Fraud, Identity Theft and the New HR Director (for about 45 minutes)

This makes my hair stand on end.

A client emailed me to say they just hired Bill Smith as their new HR Director.

Mr. Smith ordered his own background check through us. He requested an SSN trace (because he couldn't get around that; it's built into their order) and a sex offender search. Sort of a fox/henhouse kind of arrangement.

He didn't order any criminal record searches.

So, when I got the SSN trace back it was clearly not Mr. Smith. I called him, he said he must have accidently given us his mother's SSN. (Show of hands how many people know their mom's SSN?)

He gave me another SSN which was also wrong. Called him back. He said he didn't have his social security card; he would order one and let me know what his social security number is.

At this point I ran the criminal searches he didn't ask for. His name and date of birth search came back clear, mostly because he also gave us a wrong date of birth, which I confirmed through a quick call to the court.

His crimes? Felony fraud and identity theft, including one case that is currently pending in the district court.

I immediately disabled his access to our platform.

He emailed me, full of righteous indignation that he was the victim of identity theft, that he had letters from his lawyers and a credit repair company and if I found records that looked like him, I was wrong.

Well, yeah, but we had done a background check on him five years earlier for a different client and that had all the correct information that he hadn't provided this time. The SSN was just two digits different and the DOB was close.

(Ann blows out her cheeks with a big raspberry.)

Sheesh. Some people.

The moral of the story? Make the offer, then run the background check before you give someone the keys to the kingdom. We did this entire rigamarole inside of an hour, but they didn't bring Mr. Smith in because they couldn't wait for the background check to be completed.

And I expect then they had to terminate him rather than just rescind the offer.

Want to know if you can get this level of service from a background screener? You can. Just give me a call.

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