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Intelius
FAQ
A national criminal check costs $50.
A background check provides

• criminal check
• bankruptcies
• small claims
• property info
• neighbors
• tax liens
• judgements
• licenses
• 20 year address history
• mortgage
• and "much more!"

They offer an employee screening service. Overall, it doesn't look as good as AccuFacts.

SentryLink
They do a national criminal background check for $20. For $5, they'll throw in an SSN trace.
They have a $12 employment screen.

VerifiedPerson
They have a healthcare specific employee screener.

ESR Check.com
They charge $100 to $150 for the full package.

Informus.com
Their a la carte menu shows the same kind of stuff at the same kind of higher-end prices.

Choice Point is a public company (CPS NYSE) sec, but they also offer home and auto insurance data services and vital records stuff, but it's close enough. Business services is 40% of revenues, but they're discontinuing some of it: sale of info with social security and driver's license numbers apparently due to a fraud problem (Sept 2004 in LA, Nigerian citizen [figures] faked accounts and got customer info). Their 10-K (also here) shows they're a real serial acquirer. Their operating margins are 26%, up from 23% in 2003, 25% in 2002, 17% in 2001, and less in 2000.

InfoLinkScreening
They have their own security expert, Barry Nadell. They don't list prices, which is not surprising.

American Data Bank.com
They don't seem so great.

EasyBackgrounds.com
They have an a la carte menu with normal prices.

Yahoo has a list of them. A LOT of them.

After going through these websites, I went into the AccuFacts website. I'd say it compares favorably.



You can hear the CEO here from 2004 [last name is pronounced lou-WEE-zoh]. 24-48 hour turnaround. The Maglio acquisition was mainly to expand their services outside of just criminal records and SSN data (existing NY business) and into employment and education verification. In 1999, they revamped everything to tie both computer systems together (SQL and Oracle). Allowed them to shrink the employees from 70 down to about 40 (it's now only 18). Now there are various resellers who resell AccuFacts' information. AccuFacts gives them the technology to go out and sell with their own brand names (this is great!).

They plan to enter into psychological exams, automated educational employment info (allowing AccuFacts to upload information and being a data warehouse), exit interviews (why employees are leaving), using MS Outlook add-on to work with employment hiring websites, possibly doing the employment check and working directly with the applicant so they can walk into a business with a verified/certified background check already done.

They're looking at 10% to 15% growth rates per year in this new stuff.

I have to say that this guy is talking about things that make a lot of sense. He's talking about the big picture correctly, in my view.



I always think it's funny to find stuff like this: developers going on the web for help when working on a project in the company I'm looking at. This was back in 1997.