A Notre Dame football coach did it. So did the physician who advises Major League Baseball. Even a poet laureate of California did it.

All have embellished, inflated, garnished, whitewashed or flat-out falsified their resumes.

And employment experts say there's a good chance that someone at your company, not-for-profit or government agency has done it, too.

While fibbing on resumes may fall short of becoming a new national pastime, a 2001 survey of 7,000 resumes by executive-search firm Christian & Timbers found that almost one in four included misrepresentations. In a 2004 study, 44.7 percent of Korn/Ferry International consultants said that they "strongly" or "somewhat" believe that resume fraud among white-collar executives is increasing. In that study, the most frequently fabricated bits of information were "reasons for leaving prior jobs" (68.7 percent) and results/accomplishments (68.2 percent).

Michael Kessler, CEO of Manhattan-based forensic accounting and corporate investigation firm Kessler International, said resume fraud spans the organizational chart.

"We've done background checks on top-level executives who have lied on their resumes," he said. "These are people who make high-six figures. When they move between companies, you find discrepancies."

Sometimes, bogus resumes become fodder for headlines.

In 2001, George O'Leary lasted only five days as head coach of Notre Dame's football team after revelations that his claims of earning a master's degree from New York University and a letter playing football at the University of New Hampshire were proved false.

In March, Elliot Pellman, team doctor for the New York Jets, New York Islanders and medical adviser to Major League Baseball, found his name on the front page of The New York Times. Pellman, who testified before a congressional committee on steroid use in the big leagues, claimed in a resume circulated by the Jets that he received a medical degree from the Stony Brook University.

In reality, Pellman attended medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and received an M.D. from the New York State Education Department after a one-year clinical residency at Stony Brook. Pellman also identified himself as an associate clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, when, in fact, he is a lower-ranking assistant clinical professor.

In 2002, after four months as California's first poet laureate, Quincy Troupe resigned after admitting that he never got his degree from Grambling College as he claimed.

Perhaps the most prolific faker of all was Ferdinand Waldo Demara, who became the subject of the 1962 film, "The Great Impostor."

He joined the Army in 1941, went AWOL, joined the Navy, faked his suicide, but eventually was caught and spent 18 months in prison. Before "identity theft" became a common term, he adopted a string of aliases, posing as a civil engineer, a sheriff's deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a Trappist monk and a cancer researcher.

Puffery also can take the form of getting degrees from bogus educational institutions.

"In most workplaces, degrees mean more money," Kessler said. "If you get a fake degree, it means more money."

As part of a three-year investigation, the Office of Special Investigations of Congress' General Accounting Office unearthed 463 federal employees who had credentials from diploma mills and other unaccredited institutions, including a trio of Department of Energy employees with emergency operations responsibilities at the National Nuclear Security Administration and "Q" level security clearances.

One of the three got a Ph.D. in engineering administration from Columbia Pacific University, which a court later ordered to cease operations in California.

GAO investigators also bought bachelor's and master's degrees with honors from non-existent Lexington University in a $1,515 package that included a telephone verification service in case employers sought to check on the degrees.

For those who don't want to bother with the effort of seeking a degree from a diploma mill, Web sites like www.diplomareplacementservice.com offer "shockingly realistic, high-quality 'novelty' replacement diplomas and transcripts!" They range from a high school diploma through a doctoral transcript.

Dara Herbst, president of St. Louis-based Certified Reference Checking Co., said that inflating educational accomplishments is the most common form of resume chicanery.

"Probably the first place they're going to embellish is their education," she said.

Janet Lenaghan, a professor at Hofstra University's Frank G. Zarb School of Business, said job candidates also tend to exaggerate their responsibilities, titles and lengths of employment.

Companies often lower their guard when hiring for the most critical positions, said Robert Seiden, president of Fortress Global Investigations, with offices in Manhattan, Great Neck, London, Hong Kong and Johannesburg.

"What we see in executive-level searches is most big companies - if the person has a good education and higher-level job - forgo doing a background check," said Seiden. "In a cost-benefit analysis, someone on whom you'd spend $100,000 or more, it's a no-brainer."

How can an organization avoid being suckered by resume puffery?

Seiden said that with about 25 percent of resumes being padded, companies should conduct basic background screening, checking references, seeking to uncover criminal or civil litigation and verifying previous jobs.

Seiden said a professional screening also can uncover a "backstop" - when a prospective employee provides the phone number of a friend who poses as a reference at a company.

Checking references itself can be a delicate proposition. Many employees, fearing lawsuits, will provide only the most basic information, said Hofstra's Lenaghan.

"For instance, if an employer discovers an employee has stolen something, perhaps they don't have enough to prosecute them in a court case, but they have enough to say, 'You're outta here.'"

Still, background checks sometimes can surprise even jaded professionals.

About five years ago, Herbst said, a company asked Certified Reference Checking to check the candidacy of a prospective accounting supervisor.

"They loved this guy," she said. "We found a criminal record of credit-card fraud. When I called them, they were flabbergasted. He would have had access to many, many things. It would have been ugly."