Is it my responsibility to inform HR of illegal events performed by coworkers that they might not know about?

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Recently a worker">coworker informed me they were convicted for check fraud and sent to prison several years ago, they advised me they did not disclose this information when being hired by the company. I work for a large Financial company and deal with social security numbers and personal account information daily. Should I go to HR to make them aware?

manpreet 2 years ago

You do not have knowledge of illegal activity.

You have been told that one of your coworkers has a past that may disqualify them from being employed there. It is possible that your employer found out about the problem and hired them anyway. It is also possible that the person is making it up.

The safest thing for you to do is approach your HR Rep and ask if hypothetically someone you work with told you that they had a record for check fraud, would it be your obligation to report it to HR? I suspect they will ask do you know for sure that they have this record? Do you suspect that they are dishonest when they are performing their duties? If you answer both of those no then they may very well tell you that it falls into the category of gossip. But your company may have other policies so it is probably safer to ask HR if you need to report it than this SE.

You need to protect your self in the case that there was an obligation you can state that you talked to X in HR on September 27th and were told Y. But after that you are probably better off pretending you do not know the information.