Hires built on stolen identities.
DOJ's nationwide action describes North Korean IT workers getting hired with stolen and fake identities. A background check on a stolen identity can come back clean.
Read the DOJ releaseIdentity verification · as a consumer report
Most vendors hand you a pass or fail gate that lives in someone else's portal. 3rd Degree delivers identity verification as an employment consumer report, inside the FCRA workflow you already run, held to the same accuracy standard as the rest of your file.
For employers, staffing firms, healthcare, property managers, and contractor programs that need the identity nailed down before the background check is built.
Identity furnished as a report
Disclosure, access, and dispute rights
PBSA Accredited
Background Screening Association
FCRA Certified Staff
Fair Credit Reporting Act
100% US-Based
Support and Operations
Licensed Private Investigative Agency
State-Licensed & Bonded
Client Voices
See what hiring teams across every industry are saying about working with us.
Quality reports done in a timely manner.
Trent Grundmeyer
Owner
Simple process, easy to follow and seamless for the candidate.
Tonya Walker
Owner/Founder
Great customer service. It's user friendly for both the candidate and employer.
Dawn DeLaTorre
Human Resources Manager
Exhibit A · Field data from 1,084 real applicants
1,084
Applicants reviewed
PII compared against government-ID data
121
Bad or inconsistent PII
About 1 in 9 orders had an issue
21
Criminal records in that group
Bad data can hide real records
< 36 hrs
Turnaround
On most reports
The category
Standalone IDV vendors sell an event. You upload a document, take a selfie, and get a pass or fail in their portal. It's useful, but it sits outside your screening program. When 3rd Degree runs identity verification for a permissible employment purpose, we can furnish it as a consumer report, so the verified identity becomes part of the screening file and carries the protections you already expect from a CRA.
A standalone gate leaves you with a separate vendor, a separate contract, and a black-box identity decision that can still shape a hiring outcome, with none of the accuracy procedures, disclosure, or dispute rights the rest of your background check already runs under. That's the gap 3rd Degree closes.
The FCRA requires a CRA to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, and FTC guidance applies that standard to background screening companies. Your identity data inherits it.
Disclosure, authorization, and permissible purpose are already handled in your screening flow. The identity result rides the same rails instead of a parallel portal.
If identity information is reported, the candidate can see and dispute it. That turns a black-box rejection into a defensible, reviewable result.
Identity, discrepancy review, and adverse-action support live in one file, exactly what you want if an identity issue ever influences the outcome.
Why it matters now
Remote hiring, stolen and synthetic identities, and AI-generated candidates have turned “who applied” and “who shows up” into two different questions. A clean record means nothing if it belongs to the wrong identity.
DOJ's nationwide action describes North Korean IT workers getting hired with stolen and fake identities. A background check on a stolen identity can come back clean.
Read the DOJ releaseResearchers spun up a synthetic job candidate, video and all, in about an hour. A video interview is no longer proof of who you're talking to.
Read the reportAn imposter nurse cycled aliases and Social Security numbers for years. When the identity moves, the background check can run on the wrong person entirely.
Read the storyBuyer value
Delivering identity as a consumer report isn't a compliance checkbox. It changes what you're buying. The identity result becomes part of the decision, held to the same rigor as the rest of the file.
Criminal, alias, address, and court searches are only as good as the identity behind them. Verifying ID and PII first keeps a typo or a borrowed name from quietly steering every search that follows.
Because identity is furnished as a consumer report, it falls under reasonable procedures for maximum possible accuracy, not a generic pass or fail from a tool outside your program.
If identity information affects the outcome, the candidate can see and dispute what was reported instead of being dead-ended by an opaque ID gate they can't question.
Identity verification, discrepancy review, and the background check live in a single screening record, not stitched together from unrelated vendor outputs after the fact.
Bad PII means re-collection, reruns, delays, and frustrated candidates. Catching it at the front protects your turnaround and your team's time.
Healthcare, youth-serving, tenant, staffing, and contractor programs need more than speed. They need proof the report is about the person actually being placed.
The buyer test
Is identity verification part of the consumer report, or is it just a separate proofing event attached to the process?
Commodity IDV
3rd Degree IDV
A standalone proofing workflow
A pass or fail event that lives in someone else's portal, outside your screening program.
A reportable screening component
Ordered with the background check and furnished as part of the consumer report.
Often carved out
The identity vendor may only verify identity and avoid the background-check role.
Built into the report file
The IDV result belongs with the order, review history, and downstream searches.
Pass or fail
A narrow result that may not explain what changed in the screening record.
Actionable discrepancy review
Name, DOB, and document conflicts can be reviewed before searches run.
Separate support path
The applicant and client can be bounced between identity proofing and screening vendors.
One screening workflow
A cleaner report and a clearer consumer process, all from 3rd Degree.
How It Works
The advantage isn't only the technology. It's where the identity result is ordered, reviewed, and returned: in the same file as the background check, not a side portal.
Identity verification is ordered through the same package, QuickApp, or workflow you already use.
The candidate completes mobile document capture, selfie, and liveness from anywhere. We compare candidate-entered data against the government-ID data before any search runs.
Discrepancies go to review instead of silently poisoning the inputs. The verified result is delivered as part of the consumer report, with access and dispute rights.
The rest of the package builds on a confirmed identity, not self-reported data.
Questions you're probably asking
Straight answers on how identity verification works as a consumer report, and where it fits alongside the rest of your hiring process.
No. It improves it. Identity verification confirms the person and improves the subject data used by the criminal, address, alias, and other screening searches.
No. Identity Verification can support a stronger identity workflow, but I-9 and E-Verify are separate employment-eligibility processes with their own requirements.
That discrepancy becomes reviewable. The point is not automatic rejection. The point is to avoid running searches on bad identity data.
A standalone tool proves someone completed a verification event in its portal. 3rd Degree furnishes the result as part of the consumer report, so it carries CRA accuracy procedures, candidate rights, and a documented trail, and it lives in the same file as the background check.
Get a Demo
Add identity verification as a standalone employment consumer report, or build it into the screening packages you already order from 3rd Degree. Same workflow, cleaner data, and a decision trail you can stand behind. No commitment required.
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