CI’s Common Inquiries!

What is the different between a National Sex Offender Search and a State Specific Sex Offender Search?

We here at Commercial Investigations LLC (CI) offer two types of sex offender searches, the National Sex Offender Registry search (Dru Sjodin), and state specific searches. The National Sex Offender Registry searches all public records for the United States. Now you may be thinking if this one search does the entire US, are state specific searches really necessary? The answer is yes! The difference is that the National Sex Offender Registry only contains results that are high level, not all sex offender records. There are states like New York and Massachusetts that only have certain level sex offender information available on their online public record search. Although Level 2 and 3 offenders are typically the violent and most likely to reoffend, the Level 1 offenders can be those who may have committed violent crimes but have had them plead down to a lower offense level. It’s in everyone’s best interest to search as many levels as there are available to insure compliant and comprehensive results across the board!

Why does the turnaround time on the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry take up to two weeks?

When you run a sex offender search for Massachusetts (MA SOR), you may be surprised to see that it can take up to two weeks to get this information back. While you may think this is a lengthy time frame when you can conduct the search online, the truth is the online database for Massachusetts does not include information for all sex offenders in the state. Like the New York State Sex Offender search, the online MA SOR only offers search results for Level 3 sex offenders. This is why it’s important to contact the MA Sex Offender Registry Board directly to search the records that are not available in their online database. However, when you submit a search to the MA Sex Offender Registry Board, the information is handled, processed, and returned by one individual for the entire state. This is the reason for the longer turnaround time on these searches but you can rest assured that you’re getting a complete search of all publically available Sex Offender records in the state!

What does it mean when a Social Security Number comes back as unable to validate?

There could be a couple different reasons why the Social Security Number comes back as unable to validate. The one that comes up most often is if the subject has recently received their Social Security Number. When this happens we utilize an additional search called the SSA-89 Form, also known as the Consent Based SSN Verification, which would be an additional search added to the subject’s file. This process requires the subject to hand-sign the SSA-89 form that is then submitted to the US Social Security Administration. Once this comes back from the social security administration, we would update the consent based SSN verification search. We are unable to change the actual social trace results that state “unable to validate,” however the new search will state that it matches and was successful or will come back as no matches. If you have additional questions or want more information, don’t hesitate to call us at 800-284-0906!