Archive for the ‘legal papers’ Category

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A Clerical Error Landed Kathleen Casey on the Streets

By Dawn in Background Checks, court cases, Criminal Background Check, Criminal Records, legal papers, MSI Detective Services, Police Records, Private Investigator at December 21st, 2011 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

If you are an employer needing background checks performed on prospective employees, MSI Detective Services offers this service. Mistakes won’t be make like the ones you will read about in this story because we have the means to accurately check and cross-check information. For example, in the first story, our staff would have noticed that the birth date did not match the age of the individual, and even if it did, one of our Private Investigators would have pulled the police report to ensure they had the right person. Employers should also know that they are required by law to inform job applicants when they have been rejected because of negative information in a background check. This gives the applicant an opportunity to clear up any mis-information. So, unless you want a lawsuit on your hands, you are advised to do a proper background check and follow the law.

Out of work two years, her unemployment benefits exhausted, in danger of losing her apartment, Casey applied for a job in the pharmacy of a Boston drugstore. She was offered $11 an hour. All she had to do was pass a background check.

It turned up a 14-count criminal indictment. Kathleen Casey had been charged with larceny in a scam against an elderly man and woman that involved forged checks and fake credit cards.

There was one technicality: The company that ran the background check, First Advantage, had the wrong woman. The rap sheet belonged to Kathleen A. Casey, who lived in another town nearby and was 18 years younger.

Kathleen Ann Casey, would-be pharmacy technician, was clean.

“It knocked my legs out from under me,” she says.

The business of background checks is booming. Employers spend at least $2 billion a year to look into the pasts of their prospective employees. They want to make sure they’re not hiring a thief, or worse.

But it is a system weakened by the conversion to digital files and compromised by the welter of private companies that profit by amassing public records and selling them to employers. These flaws have devastating consequences. Read the full article »

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Solyndra Leaders Invoke 5th Amendment at Hearing

By Dawn in Criminal Background Check, due diligence, Interrogation, Investigations, legal papers, MSI Detective Services, Politics at September 29th, 2011 | No comments

Top executives from a bankrupt California solar energy company declined to testify before a congressional hearing investigating their half-billion dollar government loan. Solyndra Inc. CEO Brian Harrison and the company’s chief financial officer, Bill Stover, both invoked their Fifth Amendment right to decline to testify to avoid self-incrimination.

Solyndra Inc. received a $528 million loan from the Energy Department in 2009.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., compared the Solyndra loan to the Great Train Robbery in England in the 1960s. Upton faulted the Obama administration for its role in the loan, saying at a minimum the Energy Department did not complete due diligence on the company, which lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the years before the loan was approved. He called the loan “reckless use of taxpayer dollars on a company that was known to pose serious risks before a single dime went out the door.”

One does wonder why due diligence is often over-looked when “someone else’s money” is being spent – in this case it’s our tax dollars. I wonder if background checks, investigation of past fraud practices, or interrogatory questions would be asked if this were a private sector transaction. Not to say those oversights never occur, but they are less likely because it’s an investors money or a company’s money being spent and their money is not being backed by the government, as is the case in this deal. Committee leaders said the administration may have violated the law when it restructured Solyndra’s loan in February in such a way that private investors moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of default. The economic stimulus law provides for taxpayers to be ahead of other creditors in the event of bankruptcy or default.

Hiring a private investigative firm wouldn’t take much effort, such as MSI Detective Services. Our investigative services could have handled the necessary due diligence through background checks, past fraud, interviews, etc.
Read full story@ msnbc

 

 

 

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Commodities broker from Chicago faked death

By alisa in Chicago, court cases, Crime, fraud, Investigations, legal papers, Missing Persons Investigations at July 22nd, 2011 | No comments

Arthur Gerald Jones, who had a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade, was reported missing in 1979. Police were suspicious of his disappearance and they believed his intentions to vanish were from his gambling debts and other trouble he might have been in.

In 1986, Jones was declared dead and his family collected his social security benefits.

“Mr. Jones apparently had a valid Social Security number that was issued to another person, and that’s how he was discovered, was someone filed a complaint,” said Kevin Malone of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles. Investigators found that Jones had been alive the whole time, living under the alias of Joseph Richard Sandelli. Malone said Jones first went to Florida under the Sandelli alias, and then to Las Vegas in the late 1980s.

Jones is set to appear in court on charges of felony identity theft and fraud on Aug. 23.

Read more @ CBS Chicago News

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Summoning w/o license can void a lawsuit

By alisa in court cases, legal papers, Private Investigator, process service, service of summons at July 20th, 2011 | No comments

Hundreds of small claims lawsuits filed in St. Clair County Circuit Court on behalf of a Belleville hospital to collect delinquent bills may be challenged because the county official, Rick Stone, who served the summonses did not have a PI license.

Stone, who is an official coroner, was delivering the summonses until Chief Judge John Baricevic in May told him to stop unless he could prove he was licensed. In most cases, a process server in Illinois must possess a state private investigator’s license or a card allowing the person to work under the supervision of a licensed investigator.

“I told him that unless he can show me that he had a P.I. license that he could no longer serve,” Baricevic said.

Stone estimated that beginning sometime in 2009 and ending in May, he was paid to serve as many as 300 summonses for Argent Healthcare Financial Services on behalf of Memorial Hospital.

Argent is a national firm with offices in Belleville. Stone was paid privately for this work, separate from his public duties as coroner.
Read the full article »

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