The Expert Podcast

So today we're going to talk about background checks and why they have much more use than what you might think. The typical thought when you hear background checks is when you're hiring an employee as a business that you want to run a background check and that may or may not be valid. Just keep in mind that some states don't allow criminal background checks on pre-employment evaluation, some states require that you make a bona fide offer to an employee before you can check criminal history, and some states don't allow you to run criminal history at all. So make sure if you're an employer you know you're laws.

However, as a consumer, as an individual, you may want to get information about a person that sometimes could be called a background check before you engage with certain activities. We'll talk about a few stories that we ran into with different people that were going to be associated with a client that had some serious background issues that probably you want to be aware of.

Make sure if you're researching any records on a person or if you obtain records that you know what the law is of how you can use them. Make sure you get good legal advice. We're not attorneys, we're not telling you when and where you can use these things, we're just telling you where there's some liability that might be worthwhile.

For example, we had a case where a client was working with us on a family event where they had one of their children that was seeing a psychiatrist or was going to see a psychiatrist and this psychiatrist after a couple sessions with their child something seemed off. Their child wasn't happy with it, they didn't have good feedback and they were cautious about the psychiatrist and their concern really was financial. They thought maybe the psychiatrist had financial problems or they weren't secure with their money.

So we did some research on the psychiatrist that come to find out there were certainly some financial issues. There was a recent bankruptcy, there was open liens, there were non-payment of vendors, there was a lot of financial issues. More troubling was the fact that their spouse of the psychiatrist had serious criminal convictions, recent criminal convictions, and these convictions were things like aggravated assaults, resisting arrest, engaging in police pursuit, harassment, stalking, some cyber crimes. And more troubling was this spouse of the psychiatrist was an employee of the psychiatrist office. They worked in this office. The exact role was unknown. They may have had some kind of administrative job or scheduling job but regardless they were involved with this psychiatrist business.

So think about it. You're a parent, you have your child seeing a psychiatrist and you're submitting them to this environment where the primary caregiver has some let's say financial insecurity or financial bad judgment in the past. You have an employee that close relationship to this caregiver, the spouse had some serious personal criminal history. Look, there's people have criminal history that may not be an issue. Maybe the person had you know a bounce check 10 years ago, maybe they had a speeding ticket 10 years ago, you know you can make a decision about those. But the records were talking about were directly related to violence against other people, how they have they manage their temper and the fact that this psychiatrist was in a close relationship personal relationship with this person kind of give some pause about whether or not you want to have your child be related to them. So this was a revelation to them and certainly they moved on to a different provider of these services, these mental health services.

Another case we had where there was a client that was dealing with their CPA and their CPA, same thing, they had some funny feelings about it, they weren't sure if there was any good. Fortunately they'd have only been working with the CPA for about a year and they were getting ready to do some more. The CPA was doing things like payroll and some basic accounting but they were going to have them get into their taxes and some of their long-term financial planning.

So we ran a background check on the CPA. Come to find out the CPA was running two illegal businesses, unlicensed businesses that were nothing illegal, nothing that was untoward. They were outside of the scope of the financial industry. There were things that were a little bit more can we say blue collar and kind of down to earth, but the problem is they were engaging in these businesses that required them to have a license for these businesses which they did not have. They had a CPA license but these other businesses they were not properly licensed for.

So that's a judgment call right? Your CPA has decided to break the law by not getting the proper licenses for these other businesses. Does that make them a bad person? Maybe, maybe not. But it does show that they're willing to cut corners and if they're going to cut corners on their own business operations does that send a bad signal for maybe how they're going to cut corners on your taxes or on giving you advice right?

Third one is this is a very common thing we run into. Building contractors and general contractors even if they're licensed many times, many times especially at the mid to lower end of the spectrum have criminal records. If you look on Craigslist, on Facebook and you find handyman type people, you find repair type people, I'm not talking about skilled trades electricians, plumbers, usually that's a little bit different but you want to check them out too. I'm talking more general contractors or general builders even if they have a building license. Many states the building license allows you to have some criminal records or maybe your employees can have criminal records and many times these contractors they're in your house at least in your yard. They're around your activity, they're seeing what's there, they see what your assets are, they see what your car is, they see what your activities are, when you're coming and going, how the doors are, how the locks are.

And I have to tell you, you know, we did some samples of contractors on the various platforms, Angie's List, Craigslist, House, there's a couple other platforms that have contractors that are advertised and even though some of those platforms claim that they run background checks, we have run criminal records and civil records on some of these providers and we found some very serious things. We found attempted murder, we found narcotics trafficking, we found endangering child welfare. We found in some cases even injuries and damages to other people for not having proper equipment.

There was one company that had a heavy duty truck that was transporting a payloader for their construction industry and they didn't have the proper permits for the truck, they didn't have the proper equipment for the truck. The truck ran off the road and killed somebody and they didn't have insurance and they're still a licensed contractor.

So if you're engaging with any person who's going to be in and around your physical residence on a regular basis, a contractor, a landscaper, even you probably won't know who that is right? Are they prone to having burglary, robbery charges, theft, embezzlement? Because you're allowing them to enter into your personal space, enter into your domain of residence. And look, the person may not have the intention of stealing from you when they get there but the more they look around and they see things, temptation may get the better of them.

And here's another factor. Think about it. People who are contractors or work for contractors many times take that job because traditional employment is either impossible or unappealing. Some of these people can't work in an office, they can't be around people in a social setting, some of them can't get jobs in traditional companies because of their backgrounds or because of their lifestyle. And contractors even builders who are legitimate companies many times are desperate for employees. Builders right now are backed up with jobs because they don't have enough employees so they may cut some corners on criminal records on doing proper due diligence. In fact, even large companies are now waiving certain background checks, even the federal government is making their acceptance policies for the military less stringent. So if you think in the private sector that would follow downhill, you're probably right.

So make sure that if you're hiring somebody on a regular basis to be on your property, to be at your house fixing something, landscaper, pool company, that you at least check out the basics of who they are.

Now another caveat to this, one of the types of records that many times people will get are civil records. Are there lawsuits? And you have to be very careful about looking at lawsuits when you're evaluating a person's legitimacy or their honorability. The reason why is because look, anybody can get sued. If he gets sued once, you know that can happen. But if somebody has a pattern of being sued and losing those lawsuits that might say maybe the way they do business isn't legitimate. Now what if somebody sues other people? Well that could be an issue too. Are they prone to litigation right? Everybody could have a conflict and maybe sue somebody depending on what business they're in. Some businesses you have to sue people a lot because you have conflicts and disputes in your business and you also don't want to discriminate against somebody for exercising the right they have to get redress in the courts.

So be careful about using civil records especially with employment because if somebody sues people a lot, you know that might be them exercising their rights and if you use that as a limiting factor in employment that could be a problem. Again, we're not attorneys, get good legal advice on all this.

But getting information on backgrounds and look, a lot of this you can get from social media, a lot of this you can get from public records. The background check itself isn't any kind of magical source. All of the records for this are available to anybody. You could do this yourself. What an investigator does is they first of all for convenience they put in the time. Typical background check is going to take 10 to 14 man hours of labor. The other thing is knowing where to search and how to pull the records.

There's no magical push a button and a background check pops up on your screen. You've heard about the infamous FBI background check. There's no such thing as an FBI background check companies don't run this. The FBI keeps some records but those are only performed by government agencies at a very high level. Even when you go to let's say the police pull you over and they want to run your background, they're not running an FBI background check. They don't have that capacity.

So the way records are pulled is the local court records, civil, criminal, arrest records all exist in different places and an investigator will look at all those financial records, asset and look at each source of where those records are and put them into your report.

So if you have questions about what would go into a background check, what you'd find out, what you wouldn't find out, you can contact us on our website. We have the availability to look at our FAQs and our questions, other videos. We also have private consultation available if you need that or if you have questions you can call us up and we'd be glad to be of assistance.