On Twitter some of the founders discussed this. He would give references to people who answered the phone and then praised his work generically. One person said they thought it was strange that both of his reference checks seemed like really young guys, but it's the startup world so they overlooked it.

There was one Tweet from someone who said they did a reference check from someone who said he did good work when he was working, but he was working multiple jobs at the same time so he wasn't working much. Maybe he assumed his references wouldn't be checked often, and maybe he was right?

To add to this. It would be great to see which companies he interviewed at but didn't get the job. Would argue those companies have better BS-detectors conducting the interviews.

For my last job — the guy who was supposed to verify my permanent address called me and asked me to ask someone in my village to take a photo of the house with same day newspaper in the view and send it to him. I forwarded the request to my future employer asking whether it was the normal verification procedure :-)

Background checks come in different varieties, usually it's criminal and global watchlist checks. Employment and education check is couple $$ extra for the employer, and some employers really don't mind.