Background Checks : Who is watching your employees?

Over and over the news covers employee fraud and employee embezzlement. Our goal at AccuScreen is to help business get wise about who their hiring, by doing a background check and a making each employee accountable to someone. Read below a recent case dealing with payroll fraud.

Geselle Savoy, 52, of Alamogordo, N.M., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Lemmon to conspiring to commit federal program fraud while working as a testing technician for the Jefferson public schools, according to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office.

Savoy admitted that from February 2007 to September 2009 she submitted fraudulent payroll documents for herself and three other school system employees to receive about $132,000 in payments and stipends from the district. The payments came through the LEAP program, Graduate Exit Examination tutoring fund, Education Excellent fund and general fund.

Neither Savoy nor her co-defendants, Amanda Jackson, Danay Jackson and Tracy Walker, were certified teachers or qualified to perform testing or tutoring. Amanda Jackson and Savoy are cousins, and Danay Jackson is Amanda’s daughter.

According to court records, Savoy admitted receiving about $38,000 in payments personally and she processed fraudulent payroll sheets for the other co-defendants that totaled thousands of dollars each. The employees were submitting false overtime records and were able to access the school system’s financial database despite not being authorized for that access, according to court documents.

Savoy is set to be sentenced Oct. 12. She faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Are Your Employees Being Held Accountable?

Are your employees held accountable? Fraud can cost your business everything. It is something that in reality many companies face due to an unexpecting employee who becomes desperate. For example a most recent story is of Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands. They are facing tough decisions on how to stay open and what to cut back on due to an employee who started to skim off the top which turned into embezzling $30,000 in two years.

Misti Moore was the administrative assistant who started to take small amounts from the memorial to cover her gambling debts, but two years into taken money it turned into $30,000. Moore would write checks to herself and then go to great lengths to electronically alter the records that came back from the bank to make it appear that those checks were being written to legitimate businesses.

Everyone was blown away by the fact that Moore was so unassuming, and would have never imagined she would do such a thing. Because of cutbacks Moore was laid off and that is when the embezzlement came to light. The person who replaced her noticed the irregularities in the banking and notified the police. Moore is being charged with embezzlement, and now Lincoln Memorial Shrine is looking at ways to keep the doors open.

Lincoln Memorial Shrine is now making changes by having a job once performed by one person dealing with the money will now be handled by three staffers who will keep an eye on the accounts and, by default, each other. Are you making sure your employees are held accountable? Setting up systems where not one is in charge of all the accounts, but everyone is held accountable is one way to prevent fraud. Make sure you have a system in place where pre employment background screening is first and systems are second when it comes to employment.

Employers: Avoid The Worst Employees Of The Year!

The Worst Employees
These employees seem to cause or attract trouble wherever they go. The problems can be mild like the chronic troublemaker who always seems to have a hard time getting to work on time because the car had a flat tire or there was an “accident”. Then there is the extreme employee who can cause physical and financial harm.

Employers can avoid the “worst employees of the year” by having solid recruiting practices in place. This should include using a professional pre-employment screening firm such as Accu-Screen, Inc. The careful screen of an employee can reveal many inconsistencies and allow an employer to make a solid and informed hiring decision.

When you use the services provided by Accu-Screen, Inc. you can avoid hiring employees who are:

* Violent
* Lazy
* Unskilled
* Liars
* Criminal
* Problematic

The worst employees awards

If there was an award for the “worst employees of the year”, these employees would win hands down:

The violent employee

This violent employee should be avoided at all costs. This type of employee does not work well with others and may cause harm to fellow employees and other persons they come into contact with at work.

The lazybones employee

This type of employee will come to work, do as little work as possible and complain all day long about how much work they do. This type of employee is generally unproductive and likes to spend a good part of the day socializing. This employee acts busy when the boss is around, but will go from cubicle to cubicle at the first opportunity.

Unskilled workers

Several kinds of employees can be categorized under unskilled employees. This employee will usually embellish his or her skills during an interview to land a job.

The lack of skill is readily apparent once this person is asked to perform the tasks in the position. Unfortunately by then they could have caused minor or very serious damage to a business, fellow employees, clients or patients.

Liars

Watch out for fake licenses, credentials, references and even bogus degrees from this employee. They are also known to outright steal someone else’s identity in order to get a job.

Criminal

Some job seekers with a criminal past will lie about it on their resume′or application.

These employees range from petty criminals to violent offenders. Regardless of the criminal record, an employer should be aware of this prior to making a job offer. Keep in mind that an employer is responsible for his or her employee’s behavior while on the clock.

Problematic employees

* The “Finagle’s Law” employee who is always the victim of an elaborate chain of events that prevents them from being at work on time, coming back from lunch on time and requires them to leave early.
* The “sufferer” who always works harder and longer than everyone else. This employee also refuses to take a lunch or a break because they just have so much work to do. This wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t spend half of their time letting everyone know how “overworked or busy” they are.
* The “saboteur” You can’t turn your back on this employee because she is eyeing your job. This employee makes it difficult for an employer to do their job because of the time, energy and effort involved in managing this employee.

If an award for the worst employee of the year were being given, any of these employees would easily receive it. Employers make sure you don’t end up with these “winners”.

Manager Embezzled $1 million From Employeer and Charged with Tax Evasion

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX—The former office manager for a local medical group has been sentenced to federal prison for tax evasion, United States Attorney José Angel Moreno announced today.

Senior United States District Judge John D. Rainey sentenced Gina Anzaldua Holley, of Corpus Christi, to 24 months in federal custody, followed by a three year term of supervised release for failing to pay taxes on approximately $1 million she embezzled from her employer. Holley was also ordered to pay $297,855 in back taxes owed to the United States.

Holley pleaded guilty to tax evasion in April 2010 admitting she failed to pay taxes on the money she embezzled from her employer between 2003 and 2006 while working as the office manager for a medical group. Holley’s failed to disclosed this income on her tax returns which resulted in $297,855 in unpaid taxes to the United States.

According to pleadings filed of record in the case, in September 2007 the medical group discovered Holley had been using a company ATM card to make unauthorized withdrawals. Further investigation revealed that in addition to the unauthorized withdrawals, Holley also embezzled money by issuing company checks to herself, writing company checks to pay her credit cards and other expenses and making unauthorized transfers to her checking account. As office manager, Holley had control of accounts payable and the payroll as well as being in charge of bank reconciliations. Holley altered business records to conceal the fraud by making various journal entries and coding the majority of the embezzled funds to medication expenses. She used the embezzled funds to purchase vehicles and a house, and to fund cosmetic surgery and frequent trips to Las Vegas, Nev., New York and Puerto Rico.

The medical group obtained a civil judgment against Holley of $1,132,273 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in exemplary damages as a result of the embezzlement.

The court has permitted Holley to remain on bond pending the issuance of an order to surrender to a Bureau of Prisons facility to be designated in the near future.

The investigation leading to the charges against Holley was conducted by special agents of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations and the FBI. Assistant United States Attorney Robert D. Thorpe Jr. prosecuted the case.

Best Buy Finds a Good and a Bad Employee.

Here is a great article written by Kathleen Edmond. The real life story is about Best Buy Ethics, and how one employee can make a huge difference – for good or bad.

Best Buy recently earned some rather embarrassing publicity in a federal court case regarding a $40M fraud scheme involving one of our employees and a vendor. The employee plead guilty to federal fraud charges and the vendor was convicted in federal court early last month. Beyond the PR hit, and the financial impact of the fraud, Best Buy was forced to take a hard look at its internal controls and policies and the leaders responsible for them.

The details of the case are readily available on the Internet (simply Google “Chip Factory Best Buy”) but I am most interested in the ethical implications and the power that an individual employee can have on a company – whether for good or bad. The “good” in this case was Matt Dickinson, a manager on our Repair Services team who supports our parts acquisition business. This is Matt’s story.

Curiosity, persistence and a little good luck

Back in early 2007, Matt Dickinson – a long-time employee of Best Buy – was digging into a new role supporting Best Buy’s online parts auction. The company had recently hired an independent third-party agency to facilitate an innovative parts bidding system through which Best Buy purchased computer repair parts on the open market from numerous suppliers. A sort of “reverse eBay,” the auction system enabled Best Buy to quickly and efficiently source the parts needed for computer repairs around the nation, all while theoretically obtaining the best pricing the market would bear on that date for that specific part.

While doing routine research, Matt stumbled upon a $7,500 variance in the payments made to a particular vendor participating in the auction. According to his reports, The Chip Factory had billed Best Buy $7,500 more than the sum total of their winning bids in the parts auction that month. Matt passed this information along to his co-worker in charge of Best Buy’s relationship with The Chip Factory. Matt was told that it was an honest mistake and would be addressed.

Several months passed when Matt was doing more research into auction results. In doing so, he discovered an invoicing error on the part of one vendor that resulted in large discrepancies in their billings to Best Buy. When shown the data, the vendor was greatly embarrassed by the mistake and immediately repaid Best Buy for any cumulative excess billings. The discovery made an impression on Matt, however. “It occurred to me that there was the potential for a lack of control in this portion of the auction system. I figured if this mistake could go unnoticed here, it could happen elsewhere.”

Matt decided to run a variance report across all vendors participating in the auction and quickly saw a familiar name – The Chip Factory. This latest report showed The Chip Factory had billed Best Buy $175,000 more than the total of their winning bids that month. Again, Matt passed the information to his neighbor, Bob, who pledged to get to the bottom of the issue with his vendor partner. This time, however, Matt also approached a co-worker who understood the complexities of the auction billing system better than he. This co-worker gave Matt some alarming news; when multiplied by the total quantity of parts purchased through the auction, the excess billings levied by The Chip Factory that month actually exceeded $1.7 million.

With the stakes suddenly much larger, Matt requested a similar variance report dating back 18 months. To his horror, it showed that The Chip Factory had consistently overbilled for parts – a variance now totaling tens of millions of dollars. Alarmed but not ready to accuse, Matt checked and rechecked his work. “I verified the numbers many times and in many different ways. It all added up to one conclusion. Somehow, it appeared The Chip Factory had identified and exploited a blind spot in our system that enabled them to selectively over- and underbill us in a way that hid the fact that they were wildly overbilling us over the course of a month.”

At this point, Matt engaged Best Buy’s Legal department, Internal Audit and our Asset Protection specialists. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, Best Buy hired a highly regarded “forensic accountant” to research the auction data. The ensuing investigation quietly continued for more than a year with everyone wondering what had happened. No one, not even Matt, imagined that Bob – the employee in the cube next door – might somehow be involved.

Several weeks later, the truth hit the front page of the newspaper. Bob had been indicted on charges stemming from an investigation carried out by the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Postal Inspector. Bob eventually admitted to Federal investigators that he had accepted more than $100,000 in cash, a motorcycle and other lavish gifts from The Chip Factory in return for enabling the fraud against Best Buy. The husband and wife owners of The Chip Factory were subsequently indicted and convicted at trial, and all are currently awaiting sentencing.

Clearly, the implications of this story are enormous. By simply doing his job and asking questions, Matt uncovered what will hopefully be the largest (and last) fraud ever committed against Best Buy. When asked what advice he has to share with others, this is what Matt said:

* “Openness is critical. If you have an environment where anyone can talk to anyone, it enables non-threatening conversations to happen.”

* “Trust your instincts. If something does not smell right, do your homework, investigate and don’t stop until you get a clear answer either way.”

* “Know the business. All the signs were there if we just knew to look for them. Clearly, not enough controls were in place in the auction system in those days relative to the risk to Best Buy.”

* “Listen to the people around you. After the fact, we learned that other employees had asked why we were paying such ridiculous prices for certain parts. As it turns out, they could see something we couldn’t.

* “If someone really wants to rip you off, there is not much you can do to prevent it. No one goes to work thinking the person in the next cube could be capable of something like that, but it’s true. All of the controls in the world cannot eliminate the possibility that a trusted partner might be looking for ways around those controls.”

So, is Best Buy any different today than it was in 2007? From his vantage point, Matt has seen significant changes:

* “The entire culture of my department is different today. It’s very transparent and we are completely open to discussing issues now. Before this happened, our culture was extremely territorial and not welcoming of disagreement.”

* “We have a sincere ‘open door’ mentality now. People can talk to anyone they want – up, down or across the department. That kind of access and trust didn’t exist before.”

* “Leaders focus on assigning roles to people based on their natural strengths so the best talent and the best ‘fit’ is in every job.”

* “Best Buy’s Gifts and Gratuities policy is much more conservative. Today, you might get an occasional business dinner at a local restaurant. Extravagant dinners and entertainment are out.”

* “Of course, we have much more rigorous controls on everything now. Every process is scrutinized to make sure it is as tight as possible.”

Learning from our mistakes

As painful as this episode has been for Best Buy, it has enabled enormous growth. The balance between trusting the humility and integrity of the people around us and the need for healthy professional skepticism has become much clearer. What have you learned from this story?

1. Which was more troubling to you? The actions of The Chip Factory or that of the Best Buy employee who assisted them? Why?

2. Does your team have the kind of “open door” culture that Matt described above? If someone suspected an ethical issue on your team, would they feel free to talk to anyone – up, down or across the department? How can you be sure?

3. Have you ever seen a situation where “territorial” leadership behavior created an environment where unethical behaviors went unchallenged? What did you do about it and how did it turn out.

4. Do you think entertainment, gifts and other business courtesies from vendor partners are always OK, never OK, or somewhere in between? If the latter, where would you draw the line?

Employee Social Media Use: Danger to Your Business?

Bimbo Bakeries USA (bakers of the Thomas’ brand English muffins) and former senior vice president Chris Botticella are caught up in a trade secrets lawsuit.

What’s at issue is this: Has – or will — Botticella reveal the secrets of manufacturing the famous English muffins to the new employer, Hostess, Inc.?

Bimbo Bakeries offers testimony from computer forensics that Botticella had “deliberately copied trade secret documents onto an external USB device moments before being escorted from (Bimbo) premises.”

This possibility of a trusted employee using electronic devices to divulge confidential information to unauthorized parties or competitors would never happen in your operation. Or would it?

The Bimbo Bakeries versus Botticella case doesn’t appear to involve use (or misuse) of social media. However, it’s a vivid incident reminding management that dangers and risks made possible by electronic devices are now even more likely in any business – even your own — because of increasing use of social media.

Consider this statistic: According to the 2010 Trend Micro, Inc. survey of corporate and small business Internet end-users, 50 percent of those surveyed admitted to revealing company confidential information data through an unsecured Web mail or social media account. Responses came from 1,600 end users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Results were announced in May. Mobile employees were more likely than desktop users to share confidential information, with 60 percent of mobile employees admitting to sending out confidential information compared to 44 percent of desktop users.

Another statistic: The 2010 Trend Micro survey also reported that about one out of 10 Internet end-users admitted to overriding their company’s security systems in order to access restricted Web sites.

Still more social media use facts:

* A security firm Proofpoint poll of IT professionals at the Infosecurity Europe show in London this year found 93 percent of those polled said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the potential for confidential or personal information within their firms or organizations to get leaked by e-mail.
* A Proofpoint study in 2009, getting responses from more than 200 e-mail decision makers in U.S. firms, found eight percent of them reported the company had terminated an employee for using Facebook during work time.
* 24 percent of surveyed non-profit and government employers reported having to discipline an employee for his or her activities on social media sites like Facebook®, Twitter®, or Linkedin®. This result was from contacts with nearly 800 individuals in non-profit and governmental institutions surveyed in late 2009 by the Health Care Compliance Association and the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics.
* A high percentage of your employees probably believe whatever they do on the Internet and on social networking sites is one of their fundamental rights. That view is certainly reflected in a GlobeScan poll of 28,000 people in the United Kingdom in early 2010. In the polling, 87 percent of those who reported using the Internet said they believed it should be a “fundamental right.”

* By 2014, according to the research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc., social networking will replace e-mail as the primary way to communicate for 20 percent of business users.

With the facts like those above confronting employers it’s not surprising that employers are taking action to lessen the risks from employees’ Internet and social media use.

One example: The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, in Iowa City, earlier this year announced it was blocking social networking sites and other Web sites in clinical workstations. The new policy is the result of concerns about patient privacy and assuring the proper use of the organization’s electronic and Internet resources.

The University of Iowa Hospitals’ chief executive, Ken Kates, in an e-mail to staff wrote: “… viewing inappropriate Web sites for nonwork-related purposes consumes employee time and organizational resources.”

Risks and dangers of social networking by employees. Little wonder that employers are grappling with the issues and challenges associated with employees communicating during work time through e-mail and social networking sites. Following are major risks and dangers:

* Disruption of productivity. Employees during work time communicating electronically on personal matters distracts them from their job performance, resulting in lower overall productivity and increased costs.

Example. This message was recently posted in “The Admin Pro Forum” e-letter: “I know my office co-worker chats on Facebook most of the day. I now have proof when another co-worker stopped by the office and mentioned that her posts are usually between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m… there are times when I am overwhelmed with work and I know she’s chatting on Facebook and not getting her work done.”

* Legal risks to the company or organization. Imagine the variety of views and images employees can disseminate by e-mail and on social media sites that can negatively affect their employers. An employee, using the employer’s computer and Internet connection can circulate defamatory information, sexually explicit statements and photos, and sexually harassing images through their social media sites and blogs. An employee can whip out insulting messages by e-mail to customers, damaging the employer’s reputation.

* Risks of damage to the company’s or organization’s reputation. An employee can instantly and thoughtlessly send out an insulting and embarrassing message by e-mail or post it on a social media site. The message gets seen – and reacted to – by hundreds, thousands of people. It can become a reputation-damaging smear difficult to contain and hard on the bottom line.

Example. Early this year a woman, Sarah, and her husband went to the theater in St. Croix Falls, WI, owned by a chain of seven theaters in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The woman brought enough cash for snacks. But the theater didn’t accept credit or debit cards for tickets and the lobby’s ATM was out of cash. So the couple’s friends wrote a check. Then because of attempts by some underage patrons to sneak into the R-rated movie, the theater staff spent up to 20 minutes disrupting the patrons by using flashlights to check ticket stubs.

Later the woman wrote an e-mail letter of complaint to the theater owners. The e-mail response she got from the company vice president read: “Go f*** yourself. If you don’t have money for entertainment, get a better job, and don’t pay for everything on your credit or check card. You can also shove your time and gas up your f****** a**.” Sarah posted the e-mail exchange on her Facebook page. It spread. And soon there was a “BOYCOTT St Croix Falls Cinema 8″ page on Facebook with 5,082 members, more than double the population of St. Croix Falls.

* Intentional sharing of sensitive and/or confidential information. Disgruntled employees, on their own time and in their own home, can set up a Web site or blog site and begin to share an employer’s confidential and/or embarrassing information with the public.

Won’t happen with your employees? Think again. A recent survey of 2,000 adults, done by insurer Travelers Companies, revealed that 30 percent of respondents believed it was okay to post information about their employer online as long as they believe it is true.

* Inadvertent sending of sensitive and/or confidential information. An employee, preparing a sensitive financial report, can inadvertently insert a wrong e-mail address and whip the confidential message off to a customer or friend who has no right to know the information.

* Positives of employee social networking. There’s a flip side to the risks and dangers associated with social networking by employees. For some companies and organizations, in some workplaces, management may see advantages from employee social networking. Advantages like these:

o Supports a creative, innovative culture. Companies and organizations employing technologically savvy and creative people who are focused in their work on innovating and staying competitive will have a workforce that expects the freedom of social media, e-mail, and texting. An openness to the free flow of electronic communication for this workforce is necessary for keeping the company or organization on the cutting edge.

o Supports viral and other social media marketing. For companies and organizations using viral and social media marketing, permitting employees to responsibly engage in personal electronic communication during work time can help keep their electronic communication skills and knowledge in top form.

o Increases productivity. This stated advantage is based on a University of Melbourne study done last year in Australia. The study’s author, Brent Coker, called it a study of “workplace Internet leisure browsing” or WILB. The study of 300 employees found that 70 percent of them used the Internet at work for WILB. The researchers concluded that employees surfing the Internet for personal reasons during work were nine percent more productive than employees who did not do this.

In a blog explaining reasons for this seemingly paradoxical result, Coker gave two explanations.

1. “We need breaks in our workday… Concentration levels in the tasks we perform begin to wane fairly quickly after about an hour or so… WILB is (similar to a walk in the forest) an enjoyable activity, which enables efficient restoration of concentration.”

2. “Overwhelmingly, management research suggests that workers who feel they have a degree of freedom in the workplace perform better than those who feel they are stifled and not in control…”

o Makes the workplace more appealing. A workplace where employees are permitted to responsibly use electronic communication such as social media is attractive to young applicants and creative and innovative people of all ages. More and more employees are immersed in a culture where interacting with others through social media, e-mail, and texting is the norm.

Work Time Spent at Casinos, on Tennis Court Sends Federal Housing Exec to Prison

KANSAS CITY, KS—A $141,000-a-year executive at the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) office in Kansas City, Kan., has been sentenced to 12 months and a day in federal prison for taking pay for hours he did not work, U.S. Attorney Lanny Welch said today.

The sentence also includes two years of supervised release, a $2,000 special assessment, and $46,925 in restitution to HUD.

In March, a jury found Herman S. Ransom, 53, Olathe, Kan., guilty on 10 counts of wire fraud and 10 counts of theft of public funds. During a trial in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., prosecutors presented evidence that federal investigators kept Ransom under surveillance for 32 separate days while he went to casinos and/or played tennis during hours he was paid to work. Investigators compiled and analyzed records from the Overland Park Racquet Club and casinos in Kansas City to determine that between 2001 and 2007, Ransom collected $46,925 in pay for hours he did not work.

As Hub Director of HUD’s office in Kansas City, Kan., Ransom was responsible for supervising approximately 89 employees in Kansas City, Kan., St. Louis, Des Moines, Omaha, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City. His duties included overseeing the Office of Multifamily Housing for Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. As a GS-15 level supervisor, Ransom’s working hours were set at 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. He certified on pay reports that he worked 40 hours a week when in fact he knew he had taken personal time off during work hours. The false reports were sent electronically from Kansas City, Kan., to the National Finance Center in New Orleans, La., for processing and payment.

Welch commended the Department of Housing and Urban Development – Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Tris Hunt for their work on the case.

U.S. Companies Report Alarming Increase in Employee Fraud

“Infinity screening” can protect businesses during the economic downturn, Accu-Screen reports

Chalk up one more negative consequence of the economic downturn: employee fraud and thefts are on the rise.

Employees facing increased financial hardships (such as having a spouse who was laid off, a sick family member or a home at risk of foreclosure) are more likely to take illegal actions to augment their incomes.

“The stress of these types of situations has lead to violence in the workplace, embezzlement and identity theft,” says Kevin Connell, chief executive officer and founder of Accu-Screen. “Employee larceny and other illegal acts can weaken or even ruin a corporation.”

In a February 19th Wall Street Journal article on this trend, Simona Covel reported: “Small companies are especially vulnerable because they often lack stringent internal controls to prevent fraud. Sometimes managers of affected companies attribute lost funds to lower sales – never even suspecting foul play.”

The following facts show how widespread this problem is:

* American organizations lose an average of 7 percent of their revenues to occupational fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

* The costs of fraud in the U.S. are estimated at $6 billion annually.

* Embezzlement has been the No. 1 financial crime for the past four decades; almost one-third of all company bankruptcies can be attributed to embezzlement.

* Fraud, identity theft and property thefts account for 60 percent of a company’s annual losses.

* Common employee frauds include false invoicing, check forgery, theft of cash and goods and setting up ghost employees or ghost vendors.

Many frauds are conducted by trusted long-term employees who are in positions of responsibility, such as bookkeepers and accountants. Companies should watch out for employees who are living a lifestyle that seems beyond their means, as well as employees who never take a vacation or try to prevent others from seeing the firm’s books or accounting software.

While most hiring managers understand the benefits of screening new hires, it’s less common for companies to continue screening their current employees. This can be a costly mistake. There is no guarantee that an employee who is hired with a clean criminal and credit record will remain that way.

Periodic credit and criminal background checks, also known as “continuous screening” or “infinity background screening,” have been shown to be effective risk management tools for companies and a major deterrent against potential fraud.

“The ‘employee from hell’ can kill a business in a New York minute,” Connell says. “Pre-employment screening reduces the risk of a bad hiring decision; post-employment screening minimizes the risk to which a company is exposed over the long term.”

By hiring a reputable background screening firm such as Accu-Screen, businesses can protect their company from fraud and help ensure their survival during the current economic crisis.