After a complaint was made, an investigation found no record of him ever being awarded a university qualification, and it was suspected he created a fake degree certificate. His application also included two references supposedly from his most recent job but the agency did not make any inquiries about the references, one of which was sent from a BigPond account. The officer did not include a reference from his second-most recent place of employment. The investigation found he was fired from the organisation due to suspicions he was awarding contracts to companies connected to people he had associations with. After the CCC investigation, the officer was charged with one offence of fraud and another of uttering a false statement.

He pleaded guilty to both charges and is awaiting sentence. In another example, the CCC – investigating allegations of corrupt conduct involving fraud – found a university officer was employed without any criminal history check. An investigation revealed the officer was a student at the university while in jail for fraud offences. The officer had also been investigated by the university after anonymous allegations were made about their integrity, bankruptcy and criminal history. The officer argued they did not declare a criminal history before getting the job because the university's policy only required declaration of a "serious offence", and that the university should have been aware they were a student while incarcerated.

The university's investigation recommended if the officer was to keep their job, the risks would need to be managed carefully and HR should introduce criminal history checks. But the HR branch said on human rights grounds, it was not appropriate to introduce criminal checks and no mechanisms were in place to manage the risks in employing the officer. The CCC went on to investigate later allegations that, after the university's investigation, the officer engaged in fraud against the university. In another case, an employee secured an AO8 job – with a salary of about $100,000 – where it was alleged they had a family connection to the senior person who approved their appointment, who did not declare a conflict of interest. In another case, a chair of a recruitment panel declared a professional relationship but failed to declare a personal relationship with the successful candidate. The chair had drafted an interview question so only their friend could answer it and invited a candidate out to dinner with another panel member before the interview.

The CCC examined allegations of corrupt conduct in recruiting across 12 public sector agencies during 2016-17 and how they dealt with the complaints. Out of the 43 accusations of recruitment corrupt conduct across the 12 agencies, nepotism was the most common at 81 per cent, followed by false qualifications at 7 per cent. The CCC had identified between July and December 2015, complaints of "misuse authority" made up almost one-fifth of complaints against public sector agencies. Of these, 17 per cent of allegations involved the alleged misuse of authority to benefit others during recruitment or selection. The CCC said it was satisfied with how agencies managed the majority of complaints, but some failed to maintain relevant investigation documentation.