This long but a great story.
I had a design intern apply for a job with a terrific portfolio for someone just out of school, if a bit contrived, and she not only let crying in tears 72 hours later but her actions caused her to loose her other two jobs.
That terrific portfolio, turns out was all stolen work. I wouldn't ever have thought before to check an interns references, however whenever we hire a new designer we give them a quick assessment.
We give them one page of content for a client, a bit of background and ask them to make something in 10 hours to show us. They get paid for it, but it's mostly to see how fast they are and how they handle pressure. Lots of amazing designers can't make a deadline, plus with interns it helps us see how we can help them become better designers.
Anyways we hire her on Friday, Sunday night she sends what had to have been the worst layout ever, body copy was a grunge typewriter 50% grey over a grayscale image, I think the headline was Bleeding Cowboys. Every paragraph and header was saved a separate file.
So I'm lost, everything in her portfolio is 180 degrees from what she made and I get to thinking, well her work wasn't the most original maybe she just copied someone's layout for her work. I mean, if she can copy that good than she can learn to do it on her own.
So I reverse image search her stuff to see if google can find me something similar. It does in fact, every piece including her logo is from ffffound. Identical files with the same dimensions.
So I send a quick email to her boss at the other design job asking what she was working on, since we know each other AIGA. I mean maybe she was just nervous. Everyone can make a mistake.
So Monday I sit her down and we talk about the piece she made and how it doesn't match her work, and maybe she wants to talk about it (Hint Hint). She doesn't. So I give up being subtle and straight up tell her that her portfolio belongs to several different artists. She says her work was stolen. A little bit of research the night before clued me in that she would've eleven when it was created.
Anyways if she had just said sorry, I messed up, I don't know that I would've cared, but she didn't and she kept lying so I gave up and fired her. She grabbed her stuff and ran out in full tears, tripped on the rug on the way out.
15ms later her other job calls, says they haven't heard of her and the job doesn't exist. About an hour later they call back, they were pissed someone claimed to work for them but they got to the bottom of it, she turned out to be an assistant to the DJ. Who almost lost his job because they thought he was doing unauthorized poster design for events. He fired her.
Than it turns out her manger at her 9-5 part time job helped her get the assistant job with DJ who was personal friend. She got fired.
Funny thing, a year later my boss is at Thanksgiving with his girlfriend's family. Guess who's there? When her Mom finds out my boss owns a design firm she tries to get her daughter a job. My boss just smiles and says he'd really love to her portfolio.