Legal Question concerning employer background check?

A friend of mine contacted me regarding this issue because I am in human resources. I don't know how to advise her...she said in 1995, she worked at a store and obtained a stolen credit card that she gave to a co worker and they ran the card up with charges. They got caught and it was a Felony 4. She never got arrested, or went to court but instead she had to go through a diversion program and the case was dimissed. She has gotten several jobs since then. She recently applied for a HR position at an insurance company and on the application, they asked if she ever went through a diversion program and to answer the question honeslty so she said yes. They said she may be asked about the charge during the interview. I looked up her name on the clerk of courts website and it is still there as theft but it says she completed a diversion program and it was dismissed. What should she say if they ask her about the details of it?

Unfortunately she is not in a good situation. Her best defense is that she was stupid and learned from her mistake,which was 12 years ago, hoping that the employers are excited about her good qualities. What she does not want to do is hide the facts at all. Once something pops up on a background check the interviewer is looking for B.S. and if they even think they smell some of it you are out of the running.

The truth.
If you found it, so can they, or anyone.

I think you should call a free legal advice hotline, and see what they say. I work in Career Development, and that's quite a hard question to answer, I think.

Try:
http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/find...

Advice would be to answer in honestly as a background check will pick up what you did and no answer or lack of an answer could cause the company to dismiss the candidate for dishonesty or terminate them if after acquired evidence. Many times people are told, falsely, that their records have been expunged when they have not. The record usually stands unless the courts are petitioned and agree to expunge.

There are alot of problems with her story.

Either the case was dismissed or not. If it was dismissed, then there was no legal conviction, and therefore, it was illegal for the court to report it.

That is the PURPOSE of going through a diversion program, so you can get it dismissed. If the court is going to report it anyway, then it's no different than if you were convicted with no jail time.

California is the only state that I know of where dismissed and expunged records will still get reported to background companies and on any public search...I don't live there, but my first job out of college was with a background investigations company, and it has to do with the way their court system is set up. Anytime we did a search on someone in California, they always reported the dismissed/expunged records upon request.

PS: Bob is correct too. Alot of people think their record has been dismissed but it hasn't been. Sometimes the SENTENCE is what has been dismissed but not the conviction.

She should definitely point out that it was something stupid she did 12 years ago and that she learned her lesson and hasn't done anything like that since - assuming that she hasn't. She should answer any further questions they ask honestly.