stories about the other guy with his same name committing crimes.

Eventually he owned his own business and it was clear those were different people.

Image credits: nuHAYven

#24

I had the recruiter at my job hire a guy. He had a very unique first and last name. When we brought him in for his final interview a girl I work with said, “You can’t hire him!” and looked legitimately scared. Come to find out after a conversation with her and a quick Google he was currently currently facing charges for statutory r**e and lots of other scary s**t. The victim was one of her close friends. The girl he had charges for was barely 17. I don’t even know why we have a recruiter or why they pretend to do background checks. Had a second man convicted of statutory r**e. A man who was the get away driver in a school shooting. Also a gun runner (not sure if that is the right term but he sold guns illegally through his legal business).

Image credits: breakmedearest

#25

First day on the job, parent HR company called to say that they just got his d**g test back and failed (m**h), training was cut short and he was escorted to the front door and told to check out of his hotel and change his flight home at his expense.

Months later second guy for same position was 2 weeks into the job and training when HR was informed about a felony case for theft that he was about to be sentenced for… We picked some winners….

Image credits: EvilBelgianWaffles

#26

Not me, but friend of mine works at a company that does hire people who have been in prison and it is a fresh start for a lot of people. Two problems though – he has people who put “no” on their application when asked “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” and their background checks tell quite a different story. Automatic rejection – they know a background check will be done, so why lie? He doesn’t want to know, so buh-bye. The second is anyone who’s committed a violent crime and all s*x offenders. He’s had people say “yes” to the question and be cagey about what they were convicted of, they are almost always s*x offenders.

Image credits: Pascale73

#27

Not HR. Was doing clinical rotations as a pharmacy student and I was given a heads up that one of the patients I was seeing in clinic has been in jail for like 15 years. Looked him up, he did in fact do some m*rder. Nicest guy.

Image credits: stazib14

#28

Not for a job but I run an animal rescue and you’d be shocked how many people with animal cruelty convictions apply to adopt animals.

No, I am not sending an animal I spent months rehabbing to a home that starved it’s last pets to death.

Image credits: LizardPossum

#29

Not a background check guy but I got hired at a government agency doing admin work. A guy in another department was leaving and they asked if I could take over some of his tasks while they searched for a replacement which was fine with me, so I shadowed him for a couple weeks.

Hated the guy. Talked to me like I was a toddler; everything was in a really singsongy voice and would over-explain things in such a weird way. I once wore a shirt that had a dinosaur motif and he leaned over me, hands on his knees, and said “Wow! Dinosaurs? Like Jurassic Park? Do you know Jurassic Park? It’s a movie! It’s got Din-o-saurs. You should see it! But it’s a little scaaaaaary! Make sure you have some cartoons to watch after, ok?” For context, I’m a 30+ year old man. He was probably in his mid to late 30s as well. 

Dude just had a super strange energy and gave big predator vibes. 

Anyway, I googled him out of sheer curiosity as to what his deal was. Sure enough, first thing that pops up is a mug shot. Turns out he’d had some unknown trouble in high school and went to college late. Joined a frat despite being 28. The frat brothers said he was “very weird” but was admitted because he was willing to buy them booze. During a party the house got raided when two girls were found unconscious in the house. Guys room turns out to be filled with d***s, including the sort you could hypothetically make two girls unconscious with. He managed to get out of any serious charges because the d***s were “for personal use to improve his school performance”; which is coded language for wealthy parents I think. 

Anyways; how he got hired at the government agency baffles me. What’s more, he was leaving us for a higher power position at a different government post. 

Dude gave me massive ick. .

#30

A lady ran for tax collector in my township, she was trying to unseat a long term incumbent. When I googled here I found she had committed tax fraud and been found guilty.

She was running on a campaign of integrity.

Luckily she didn’t win, she lost very badly.

#31

I’m not in HR but a few years ago I was working at a big telecommunications type place and my team got a new hire with an incredible resume… qualifications from Yale and Oxford type thing, which in my country is pretty unusual. Frankly the role seemed a little beneath someone with his qualifications, so being the curious type I Googled him.

Turns out he had tried his hand at politics a few years earlier, but had been forced to drop out as a candidate after it came to light he had been charged (but not convicted) with abusing his ex wife. Being the curious type I found the news article relating to his arrest, he’d been upset that his ex wife had not been suitably excited about a promotion or new job, so he dragged her across a parking lot by her hair.

This information was not hard for me to find, but apparently the hiring folks at my company never looked for it. I mentioned it to my boss’s assistant who told my boss. He pulled me into a room in a panic and asked me not to mention it to anyone!

I left a couple of months later and as a parting gift told my colleagues to Google him, bloke was a tool to everyone so I had no problems making his life a bit uncomfortable.

I checked back at his Google results a year or two later after someone asked after him…. all those news stories about his arrest and dropping out of the election were gone. Someone did a great job astroturfing the guy!

#32

A guy we had interviewed looked pretty good on paper, but had a big resume gap that he was definitely lying about. We just got a weird feeling about it so a coworker and I googled him and found an article about how he had severely assaulted his ex-girlfriend while she was holding their month old baby.

This was a job where he could have been working with non-verbal autistic people. We ended up passing on him, and let other agencies in the area know about him.

#33

Well when I had government clearance, I did one for a man who was on the most wanted list. ATF and FBI came the next day.

#34

A woman that was not a close friend but was in my social circle came to me for work. I couldn’t hire her because she was convicted of breaking her son’s legs when he was an infant.

#35

Desecration of a corpse.

Their partner had OD’ed and instead of calling the cops since the person was also using at the time, they moved the body back home. Apparently that alone can catch someone a felony and 10+ years in prison.

#36

Former Background Investigator for an East Coast LEA.

Big boss wanted a certain applicant because the father of the applicant was a local politician.

Q. Does your son have any history of d**g use?
A. My son? Of course not.

Surprise.

Son missed months of school (I got to see the archived school records) because he was in rehab for LSD use.

Applicnt: Denied!

#37

Worked as a GM in a mid-luxury clothing store (like, not Gucci level, but Gucci was 2 doors down from us). We had a regular customer who everyone LOVED who applied to work for us part time because he figured he was there enough he might as well get a discount. Background check came back and he had theft and embezzlement charges…from when he worked in our exact location 13 years prior! Wasn’t flagged by our application system because he changed his last name somewhere down the line.

#38

Not HR or anyone who does background checks. But, like 13-14 years, I was a grill manager at a fast food place. The new lady who was the lobby person/greeter gave off real bad vibes. Saw her application, and attached to it was like 2 pages she wrote on why she was a convicted felon. She had been found guilty of multiple child s*x crimes but “found god in prison and changed her ways.” I couldn’t believe the hiring manager hired her to be a lobby person. I told her she could go ahead and clock out, that she was no longer needed as an employee. The next day, the hiring manager pulled me into the office when I showed up. The new lady and the GM were in the office as well. The GM asked why I fired the new lady, so I grabbed the application from the desk and handed it to him. He read it and had the same look of disgust I probably had when I read it. He then told the new lady that yes, she was indeed fired. He then proceeded to rip into the hiring managers a*s lol.

Image credits: aSnowMan1993

#39

Had a guy that was convicted of assaulting a patient at the hospital he worked out. He insisted that after spending time in prison for his crime, he was a changed man. We decided that since we were also a hospital, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Image credits: BlueRFR3100

#40

Managed a liquor store had two.

We did Google searches on all applications

Worst was he listed himself as self employed handyman. According to the news story he was arrested like 2 months prior as a major local d**g dealer

Second like we’ve had a couple apply with DUIs but one k*lled someone.

#41

Had a guy come into apply. Said he had a little trouble in his background, no big deal. 

He did 12 years for m*rder with 2 underage kids when he was 19. 

He was out on bond waiting on another m*rder trial. .

#42

A cousin to a current employee took a polygraph to become a police officer. He admitted, in a taped interview, to putting peanut butter on his private parts and letting his dog lick him. If I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t believe it either.

#43

So, we hired a guy who made it through interviews with flying colors, he had a great resume and seemed like a great fit for our team. Idk why but our background checks can take a long time, like, this guy was halfway through six week training when his came back in. When word went around that backgrounds were coming in, he seemed nervous and overly chatty about everything in life but suddenly blurted out during a break time that he wasn’t going to pass his background check because he was “framed” for something he didn’t even do. Long story short he was charged with CP – except he didn’t actually do it. He had someone who worked for his apt complex on his wifi supposedly. Either way, he was fired and were still dealing with the waves.

#44

Was interviewing an intern for a summer graphic designer position. He loaded up his zip disk (2001) and the blood left his face. He brought a disk filled with p**n instead of his work….lol.

#45

I always do a quick google search of applicants. Had one that was arrested for bovine b*********y on two separate occasions. I kind of wanted to bring him in just to meet him. But ultimately I didn’t have time for that s**t. “Twice!”.

#46

Interviewed a guys ex-wife one time. She told me that he had another wife and had two kids with her. She found out when she was at a party and the other woman was there. Several woman were talking about husbands and thought the two had a lot in common. Then they showed each other a picture of their respective husband. Same guy. Oh, no telling how that went down when she got home. BTW, he denied it to her. She divorced him, and to this day denies it was him. I don’t think it was on his SF-86 (background info packet he fills out).

#47

Not with a background check but during a group application / job introduction someones phone went missing. They searched everywhere but nothing. Conclusion was that it had to be stolen by someone in that room and the trainer decided to call the police. Just before they showed up a guy suddenly ‘found’ the phone under his chair. He didn’t get the job.

#48

A candidate had a great interview, was about to get hired and then i got an angry call. Apparantly someone googled him and his nickname was similar to the likes of “H***y Horrace” or something like that. Seemed that he had a sidegig in local politics but had groped some coworkers in a parking garage.

#49

I worked at a school and someone we had interview for a job there had a conviction for inciting racial hatred. He’d been a bare knuckle boxer for many years and wasn’t capable of closing his hands fully anymore. Happy to deploy the N word in interviews it turns out.

#50

I’ve seen the following. A guy arrested for SA on the day he was born. (The year was probably a stupid mistake on the part of the entrant, but still…). A 96 page arrest record. A guy arrested for horse theft 150 years BEFORE he was born. And finding out that beating a rented government mule like it is a rented/government mule will get you charged with Cruelty to Animals, and a lifetime ban from Grand Canyon National Park.

#51

Different angle. I was working for a fortune 50 company in a senior role and agreed to be a reference for a guy I had known for about a decade who was in need of a break.

He was excelling in his position until a DUI showed up on his background about 2 years later. He was terminated immediately because he didn’t divulge it when submitting his info pre offer. Kicker is that if he had it would not have been an issue; but he lied…

From well into 6 figures to working construction and getting cought up in d***s. Lost his wife, home and ability to see his children.

TLDR: DON’T LIE ON BACKGROUND CHECKS.

#52

I had a guy list his d**g rehab in prison under “education”.

#53

About 20 years ago I was interviewing candidates for an assistant position. It came down to two options, both with similar credentials and not much adult-life work experience–so I googled them to see what I might find. One was featured in an article about helicopter parenting; her mother was quoted in the article as saying she had called her daughter’s employer and complained about the very standard hours they worked, and she felt entitled to involve herself in her daughter’s work life. We immediately round-filed that resume and hired the other candidate.

#54

My wife works a job that requires regular background checks and has a very, very common and married name, lets call her maiden name “Jane L Waters” and now she’s “Jane L Wilson”, and she has no criminal record. There is another Jane Waters, who married a Mr. Wilson, and was the same birth day, but different year and middle name. That other Jane has a record. Whenever they run a simple instant background search for “Jane Wilson”, they get the lady who has several DUI’s and a fraud conviction. They have to run the full check with birth date and social to filter her out.

#55

A guy I considered a friend in high school turned in his laptop to get it updated. They found one file of child p**n that he neglected to delete. It opened the door to a bigger investigation where they found thousands of files on his personal computer. No one would have known but for that one file on his work laptop. I was shocked!

#56

Worked in HR straight out of college and we had one woman apply who had a police record for p**********n.

Can’t remember if she ever got hired, but we didn’t turn her away straight away because she declared it upfront and it was from 30 years previously.

#57

We’ve not hired people simply for having an onlyfans account. We also found out a guy settled on a r**e charge from when he was younger, threw his application right in the trash.

#58

So my story is not exactly on Target but close enough .

My husband and I had to go to court to testify as witnesses in a case. They screwed something up on our subpoenas and instead of being told to go to a witness room we were told to report to the courtroom. We didn’t know anything about that at the time of course

After a while in walks a co-worker of mine. I called his name and waved but he was very subdued in response. I didn’t think anything of it because again, we were there as witnesses so we didn’t think about why other people might be there.

Eventually he was called up and had been charged with domestic violence. I looked up his case later and what do you know it wasn’t his first rodeo

I said nothing to anyone, until the day after he left and then I was like hey guys gather around. I don’t believe his leaving had anything to do with his case, I don’t recall if he was let go or if it was voluntary. But wow talk about coincidence.

#59

“Forgot” to mention his 10 years in prison for c*****e distribution. Applying to become a school bus driver. 🙄.

#60

The applicant had a conviction for “sexual intercourse with a mental patient” , an offence under the 1959 metal health act.

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