Introducing The Crime Free Circle from CrimShield

CrimShield President David Pickron explains the dangers of hiring vendors and contractors to come onto your property. This simple video explains how keep your family safe from would-be criminals coming into your home or business. Honest service companies and contractors are joining Crime Free Circle and making the crime-free commitment in their companies. Other directories are just that, "directories." Who they are is usually more important than what they do.


Before you hire another contractor to come onto your property go to: www.crimefreecircle.com for crime-free certified contractors.

Instant Coffee Sucks!

What a great idea… heat up a cup of water in a microwave, or better yet, fill your cup with hot water directly from the water cooler/heater in your office break-room. Now, just add a couple of teaspoons of dirt that smells like coffee to your water and voila… a 20 second solution for your morning wake up routine. There was a time when the big coffee brands thought their newly introduced “instant” products would become the future of the industry. Boy, were they ever wrong! Let’s face it, they should just call it what it is; “a coffee flavored drink.”

It is no secret that we are all in a hurry now days and timesaving products are very enticing. But when it comes to coffee, most of us are willing to take the time to brew a pot of the good stuff vs. settling for a cup of instant nastiness. In fact, most of us go out of our way to stop by the local coffee shop and wait in line for a cup of gourmet coffee and eagerly pay six bucks for it! We splurge sometimes and buy sophisticated contraptions that can turn whole coffee beans into amazing, fresh brewed coffee right in our own kitchens. Sure, it costs a little more and takes a little more time… but it is so worth it.

We can all learn a great lesson from the coffee industry; instant products may have their place in the market, but they are never better than the real thing. In most cases they aren’t even adequate. This “instant product” mentality is plaguing the background check industry with the internet full of insufficient, “background check flavored databases.” We are all exposing ourselves and our families to people we know nothing about every single day. When a repair person comes to perform service on an appliance in your home, do you know that his company properly screened him for past criminal history? When you drop your kids off at practice, how much do you really know about the coach? How can you protect yourself and your loved ones from becoming a victim of a crime.

Remember what we learned from instant coffee? When it comes to your safety, it is important to make the extra effort required to enjoy the real-thing. An instant background check is merely a database search of incomplete and inaccurate data. They are easy for criminals to fool by simply providing a small piece of misinformation. Change a middle initial, tweak the date of birth or throw one wrong digit into a social security number and they are home free. The solution is the same as for coffee, simply pay a little more and take the necessary time to complete an investigative background check. True investigative screening requires licensed investigators to personally take the necessary steps to verify an applicant’s identity and then go into all relevant courts to obtain live data directly from the source.

Everyone deserves to know who is coming into their homes and businesses or who is coaching their child. Extra peace of mind comes with knowing who you are dealing with, so make sure to hire only crime free individuals… you might even enjoy your coffee more.

Background Check Fraud on the rise - CrimShield solves the problem...

According to David Pickron, President of CrimShield Inc., an Arizona-based background investigation company, using an instant background check service may actually increase your odds of inadvertently hiring a criminal.

Why you ask... how can this be possible?

The answer is simple. These instant database search style background check companies simply take the information entered into their system at face-value and then runs the data through an incomplete data base. If there are no red-flags... the applicant passes. So... if you have a criminal history, you know that one number or one character of misinformation on the application lets you sail through the screening process with ease. These systems aren't like Google. You won't get an message that says... Did you mean John A. Smith? If the applicant misspells his name, no records will be found... period.

Criminals love applying at companies with loose screening policies like this. So remember, if you are using a cheap, instant background solution to make your hiring decisions, your organization is a prime target for the known criminals that can't get hired elsewhere.

Is your background screening protocol making it easy for those with a criminal past to commit fraud with intentionally inaccurate information on their employment application?

At CrimShield, we have seen numerous sex-offenders, career thieves and even convicted murderers working for a variety of companies after passing these shoddy instant background checks online. It simply isn't worth the risk, protecting the people you serve and your company's reputation is too important!

CrimShield President David Pickron Exposes the Background Industry's Dirty Secret...

Is your company currently using an instant background check company? If you are trusting this instant data and reporting to make important hiring decisions, you may be putting your company at risk. Having accurate criminal history reports on every person representing your brand is the only way to protect yourself from liability should a crime be committed by one of your representatives, contractors or employees.

In order to avoid the "instant" background check scam, please consider the following carefully:

• Instant background check solutions are mere database searches. These database searches are not smart or intuitive, they do not recognize misspelled names, dates or numbers. If you are lucky, the database search you are paying for may have 65% of the relevant data pertaining to any applicant if you have his or her accurate information on the application.

• Criminals actually target companies using instant background check companies, because they know how easy it is to fool these automated database search systems. They simply change a letter here, or a number there and their previous criminal history will go undetected.

• The only way to guarantee accurate criminal history reporting is for a licensed private investigator to conduct a hands-on, eyes-on investigation into each applicant.

• When instant background checks are compared to hands-on investigative background research, the results are as follows... Out of every one hundred applicants that pass an instant background check, 17 of them fail the investigative screening process. Yes, that is one in six applicants that turn up a significant criminal history!

So, as a business owner or manager, is your screening protocol sufficient? What are your motives for conducting background checks? Are you just going through the motions of due-diligence or are you really interesting in protecting your staff, your customers and your reputation? Before you end up in court on the wrong end of a lawsuit... think about improving your company screening policy.

If you want real results, your background investigations need to be performed by real people.