A 57-year-old cheat caught sitting a civil service examination on behalf of a younger job seeker tried to explain away the difference in their looks by saying chemotherapy made him appear older.
Teerapat Kachamat, director-general of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, said a man aged 57 was arrested for pretending to be a 28-year-old man registered to sit the entrance exam for a position at the department, at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University in Dusit district, Bangkok, on Saturday.
Supervisors at the examination venue noticed that he seemed out of place among the other job seekers. He was called aside for questioning. When they checked his ID card, he appeared older than the man in the photo. He tried to explain this away by saying he had cancer and the chemotherapy made his face look older.
Officials then checked his fingerprints, and they did not match those linked to the ID card he presented. The card actually belonged to a 28-year-old man who wanted a job at the department, but did not sit the exam himself.
The imposter was charged with making a false statement and using another person’s ID card to falsely identify himself.
The disaster mitigation department was recruiting 217 officials for a range of roles including jobs in planning, finance, accounting, science, civil work and legal affairs.
