A letter published on the Cleveland.com website criticizes a U.S.-based background screening firm for laying off local workers in the Ohio area in March of 2012 and “offshoring” both jobs and the personal data of American consumers collected for background checks outside of the country. The full text of the letter, written by Katharine Sarlog, a former employee of the company who was recently laid off, is available by clicking here: Katharine Sarlog letter. (more…)

According to a report from the Associated Press (AP), a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) that performs employment screening for businesses will close two offices in South Dakota by the end of the year and move those jobs to new sites in Arizona, India, and the Philippines. The AP reports that the company, one of the largest background screening suppliers in the country, says the closings in Aberdeen, South Dakota and Mitchell, South Dakota are due to restructuring and will affect approximately 140 workers. The AP story is the latest case of a large U.S. background screening company “offshoring” the processing of background checks to foreign countries. (more…)

On the day taxes are due for Americans, April 17, 2012, House Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced bipartisan legislation – The Stopping Tax Offenders and Prosecuting Identity Theft Act (H.R. 4362) – to help stop the growing problem of tax return identity theft and protect tax payers from identity thieves who file tax returns using names of other people to receive their tax refund checks. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), more than 850,000 tax returns and $5.8 billion were associated with tax return identify theft in 2011 alone. (more…)

To alert U.S.-based employers and job seekers about the potential dangers caused by background check firms “offshoring” Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to countries such as India and the Philippines, Employment Screening Resources (ESR) is offering a new whitepaper on the subject. The whitepaper written by ESR founder and CEO Attorney Lester Rosen is titled ‘The Dangers of Offshoring Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Outside of United States’ and details the hazards of sending PII to counties that are well beyond the reach of U.S. privacy and identity theft laws. The complimentary whitepaper is available at: http://www.esrcheck.com/Download/. (more…)

For the 12th year in a row, identity theft topped the list of consumer complaints released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for 2011. Of more than 1.8 million complaints filed in 2011, 279,156 – or 15 percent – were identity theft complaints, and nearly 25 percent of those identity theft complaints were related tax- or wage-related fraud. For more information about the FTC’s Top Complaint Categories for 2011, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/02/2011complaints.shtm. (more…)