Fake CV Lands Top 'Engineer' In Jail For 15 Years (bbc.com) 90
Daniel Mthimkhulu, former chief "engineer" at South Africa's Passenger Rail Agency (Prasa), was sentenced to 15 years in prison for claiming false engineering degrees and a doctorate. His fraudulent credentials allowed him to rise rapidly within Prasa, contributing to significant financial losses and corruption within the agency. The BBC reports: Once hailed for his successful career, Daniel Mthimkhulu was head of engineering at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) for five years -- earning an annual salary of about [$156,000]. On his CV, the 49-year-old claimed to have had several mechanical engineering qualifications, including a degree from South Africa's respected Witwatersrand University as well as a doctorate from a German university. However, the court in Johannesburg heard that he had only completed his high-school education.
Mthimkhulu was arrested in July 2015 shortly after his web of lies began to unravel. He had started working at Prasa 15 years earlier, shooting up the ranks to become chief engineer, thanks to his fake qualifications. The court also heard how he had forged a job offer letter from a German company, which encouraged Prasa to increase his salary so the agency would not lose him. He was also at the forefront of a 600m rand deal to buy dozens of new trains from Spain, but they could not be used in South Africa as they were too high. [...] In an interview from 2019 with local broadcaster eNCA, Mthimkhulu admitted that he did not have a PhD. "I failed to correct the perception that I have it. I just became comfortable with the title. I did not foresee any damages as a result of this," he said.
Mthimkhulu was arrested in July 2015 shortly after his web of lies began to unravel. He had started working at Prasa 15 years earlier, shooting up the ranks to become chief engineer, thanks to his fake qualifications. The court also heard how he had forged a job offer letter from a German company, which encouraged Prasa to increase his salary so the agency would not lose him. He was also at the forefront of a 600m rand deal to buy dozens of new trains from Spain, but they could not be used in South Africa as they were too high. [...] In an interview from 2019 with local broadcaster eNCA, Mthimkhulu admitted that he did not have a PhD. "I failed to correct the perception that I have it. I just became comfortable with the title. I did not foresee any damages as a result of this," he said.
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I'm not sure professions should be defined by whether a certification is required or not.
That being said, perhaps it's time to start jailing somebody for obvious data security lapses. There are obvious security steps that are often skipped to shave pennies. Start locking people up and it will hopefully improve.
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the programmers need PE powers to over ride the PH (Score:3)
the programmers need PE powers to over ride the PHB / marking if they can face jail time for bad code.
Re:Good start [to zero] (Score:2)
Why did you propagate the vacuous Subject? But not surprising the AC brain fart led nowhere.
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In Canada, you are not allowed to call yourself an Engineer unless you are licensed by the Engineering regulatory body of your province. They don't license computer programmers, so programmers can't call themselves engineers (unless they happen to also have an engineering degree and be licensed by the Professional Engineer association.)
The term is not restricted in this way in the USA, unfortunately.
Re:Good start (Score:4, Insightful)
The word dates back to the 1100's in English with the present meaning.
Canada made an obvious mistake by trying to steal and redefine the word for the benefit of one cartel.
America wisely did not follow suit.
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Many professions have similar restrictions. Not everyone can call themselves a Physician, a Lawyer, a Dentist, etc. unless they're licensed by the appropriate body. IMO, doing the same for an Engineer is perfectly fine. Computer programming is not engineering and computer programmers are not engineers.
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Engineers only need a license for designs involving public safety. Even then, only the engineer doing the final approval needs to be a PE, not those creating the design.
In America, about 20% of degreed engineers are PEs. The percentage is highest in civil engineering.
I have an engineering degree. I am not a PE. In all my decades of employment as an engineer, no one has ever asked or cared.
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The word doctor dates back even further. That doesn't mean you can go around calling yourself a doctor without a license.
No one stole or misappropriated a word. They took the existing definition and regulated its use. Many countries have rules about what you can call yourself professionally.
America wisely did not follow suit.
Even America. Go tell someone you're a "Professional Engineer" without your PE accreditation and see how the "The word professional dates back to middle English!" defence gets you.
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You can call yourself a doctor, you can't practice medicine, there are many types of doctor, attorneys are doctors of law although you call them Esquire but legally they are Doctors.
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Opposite viewpoint: as a Canadian, I'm quite happy to know that somebody calling themselves an engineer in Canada is required to back it up with appropriate education and certifications.
Re:Good start (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember when the australian computing society (or whatever it was called. professional body for coders) tried to push through a thing where you couldnt work in the field unless you where a full engineer or something. Almost lead to riots and was *hastily* walked back when it was realised almost nobody would be eligible , cos its not actually an engineering profession, or at least its not taught by that field.
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Almost lead to riots and was *hastily* walked back when it was realised almost nobody would be eligible
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Re:Good start (Score:5, Informative)
In the U.S., the term PE (Practicing Engineer) is protected but "engineer" is not. This is for the simple reason that the term engineer is much broader and historically has also been used to mean a machine operator, or repair person. Often design, operation, and repair would be rolled in to one job. Particularly at sea.
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Sounds like they changed or restricted the meaning of the word. "Engineer" used to be used for things like a person who ran a train. Software is just a machine without visible parts.
Re:Good start (Score:4, Funny)
Driving a train is easy. (Score:4)
Not getting yourself killed while operating and monitoring a primitive steam engine, let alone keeping the aforementioned engine running was not only hard, it was hard work.
I'm not allowed to run the train, the whistle I can't blow
I'm not allowed to say how far the train is going to go
I'm not allowed to blow off steam or even clang the bell
But let the damned thing jump the track and see who catches hell!
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Because driving a train is so hard?
Making the boiler in a steam engine not explode takes a little knowledge, yes.
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Based on your extensive experience operating train engines
Re: Good start (Score:3)
I write code as part of my work but I do have a government approved Engineering Degree (I studied supply chain management, structural engineering and many other things to get the degree). Can I call myself a Software Engineer?
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Can I call myself a Software Engineer?
If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. At least not with a capital E.
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- Construction plans and specifications
- Engineering reports
- Engineering calculations
- Engineering evaluations or recommendations
- Addenda or revisions to engineering documents
- As-built or record drawings
All official documents t
Catch me if you can (Score:5, Informative)
"Catch Me If You Can"
"We can. And we did."
Sadly, and seriously, South Africa is rife with corruption and incompetence. It's really sad to see how far it has sunk after the hopeful start under Mandela.
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Sadly, and seriously, South Africa is rife with corruption and incompetence. It's really sad to see how far it has sunk after the hopeful start under Mandela.
It is exactly what you'd expect (or should have expected). One charismatic leader, no matter how incredible, can not possibly undo the damage of the horror that was colonization.
If societies were like humans, it'd be like being "taught" by an abusive religious nutjob for 17 years, and then in the 18th year you get the best possible teachers money can buy. It doesn't matter how great those teachers are: you're still not going to college.
(Which isn't in any way meant to diminish the end of apartheid, or the
Re:Catch me if you can (Score:5, Insightful)
It is exactly what you'd expect (or should have expected). One charismatic leader, no matter how incredible, can not possibly undo the damage of the horror that was colonization.
To add to this, when a strong authoritarian leader dies or is deposed (Saddam, Hafiz al-Assad, soon Putin), a period of anarchy or strife follows. People always point out to that as an evidence that crowds "need a strong hand to guide them".
Yet, they somehow fail to notice that anarchy and strife are caused by authoritarians completely replacing the mechanisms of the government by themselves. They become the state, and the state dies with them. A healthy government is made of institutions that are not completely dependent on personalities.
The South African politics is a related example. It did not have autocracy, but its racist government left behind a barren landscape of a civil society. And once the racists were deposed, the weak institutions left behind were not able to sustain a reliable government.
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They replaced racist policy with racist policy though, you can't undo authoritarianism with more authoritarianism. They tried reparations, you end up with a ton of folks that now own farmland that have no idea, tools or experience in how to run a farm and those that were successful are robbed so they have no incentive to continue their business all leave for the cities as they were intending to anyway and the land goes to waste while hunger and instability sets in.
This has been tried before: Soviets, China,
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the weak institutions left behind were not able to sustain a reliable government.
Revisionism at its best.
The institutions were destroyed due to incompetence, greed and doling out lush positions as reward for political alliance or faking employment figures. Not forgetting securing contracts and funds for the ANC bigwigs.
You clearly have no idea of the reality of the situation there so maybe spend some effort educating yourself
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The institutions were destroyed due to incompetence, greed and doling out lush positions as reward for political alliance or faking employment figures. Not forgetting securing contracts and funds for the ANC bigwigs.
And how exactly is conflicts with what I said? The racist minority government for a century worked at disenfranchising people, so they had no "deep state" institutions that could have pierced that veil of corruption.
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And how exactly is conflicts with what I said?
Pretty much everything. Your knowledge on this is tainted by ignorance. Nothing anyone else cando about that. That's on you.
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South Africa is also an example of how revolutionary groups generally suck at running things afterwards. They are great at destabilizing and tearing down things but terrible at running things afterwards. The ANC brought corruption with them.
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can not possibly undo the damage of the horror that was colonization.
Tell us you don't understand Africa without actually saying "I'm clueless about Africa"
African cultures have always been broken, suffering from some weird form of arrested development. Violent, credulous, corrupt, willfully ignorant, abusive, destructive, short-sighted, self-destructive. All of this was in place long before the "evil" colonizers arrived and remains firmly entrenched today.
This has nothing to do with "the horror that was colonization" and everything to do with the African mindset.
Maybe go s
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>> African cultures have always been broken
Nope. The cultures were really fine and very advanced all the way before 1500, before high sea navigation and transport became viable.
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Yip. It was a real Wakanda experience all over the place.
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One of only two jokes on the rich target, but I didn't see the movie. Can you clarify?
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You mean horrors like ending the custom of burning the widow alongside her dead husband in India?
Now I'm not saying the Brits did no damage to India. They did lots. For example crushing the local fabric and clothes industries so they could export their own stuff.
The list certainly goes on but let's not act like indigenous people had been a prime example of peaceful democracy before christians arrived.
Do you have any idea how common human sacrifice was in most other religions?
I'm getting so very tired of whi
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Every single country has been colonized in the past. Spain was colonized by the Muslims, the Brits were colonized by the Romans, India was colonized, Israel was colonized, China was colonized, Japan was colonized, for some reason all those countries are doing relatively well, in some cases (India and China) worse off than before, in some cases (free market capitalist countries) they have thrived.
Re:Catch me if you can (Score:5, Insightful)
can not possibly undo the damage of the horror that was colonization.
The areas of Africa that were not colonized are doing much worse.
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And what parts of Africa were not colonized? Even Ethiopia finally got overrun by Italy. And Liberia was deliberately set up as a self-ruling colony of ex-slaves.
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Sadly, and seriously, South Africa is rife with corruption and incompetence. It's really sad to see how far it has sunk after the hopeful start under Mandela.
It is exactly what you'd expect (or should have expected). One charismatic leader, no matter how incredible, can not possibly undo the damage of the horror that was colonization.
Colonization gave them first world Infrastructure, including well-regarded Universities and tech/vocation schools. They'd still be hunter-gatherers without it. If that's the life they'd prefer, the lock up the buildings, turn everything off, and let it crumble while they go back to traditional ways.
My bet: they're no more willing to give up Facebook and YouTube than you are.
When he gets out, he can come here. (Score:2)
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Re: Catch me if you can (Score:2)
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It'll get worse around the world as more and more people cheat in school and even those with official titles have nothing to back them up.
So, they took 9 years to convict? (Score:4, Informative)
This looks like a pretty clear case to me. Why the long delay?
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This came out in 2015 and he was also fired in 2015, did not show up for the job board.
At that time he was rolled into a big multi-year investigation into corruption with lots of other people, and the court cases for those people started being worked on. In 2019 he had his first trial.
After that he kept delaying until now. and he said he is planning to appeal
Trains in Spain ride mainly on the Plains (Score:3)
Wonder if the trains they wanted to buy from Spain were the same ones that were too wide to fit in their tunnels.
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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This is more common than you'd think. In Brisbane Australia it was the AC units on the top of their new rolling stock in the mid 2000s which were too high. I'm wondering why no one thought of why the old trains had tapered AC units compared to the new square ones.
Once again, blaming the wrong person (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, him lying on his resume is bad, But he worked there 15 years! He got promoted and climbed up the ladder. It's not like he was there 6 months and the company was fooled by his resume. They hired him based on the fake resume, but he apparently performed well enough for them to promote him, give him raises, and even fight another (fake) company to keep him. After 15 years, you can't blame the fake resume anymore, that is a problem with the company itself. I would guess most of the people that promoted him had never even seen his resume. The people in the company above him are the people the deserve the blame for this.
Re:Once again, blaming the wrong person (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Once again, blaming the wrong person (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, him lying on his resume is bad, But he worked there 15 years! He got promoted and climbed up the ladder. It's not like he was there 6 months and the company was fooled by his resume. They hired him based on the fake resume, but he apparently performed well enough for them to promote him, give him raises, and even fight another (fake) company to keep him. After 15 years, you can't blame the fake resume anymore, that is a problem with the company itself. I would guess most of the people that promoted him had never even seen his resume. The people in the company above him are the people the deserve the blame for this.
If he lied about his credentials, and lied about the other job offer, I'm guessing he pulled off a bunch of other schemes to climb the corporate ladder.
Not to say they shouldn't have figured it out, but most people are generally honest and they assume the same of others. A skilled BS artist can be surprisingly hard to nail.
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It's not even about the top management doing due dilligence. If this guy was working in an engineering position while having only high school qualifications, it should have immediately been overwhelmingly obvious that he's completely out of his depth and totally unqualified for the position he's holding. When someone is that incompetent/unqialified this should be obvious to his superiors definitely within the first year. But he's not only kept his job for 15 years, he's actually been promoted, multiple time
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He was working in engineering management, not doing design work.
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Engineering managers should still have some understanding of what the people they manage are doing. If there is an engineering problem, they should be capable of at least limited understading of what the problem is. Especially if he started off in lower management, where you'd need to actually talk to the grunts from time to time.
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I knew a man who must have cheated to get his degree in electrical engineering; guy was a moron. He was a pretty boy who was a great ass kisser and liar; he would quickly work his way into management and then secure his position and climb upward. Anybody competent who dared put him at risk was fired (eventually when he had the power) or campaigned against in the meantime.
He changed companies often, when their dept was laid off or company died where he'd play a big role in sinking the ship. He also was good
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It's not even about the top management doing due dilligence. If this guy was working in an engineering position while having only high school qualifications, it should have immediately been overwhelmingly obvious that he's completely out of his depth and totally unqualified for the position he's holding. When someone is that incompetent/unqialified this should be obvious to his superiors definitely within the first year. But he's not only kept his job for 15 years, he's actually been promoted, multiple times as well, all without having any of the necessary technical qualifications.
This raises all kinds of questions. Like, are his superiors even capable of recognising good/bad work? Do they care at all? Are they at all competent themselves? It's possible that even with the damage he must have been doing because of obvious incompetence, other people were wrecking stuff even worse than him, for a while at least. It may be that he was merely the only one who got caught, because his lies were just a bit too blatant.
I heard a story about an out-of-work actor who interviewed for a construction job, and gave such a good interview he got hired as the foreman (despite having no idea what he was doing). So at meetings he basically went around the table asking the various people under him for their recommendations, and things went well. Eventually he learned the trade and became an excellent foreman.
I suspect this guy could have done some of the same thing. If he started in management (on the basis of his credentials) all th
Corruption in South Africa? No! (Score:1)
eh.... bad precedent (Score:3, Interesting)
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In my long career as an engineer in America, no employer has ever asked for evidence that I have the degree I claim to have.
Re: eh.... bad precedent (Score:2)
He caused probably millions in damages by ordering a dozen train locomotives that were too high to be used in South Africa. So someone said âoecheck if there is any dirt you can stick at himâ. And since there was dirt, it stuck. If you had caused a few million damages at your job, you can bet they would have looked at your CV.
Fake doctors (Score:2)
What about all the takers giving medical advice and peddling supplements?
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*fakers, though takers also fits.
Mental note (Score:2)
Under no circumstances should you "fake it till you make it" in South Africa.
make it 60 (Score:1)
Re: make it 60 (Score:1)
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and fire who hired him
every superiors who promoted him
Even if they were real professionals, with an MBA?
none (Score:1)
HR fail (Score:3)
Human Resources fail. Basic job is to do background checks and vet education requirements with the original sources.
figures (Score:3)
Ticking time bombs.
Good (Score:2)
He didn't only rise in the company because his degrees. If they consistently promoted him for 15 years, he probably was pretty good at his job. They're just pissed they didn't catch it.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this is being repeated..
he apparently performed well enough for them to promote him, give him raises, and even fight another (fake) company to keep him.
No. His appointment, like ALL appointments in SOE and SOE aligned positions, was overseen by the ANC. All SOE's are chock full of unqualified ANC cadres and yes-men incapable of doing anything other than fail in every way possible whilst sucking the public purse dry.
The ANC saw direct financial benefit in this little saga. Alongside certain members' business enjoying preferred vendor status at hugely inflated profits.
His "promotion" track was driven primarily by corruption, greed, self interest and incompetence. Let's not mistake this for anything else. He was destroying PRASA from day one.
If you have any doubt about the accuracy of these claims, feel free to read up on the other "success" stories... .like TRANSET, SAA, ESKOM... it's an awesome list ... and exactly what happens when you put political affiliation before the good of the people. Another thing Africa does really well.
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One has to wonder how much OTHER fraud this person did if they were willing to do what we know about only now.
Too many people are jumping in to defend false credentials as unimportant and missing the important issues this brings up.
As far as South African corruption goes... (Score:1)
As far as South African corruption goes, this is a pretty minor infraction. It's just that damages from putting him in key roles he was unsuitable for that likely forced the hand of the system.
Who Cares? (Score:1)
This is beyond idiotic (Score:2)
You either can do a job or you cannot. It does not take 15 years of working at a company to figure out of someone is incompetent unless your company is incompetent from top to bottom.
Lying about credentials is barely a crime; at most it should result in a firing for dishonestly. This prosecution is political revenge for making them look bad and revealing their their promotion track is entirely divorced from merit.
If he worked there for so long and rose through the ranks with no education or skill, the peopl
Job opportunity (Score:2)
Management Failure (Score:2)
The only way for someone with a HS education to "fake" being an Engineer is for management not to notice.
There is no way, in most engineering positions to fake it unless people aren't paying attention to your work.
How is this even a thing? (Score:2)
The guy was hired and worked there for many years. Are they saying that everyday, that guy came into work, sat at his desk and did nothing more than hold up his degrees all day, then go home? ...or are they saying that he was a wonderful employee that contributed hella to the team/company and in doing so, provided said team/company with avenues to increase their profits? Must have been the latter if they gave him more money to stay rather than go to another company.
This guy and his lawyer will have an EAS