What you can learn from a background check
by Team 8 Investigation Alan Cohn
Posted Feb. 6, 2007
10:00 PM
Posted Feb. 6, 2007
10:00 PM
(WTNH) _ What can you find out about your friends, neighbors, husband, or wife? The answer is just about anything. Background checks are becoming more and more common these days and more and more intrusive.
The State of Connecticut now does background checks on school bus drivers, new police officers, government appointees.
"Their tax records, it may include credit history," Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said.
"Telephone records?" "Yes. It will. I will say be limitless. It's very intense and in depth examination of a person's history."
Police and other law enforcement agencies have access to the FBI's national criminal history data base.
"It's not 100-percent foolproof."
But now anyone can do background checks on the web. Employers can screen potential employees. Anybody and investigate anyone for prices ranging from $15 to $50. But Chris Paoletti, a private investigator in Bridgeport cautions here too the information isn't always accurate.
"The ones on the internet I think some of them are scams," he said. "They take your money. They are pretty much doing telephone book and white pages to see what kind of information they can find."
But when it comes to digging up dirt on someone the most effective way continues to be the lowest tech way -- going through their garbage. This is how Paoletti discovered how someone he was doing a background check on was violating the non-compete clause in their employment contract.
"I found an old partnership agreement in the dumpster. Unbelievable. He was signing off on particular jobs, writing checks."
But today the biggest part of Paoletti's business is doing background checks on people suspected of cheating on their spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend.
One successful Connecticut businessman, who doesn't want to be identified, has been married 25-years and has two young children. He became suspicious when, while away on businesses trips, his wife with increasing frequency, would tell him "she is going to the mall shopping or to the movies with her friends and have a baby-sitter come to watch our children."
So he contacted Chris Paoletti who now has the web site "Infidelity Investigations."
"It was a picture of her going into a restaurant with someone who wasn't one of her girlfriends. It was with a male companion," Paoletti said.
But as we've seen background checks don't way give the complete picture. And that's why this Connecticut businessman is not sure what he's going to do next.
"Is this going to wind up in a divorce?" "I don't know. I don't want to lose my wife. But you just wanted to know. I want to know."
President Bush just signed into law a bill which limits the ability of private investigators and the public from getting your telephone records. But as the saying goes "where there's a will there's a way" and "money talks." There are unscrupulous information brokers out there who will provide the records even through it's now illegal.
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