County and statewide searches only find state crimes. Federal searches find the ones that cross borders, cross states, and live in an entirely different court system.
Federal crimes are prosecuted in federal court, not state court. That means a county criminal search and a statewide search will never surface them — no matter how thorough those searches are. A federal criminal search covers all 94 federal district courts across the United States, searching for crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction: offenses that cross state lines, involve federal agencies, or violate federal law directly.
If your applicant has a federal conviction, it will not show up anywhere else. This is the only search that finds it.
We search every federal district court in the country, not just the ones tied to where the applicant currently lives.
Drug trafficking, smuggling, wire fraud, and bank robbery will never appear on a county or statewide search. Federal is the only way to find them.
Federal records often have limited identifiers. Our team knows how to piece together contextual details to confirm a match with confidence.
Federal searches should always be run alongside a county or statewide search. We help you build the right package for your hiring needs.
These offenses are prosecuted in federal court and will never appear on a county or statewide search.
Federal court records frequently have personal identifiers scrubbed from public-facing documents. Date of birth, Social Security numbers, and addresses may not be present. When that happens, our team works through the case documents themselves — pulling contextual details like prior addresses, employment history, professional licenses, or references to other records — to confirm we are looking at the right person. This takes more skill than a standard database pull, and it is something we do every day.
Every federal criminal search returns the following data points when available in the record.
Every industry benefits from adding a federal criminal search. It is especially critical when hiring for positions involving finances, access to sensitive data, cross-border travel, or vulnerable populations.
We hired someone who showed up on day one wearing an ankle monitor. Their background check was completely clean. We added a federal search and found a drug smuggling charge out of a federal court in Florida. Nothing else would have caught it. We now run federal on every single hire.
Federal covers federal courts. County and statewide cover everything else. Together they give you the most complete criminal history available. We help you build the right combination for your hiring needs.
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