Has anyone ever heard of paying for sponsorship to get a clearance? I was told that it’s possible do the following
I thought an actual company or agency had to sponsor/pay for the clearance.
Never heard of that. Don’t see how you could. You would need a sponsor and access to government facilities, documents. I don’t think the government let’s you do that privately. But I dunno. Can’t hurt to try
I’m not sure where you got that information but it is bogus. You can’t pay to get a clearance. You can only get a clearance through sponsorship with a federal agency or federal contractor. The sponsor pays for the clearance.
I already have a clearance and called BS when I first heard it. I investigated and there is in fact someone out here giving this information.
True but one thing most ppl are misinformed on, only the Gov’t pays for background investigations. Companies try to say they pay for it as the “sponsor” but that is categorically false. The word “sponsor” as it applies here is that they are sponsoring you in a candidate sense of the word, not monetarily.
“Individuals cannot apply for a personnel security clearance application on their own. Rather, the company determines whether an employee will require access to classified information in performance of tasks or services related to the fulfillment of a classified contract. Once the company makes this determination, the individual may be processed for a security clearance. The company determines the positions that require a security clearance, as well as the level required, based upon the duties and responsibilities of each position. This determination is based on contractual needs and requirements.”
So the individual taking or attempting to take this money is fraudulent?
I would say so since they cannot get you a clearance.
Who would this need to be reported to?
I wonder if maybe this is getting confused with hiring someone to help with an appeal?
There was another thread discussing the idea of paying to get a clearance but as of now it is not possible (as others have already noted).
to reiterate others, you can not make a payment to sponsor your own security clearance.
No, but you can offer to invest $50k or $500k in a small DoD contractor that already has a cage code or whatever (don’t yell at me, I’m not an FSO) with that investment being contingent on being submitted for a security clearance with a paper job title of VP of Strategic Vision or something. I don’t know if that’s “legal” per se but it would totally pass muster.
I’ve investigated a university president (big D1 school) who was submitted for TS. Yes, some part of the university was doing cleared R&D work. No, there’s no way you can convince me that the university president had true “need to know” for the nitty-gritty of that work. Just stroking his own ego.
I agree that this could certainly happen. Smaller contractors can be quite sketchy in their practices in all aspects. Especially if they are merely a sub to a big guy or they have a lot of confidence in their “holding” of the contract because of their veteran, minority, disabled, whatever status.
Get a non-cleared job with a company that also has cleared contracts. Then ask one of the cleared program managers to submit you. They will do that occasionally with what I think they call a placeholder contract. But you didn’t hear that from me 
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It is quite common… or at least it used to be.
Companies that have secret level work used to be able to put any or all employees in for a secret clearance based on the fact they had work at that level. Top Secret and SCI were not so flexible, at least not that I ever saw.