Text Size
Print
Email
Top Stories
- Text Size
- Print
- Email
How to do a background check on someone
If you have a couple of feet to walk into a county courthouse or a few fingers to peck away at a keyboard, you can find out a lot of information about another person.
The level of background information available is virtually endless.
Figuring out whether someone is who he says he is and has done what he says he has done — or, more important, has done something he hasn’t talked about — is pretty easy in the Internet age.
“More information and more knowledge are always good,” said Union County Sheriff Jamie Patton, who has made a career of ferreting out information that people don’t want uncovered.
"What’s available at your fingertips anymore is really pretty amazing.”
"What’s available at your fingertips anymore is really pretty amazing.”
Official background checks, of course, involve law enforcement.
Officers take fingerprints and submit them to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (and, in some instances, the FBI) — which then checks for misdemeanor and felony criminal convictions.
Ohio law requires criminal-background checks on some employees in certain fields or for specific professional licensures — including but not limited to educators, health-care workers, foster parents, some government employees, people involved with some youth-oriented organizations, child-care centers and employees of residential camps for children.
Even certified public accountants must undergo such checks — as must any Ohioan who wants to carry a concealed weapon.
Last year, the bureau processed more than 1 million background checks, said Rickeya Franklin, director of the BCI Office of Identification.
A formal check, Franklin said, helps employers vet job applicants. The only history that generally doesn’t show up is a sealed or expunged record, although, when such context is pertinent to the job — as with an applicant to become a law officer, for example — the records can still be accessed.
The state uses a system called WebCheck for civilian background checks. Because the information in the system is protected, not just anyone can run a background check on someone else.
A landlord seeking to screen tenants, for example, can’t just tell the sheriff to run a statewide or federal check. But the landlord can require a prospective tenant to order his own check and have the tenant submit the information to him.
Nowadays, as Patton pointed out, such information might be just as easy for a landlord to find himself.
“Social media is an unbelievable tool,” he said. “On Facebook, you can look at someone’s friends’ list, their ‘likes’ and interests, their groups, and learn a whole lot about them. And it’s also kind of amazing the number of people who don’t lock down that information.”
Searching public records and their paper trail, though, remains the best option, many experts say, but they point out that good sleuthing takes time and energy.
Having a person’s date of birth makes finding information easier, but addresses are even more helpful.
“A million times over, I’d rather have a name of a couple of places they lived than an exact birthday,” said Steve Powers, vice president of Powers Investigations, a private company on the Northwest Side.
“If you want to know if someone is who they say they are or know what they’ve done, you need to know the places they have lived.”
Once you know that, then what?
You can check records in municipal courts and small-claims courts for civil judgments (when the person might not have paid bills), search warrants at an address to see whether the person had any trouble there, traffic offenses and minor criminal cases.
You can check records in county common-pleas courts for matters such as felony criminal cases, divorces and dissolutions, lawsuits and protection orders. You can check probate courts for marriage licenses as well.
Someone says he owns a business? Check the Ohio secretary of state’s website.
If he says he is a licensed professional, such as a doctor or lawyer, search those databases online.
A simple, accessible tool is often overlooked: Google.
Run the person’s name, her friends’ names, the names of her parents or the names of companies for which she says she has worked.
“Old news articles come up — stuff somebody may have been involved in a long time ago,” Patton said. “A lot of it is still out there.”
Investigating the background of every new acquaintance, he said, isn’t necessary. But that new neighbor? Or a new boyfriend? Maybe.
“If you feel something isn’t quite right, check it out,” he said. “You can never be too careful.”
For a small fee, you can use websites such as PeopleFinders.com or CriminalSearches.com that aggregate publicly available information from various online sources. Or private investigators such as Powers can do the searching.
His business, he said, used to consist largely of tracking down cheating spouses or someone who had run out on a debt.
Not anymore.
“People are smart now,” he said. “They want to know everything they can about everybody. People move around so much more today that it’s not like you’ve known their families for years.”
His office, he said, can find out about bankruptcies and credit histories, divorces and the existence of children and criminal convictions — and pretty much anything else you might want to know.
The digging might cost as little as $50 or into the thousands of dollars, depending on the depth of information being sought.
In the end, he said, people are just being more careful.
“Now that everyone knows the information is out there,” Powers said, “they go looking for it."
2024 The Background Investigator. All Rights Reserved.