The three things that women wish they could verify about
their online date; his marital status, his finances and is
he a criminal, and how to find out.
1. Their financial status including credit, job and assets.
2. Their marital status including wives, family, alimony
and child support.
3. Their criminal history or lack thereof.
Here is a step-by-step guide to checking out those three
most important things that most people want to know about
an online date. (Note: The remainder of this article will
be written from the perspective of a woman checking out a
man because that is by far the most common check.)
Fact #1. Ordering a credit report on someone, even with
their written permission, is not a permissible purpose.
Therefore the credit bureaus will not issue the report to
you. If you should be able to find someone who will run a
credit report for you illegally, that person can receive a
substantial fine per incident. (A more immediate result
would be the revocation of credit report services by the
credit reporting bureau.) The simple way around this is to
have the person obtain his own credit report and give you a
copy or let you see the original.
Verifying a job is easy. First you need to get the "facts"
from your boyfriend. Remember that you are verifying the
information not getting new information from the employer.
They will verify the info you have, but will not give out
new info. Those facts should include his job title and
dates of employment as a minimum. While few larger
companies give out salary info you can still get a wealth
of other info. Look for a help wanted for the same
profession in the same locale to get an idea of the salary
range. When doing this we always ask an open ended question
at the end, after we've received all of the basic
information. The question would be something like this,
"What can you tell us about his competency, character or
job performance?" With a question like that you might get
a response like the following: "There are no disciplinary
actions in his file, but doing his payroll is a pain
because his pay is garnisheed because of alimony and child
support payments." It is an urban myth that you (or an
employer) can't ask certain questions of a previous
employer. Nonsense; you can ask whatever you want. The
previous employer doesn't have to answer, but there's no
harm asking.
To check his assets you would probably start with his home.
Many, if not most counties have online searchable property
tax assessment records. With the address you can easily get
an approximation of the property's value. It may be
mortgaged to the hilt, but that info is much more difficult
to obtain. If the information is not available online it
will require a trip to the county Assessor's Office to get
the pertinent data. Remember, you need the address to look
up the records. You can also check with local realtors to
see what houses are worth in his neighborhood.
Fact #2. Checking marital status is very difficult outside
of their home county. Here's why. Most people get married
in the city and county where they live. Logic would tell
us that that makes sense. And, for purposes of checking,
that is easy to check. Conversely, most people get
divorced where they live too.
The problem is that one county does not have a record of
what happens in another county. For example: Let's say a
couple gets married in New York City. That marriage is
recorded in New York County. If they subsequently move to
Oshkosh, Wisconsin and later get divorced there, Winnebago
County Wisconsin does not notify New York County of the
divorce. As far as New York County is concerned, they are
still married. Now, let's suppose that the man goes to Las
Vegas and gets married again. Clark County, Nevada doesn't
check to see if he is already married in Wisconsin or New
York or anywhere else before the marriage license is
issued. Now if you were checking for his marriage records,
where do you check?
Now here's where it really gets fun. What's to stop them
from getting divorced in Reno or worse yet, in Mexico? It
turns out that Guam has a cottage industry of providing
quickie divorces. Because Guam is a US Territory, divorces
must be recognized in all US states. Should you check
Guam too? What about checking out a woman's
marriage/divorce records; which current or maiden name do
you look up? This is why those marriage checks online are
basically worthless. They only check where the person
currently lives.
For child support and alimony you would have to search
civil records in the jurisdiction where the divorce
occurred.
Fact #3. Criminal records are public and as such are
easily searchable in every jurisdiction in the USA. But
where, other than his present address, do you search. Most
people think that those online database companies check
everything everywhere. You know, the ones that say Instant
or Free criminal checks. Not so. They only get records
where they can get them for free and most of the time that
is from a state's Department of Corrections, the state
prison system. This means that in these states you are
only getting felony convictions where they were sentenced
to prison. A person could have a long history of
misdemeanor crimes or an acquittal of a felony and you
would get no record of it. In about half of the country
records must still be searched in person at the county
Superior or District Courthouse. Wherever this is the
case, you get no records at all when using those instant
search companies.
Do it yourself. If your online lover is local, go to your
local Superior or District court and go to the criminal
court clerk's office and tell the clerk that you would like
to do a criminal records search on a person. You will need
to have his full name and date of birth. Ask the clerk if
the courts are consolidated in your county. Consolidated
courts have records of all the other courts in that county
so you only have to search in one place. If he is not
local, you may want to use the services of a professional
background checker to check each location (jurisdiction)
where he has lived.
Here's another problem. People tell me all the time that
their county court offers online searches that they can
search for free and the person they are checking lives in
that county. Sounds great! And yes, it is true that there
are many places in the country where this is possible, the
problem is, how long has he lived in that county and where
was he from before that? For all you know, he has only
lived there a few weeks and before that he lived in another
state where he was just released from prison.
And another: Criminal Checks do not include civil court
checks. If a person has a restraining order against him
from his ex wife or girlfriend, that is recorded in civil
court, not criminal court. A criminal search does not
reveal such records.
A professional reference checker's trick. If you are able
to get references from him you're going to love this. My
company has been doing background checks since July 1994.
Over these years we've learned many, many tricks to getting
info from a variety of sources. Years ago while doing FAA
and NRC background checks we were contracted to conduct
reference checks on job applicants. Under the federal
requirements we were required to do what I call a Reference
Double Check. Here's how it works: On the job application
the applicant was asked to list three personal references.
We contact each of those three references by phone and ask
them if they know someone who knows the "applicant" as well
as they do. Or goal is to get three references that are
not listed on the application and get a "real" reference
from each of them.
My company has done thousands and thousands of reference
checks, but these were different and we have used this
technique many times. Since no one has ever listed a
personal reference that will not say wonderful things about
them, this is a great way to get to someone who might
actually say something revealing about the applicant. Using
this method we would often get ex wives, disgruntled
employees or employers, angry neighbors, in-laws, etc.
Remember that it is perfectly legal to get all of the above
info (except credit) and more on anyone anytime you feel
like it. Where the laws come into play is how you use the
info. If you are using the info for private personal
reasons like a relationship you are free to do so.
----------------------------------------------------
Kit Fremin would love to hear from you. He can be e-mailed
at kit@bcint.com or visit his website at:
http://www.bcint.com .
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