Background check in your future? Don’t lie!

By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com

If there’s a background check in your future, says Debra Roth, partner at Shaw, Bransford and Roth, don’t be like Bloch: don’t lie.

Generally, Roth told Federal News Radio, the younger you are, “the more likely we have those things in our recent past.” So, for those graduating college in the next few months and joining the federal government, “they’re confronted with those questions on the SF 86 (Questionnaire for National Security Positions) or the SF 85 (Questionnaire for Non-sensitive Positions) background check forms about recent drug use” within the past ten years. “There are ways,” said Roth, “to mitigate the concern raised by illegal drug use if it’s more than two years old.”

So, Roth said, “illegal drugs, DUIs, any kind of arrest – (it) doesn’t necessarily have to result in charges or a conviction – recent arrest, anyone who has a conviction, misdemeanor or felony, it becomes very difficult if they were recent to get past a background check. For a felony, it may become for over 10 years to get past a background check.”

Roth stresses that it’s much better to tell the truth, and if you fail the background check, then that’s that, but do NOT lie about your past or have your friends lie for you. “Generally speaking, people can get away with it like once,” said Roth. After that, when you “keep having to do the form every five years,” those friends often decide not to lie anymore.

Then you get fired, said Roth, “for the lie on the form. And many people get prosecuted for lying on the form.” Roth likened the situation to the one currently faced by someone who should have known better: former Special Counsel Scott Bloch.

“And it’s the same kind of thing,” said Roth. “Lying to the federal government almost always, in current times, will get you criminal charges.”

You can nearly always, said Roth, get past the underlying conduct, “but if you lie to them – Martha Stewart knows that, Scooter Libby knows that, I mean you can go through the array of people who ended up in jail. And Scott Bloch, now, knows it. If you lie to them, they almost always bring criminal charges and they like to bring felony. It is a felony to lie on the federal forms when they ask you about drug use.”

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