Holes found in background checks
Newsday, Inc.
October 21, 2004, 8:20 PM EDT
By Karen Kreifeld, Staff Writer

Just how do you know that delivery person knocking at your door isn't a criminal?

The arrest earlier this month of a FreshDirect deliveryman, an ex-con who allegedly made obscene calls to female customers, has raised serious questions about possible gaping holes in commercial background checks.

In FreshDirect's case, the company hired ChoicePoint, a major background check company, to vet its employees for possible criminal histories.

Despite the check, FreshDirect did not know Erik Reynolds, 33, of the Bronx was an ex-con with at least two felony convictions and a half-dozen misdemeanors until his arrest this month.

FreshDirect has since fired Reynolds -- and ChoicePoint, saying ChoicePoint did not provide a "very satisfactory" reason for why it did not flag Reynolds for them.

Chuck Jones, a spokesman for ChoicePoint, said his company provides customers with several levels of screening options, some simple and some complex.

For FreshDirect, ChoicePoint performed what the company calls a National Criminal File search, which searches records in all 50 states. But the breadth and depth of records varies by state. In New York, all this search included was online prison release records from the New York Department of Correctional Services and ChoicePoint proprietary records.

This is among several reasons someone's criminal history could go undetected. For starters, the Corrections Department search would reveal only crimes for which a criminal served state prison time. It would not record crimes for which someone would serve time on Rikers Island, a city correctional facility, for instance.

(A check of the Web site for Guy Velella, who pleaded guilty to one felony count of bribery last spring, for instance, and served time in Rikers Island brings up no matches.)

Second, it would not reveal misdemeanors at all.

A check of the Corrections Web site by Newsday turned up only one of Reynolds' crimes: his 1993 felony conviction for attempted burglary.

Why didn't ChoicePoint report that to FreshDirect?

Jones said that under New York law, no consumer reporting agency can report records of convictions, release or parole, more than seven years old.

What about the misdemeanors? Reynolds had six of those in the city from 1990 through 1997.

He also has another felony conviction from 1991 from Orange County for attempted criminal possession of stolen property, for which he received 11 months.

To find those crimes, FreshDirect would have had to request a more in-depth search that included files in the state Office of Court Administration.

In short, such background checks leave much to be desired. In fact, just as they can provide "clean" records for those with long rap sheets, sloppy work can also tag innocent people as felons.

Ironically, in 2000, ChoicePoint acquired Database Technologies of Boca Raton, Fla., the company notorious for wrongly including possibly innocent people on a convicted felon list for the Florida Division of Elections, using flawed data to erroneously remove thousands of people - many of them black - from the voting rolls.

FreshDirect's Boris said that his company, luckily, has not suffered from Reynolds' frightening encounters with FreshDirect customers.

Boris also said the Long Island City-based firm, which delivers groceries in three boroughs, is hiring a new firm to conduct background checks. All 270 delivery people for the company will undergo a secondary background check, he said.

"Thankfully it has not had an impact on sales," he said. "It's an isolated incident ... and we have had one of our best weeks ever."

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In Search of Skeletons

Recruiters report that they're fielding lots of requests for in-depth background checks of CFO candidates.

CFO Magazine, January 2003
By Tim Reason

How nervous is Corporate America these days? Ask Gordon Grand, who leads the financial officers practice at New York-based executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. For the first time in his career, he says, he's fielding lots of requests to arrange in-depth background checks of CFO candidates.

Pinkerton's Inc., Kroll Inc., and other firms that do such checks say at least half of their referrals come from executive recruiters — and business is up. "We have seen an uptick in the CFO line," says Peter Turecek, a Kroll managing director.

Companies are going the gumshoe route not only because some CFOs have been accused of fraud, but because some weren't even who they were supposed to be. Veritas Software Corp.'s CFO, Kenneth Lonchar, for example, resigned in October after admitting he had lied about having an MBA.

Educational records, says David Grossman, managing director at Pinkerton's due-diligence unit, are a standard part of checks that dig far deeper, even looking at sex-offender databases.

Do CFOs really need to be checked for sex crimes? "We recommend it," states Grossman, an ex-FBI agent. "The CFO is often a public face of the company."

Background checks would have turned up Lonchar's phony MBA, but can they screen out a potential Andrew Fastow or Scott Sullivan? That's where "developed references" come in, says Grossman. References supplied by candidates are used as a starting point to identify a broader pool of people for questioning. "The most-thorough checks include reputation inquiries," adds Turecek. Barry J. Nadell, president of Chatsworth, California-based InfoLink Screening Services Inc., says such checks of one CFO candidate turned up evidence of embezzlement from a previous employer.

CFO candidates should know the law offers them certain protections. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, companies can't investigate candidates without permission, they must share the results if asked, and candidates have the right to dispute the findings