>Nowadays the scam is to find any recently closed, large firm and claim you worked there with whatever BS title you want.

This is likely why background checks even for non-sensitive/non-cleared positions are being applied. I just ran through one as a Senior Dev for a company. I guess it's more likely the more money you make too.

So if you're going to try this, you'll have to ignore companies with a background check or start forging W-2s or other documents, but who knows what data they have these days and how easy it is to fool them