Criminal Background Checks and Generic Names

[Daniel Peterson]

Hey Guys,

I recently received an application from a potential tenant and ran his credit/criminal history using mysmartmove.com. This person has a very generic name (e.g. John Smith) and the criminal history came back with A LOT of cases including felony convictions. I spoke to support at mysmartmove.com and they said the only data points used in criminal background checks are full name and DOB, so any crimes  associated with that Name/DOB will show up on the criminal history search. They did say it was common to have the search return hits from multiple people for folks with very common names but did not have any advice on how to validate if the person you are screening was the individual involved.

Is there another tool to search criminal history that uses more specific inputs like driver license number, social security number etc.?

Any Suggestions?

One other thing I found interesting is the Resident Score is only based on credit history. So theoretically a mass murderer who pays their bills on time could produce a perfect 850 Resident Score from mysmartmove.com - so if you are using their service do not make your decision based solely on the Resident Score!

What is the best service out there to screen applications? 

Thanks!

Daniel