Category: Relationships

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Background Checks Business Research Human Resources Miscellany Personal Background Checks Relationships Uncategorized

Mortgage Crash Puts New Background Checking Demands on Landlords

Corra has seen an accelerated demand in its tenant screening services. The housing crash has steadily accelerated foreclosures, and now more former homeowners are looking to rent property. The fact that mortgages are so tough tom come by also creates a higher renters market. And then of course there are many people waiting on the sidelines for the housing prices to further depreciate, so they too are renting.

The housing crisis has also created financial and domestic issues that have led to more divorces and once married, now single parents and partners are looking for a place to live.

So if you are a property management group, leasing agent, or merely a guy with a couple of apartments to rent, the prudent move is to run background check on all your applicants. Your applicants may have stories, which are either simple or elaborate excuses as to why things are the way they are. They may assure you and beg you, but at the end of the day, if things go wrong, it is you left holding the bag.

Corra has heard the horror stories and has helped clients in need of advice. Our clients are decent people, and sometimes want to be assured that thing are not how they appear to be. But…usually they are how they appear to be. Suspicious and sketchy circumstances almost never pan out into better conditions.

If you are a landlord, you should be running tenant screening, including criminal and credit reports. It may pay to run eviction searches as well. An ounce of prevention and a few bucks is worth the pounds of cure and the thousands you will have to spend in court or in eviction proceedings.

So check them out before you rent to them.

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Background Checks Human Resources Miscellany Online Dating Industry Personal Background Checks preemployment screening Relationships Uncategorized

Are Pedophiles Working For You?

Parents’ Ire Grows at Pedophile’s Unabashed Blog

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES — The search for the self-described pedophile in the large-brimmed black hat commences nearly every day here, with findings posted on chat rooms frequented by mothers.

He was spotted at a fair in Santa Clarita. He recently emerged from the Social Security office on Olympic Boulevard. He tapped away on a computer at the library in Mar Vista. Warnings have gone out. Signs have been posted.

And yet unlike convicted sex offenders, who are required to stay away from places that cater to children, in this case the police can do next to nothing, because this man, Jack McClellan, who has had Web sites detailing how and where he likes to troll for children, appears to be doing nothing illegal.

But his mere presence in Los Angeles — coupled with Mr. McClellan’s commitment to exhibitionistic blogging about his thoughts on little girls — has set parents on edge. One group of mothers, whose members by and large have never met before, will soon band together in a coffee shop to hammer out plans to push lawmakers in Sacramento to legislate Mr. McClellan out of business.

“Just the idea that this person could get away with what he was doing and no one could press charges has made me angry,” said Jane Thompson, a stay-at-home mother in East Los Angeles who recently read Mr. McClellan’s comments about a festival in her neighborhood in which he seemed to be describing her child.

For the entire article go to NYTimes.com

Pedophiles have been on the national radar with increasing frequency. The recent news story in Los Angeles had parents both horrified and up in arms over the child predator who described on the Internet his approach and tactics. Initially, the law enforcement authorities said there wasn’t much they could do to limit this man since he hadn’t really done anything yet. He wasn’t a registered sex offender.

Maybe in his case he wasn’t, but many are. They are listed nationally and on state sites. Corra includes in its state and nationwide criminal database searches the sexual offenders registry in all fifty states. Corra realizes how disruptive a sexual offender can be to the workplace. Most people will hate him, few, if any, with sympathize, and the employee morale can suffer.

In the case of McClellan, the predator in the story, a bond was issued mandating that he stay at least fifteen yards away from any child.

Check them out before you hire.

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Background Checks Human Resources Miscellany Online Dating Industry Personal Background Checks preemployment screening Relationships Uncategorized

MySpace and Weeding Out the Perverts

MySpace: 29,000 Sex Offenders Registered on Site High Number Likely to Spur Calls for Age Verification for Social Networks

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — MySpace has identified more than 29,000 registered sex offenders on its social network — more than four times the number it claimed to have found in May, according to the North Carolina attorney general’s office.

In the wake of several sex offenses that are alleged to have been traced to contacts on social-networking sites, MySpace earlier this year began checking its registered-user list against a database of registered sex offenders. In May, the News Corp.-owned site said it had found 7,000 users.

Read the full story at AdAge.com

By now most of you have become aware that at least 29,000 persons on the sexual offenders registry are on MySpace. Corra is surprised that everyone is surprised by this. Where else can sexual deviants find such a fertile happy hunting ground as the social networks?

Mind you, these are just the sexual offenders who have the temerity to use their real names. There must be thousands more posing as teenagers or at the very least registering under assumed names.

In the past few months Corra has picked up more sexual offenders on its searches than ever before. As to why this is occurring, Corra has no real idea. It is all conjecture. The main thing to realize that this is happening, and those that can be affected are women in the workplace and your kids at home.

Increasingly, it is becoming clear that background checks are needed by most businesses and even for domestic purposes. The Corra nationwide criminal background search includes the sexual offenders registry. It is key in helping to protect children and women, the more prominent victims of sexual abuse, from grievous harm.

So do yourself a favor. Check them out before you hire. Check them out when they work in your house. And check them out before you start dating. It’s that kind of world.

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Background Checks Human Resources Miscellany Personal Background Checks preemployment screening Relationships Uncategorized

Are You Comfortable With Sexual Offenders Working in Your Business?

Corra can go for many months without discovering that our clients’ applicants are on the sexual offenders registry. But during the last six weeks or so we have picked up on somewhere between six and twelve candidates who violated criminal codes and human beings to where they are now required to register on their state’s Sexual Offenders Registry.

Is one such offender working for you? And if so, how comfortable are you about employing them. Considering that several offenders Corra discovered during the last period had habitual records of violent behavior, having them in the work place may give you pause. In these cases they committed sexual battery against women, but there is no reason they could not have violated someone of the same sex or, worse, a child.

I should add that most of the sexual offenders we encountered recently were on the registry because they had violated children in ways that Corra needn’t mention here. And where children are concerned or, for that matter, women in the workplace or even women who are dating, there is always a risk. Single moms, especially, have either been victimized themselves or have had their children victimized by that “wonderful” person they had met online.

So whether as a preemployment screening program or as a predating screening program, run the Nationwide Criminal check to not only see if you are hiring a felon but a sexual offender. The sexual offenders registry is included in the Nationwide Criminal Check. And for the companies who have government contracts, for a few bucks more, Corra will attach the OFAC or Global Terror Report to the Nationwide Criminal Search.

So do yourself a favor and check them out before you hire. Check them out before you date them. Check them out.