I worked for a large pharmaceutical firm that had a whole department involved with just doing background checks on their prospective scientists. Diploma fraud could be a big problem for them.

Perhaps this startup was doing the same thing but just outsourced the work?

No...she is friends with one of the startup founders. She wasn't hired, but did it as a favor. And the investigating was limited to electronic records...not the garbage-snooping, surveillance-from-car type :)