Michelle Pyan 5/28/19 Michelle Pyan 5/28/19

Screening Logic Uncovers A Sex Offender

This case study involves a convicted and registered sex offender for which the New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) provided absolutely no results. We provide a step-by-step analysis of the research performed to reveal missing information that was not provided by the NYS OCA.

At Screening Logic, we came across an alarming occurrence. This is a case study of a convicted and registered sex offender for which the New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) provided absolutely no results. This case study is a step-by-step analysis of the research performed to reveal missing information that was not provided by the NYS OCA.

For the purpose of this case study, we will refer to this subject as JOHNNY BADMAN¹.

Screening Logic ran multiple different inquires on this individual. We received many "hits", one in particular was from a Cyber Investigation, through which we uncovered two articles, both pertaining to the same sexual abuse incident.

We also ran a Pointer File NY (PF NY) inquiry and were presented with four booking records; one for forgery, two for sexual abuse, and another for rape. One of the booking records also matched the sexual abuse articles that were discovered in the Cyber Investigation. See figure 1 for PF NY results.

Related Records — Figure 1 – Pointer File New York Booking Records
¹ Names have been changed to protect their identities.

When contracted for additional services, Screening Logic has in place a specific protocol involving the research of PF NY “hits”. The common practice for the majority of our clients is to open up a Developed Criminal Record. Wherein we call on each individual booking record, and locate the court we need to reach out to in order to obtain the final disposition.

For this particular individual, we tried the NYS OCA Statewide for the convictions we sought. See Figure 2 for the NYS OCA results.

Every instance where Screening Logic receives PF NY hits that are not obtained by the New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) search, we recommend that further research be performed. After receiving no results from the NYS OCA search, we reached out to our liaison at the NYS OCA requesting information on all booking records for this individual. The only information that was provided to us was one incomplete sexual abuse case out of Volney Town Justice. Please note that the case itself containing the final disposition was not given to us and the original results said No Results Found.

We were provided a court control number, incident date, and the court in which the case was heard. We were not provided any charge information. This is unfortunately a common occurrence with the NYS OCA. In an email response from our liaison, we were told that the incident date that matched our PF NY hit for Forgery was then sent up to a Management Analyst. They determined whether they could provide us any information on that case. Figure 3 displays the limited information provided to us, even after we have paid the fee for the NYS OCA.

Figure 3- Email from NYS OCA Research Analyst

A Sex Offender Registry search was added, as per Screening Logics’ procedures, when contracted for additional services. These results were verified by Name, Date of Birth, and Social Security Number. Once a Sex Offender Registry “hit” is discovered through the initial search of Name and Exact Date of Birth, an investigator calls the New York State Sex Offender Registry to obtain further details of the registered sex offender. The investigator will also re-verify the identifiers of Name and complete Date of Birth, as well as the full Social Security Number. Figure 4 is the complete results from the New York State Sex Offender Registry.

SOR Results — Figure 4 - New York State Sex Offender Registry Results

Because the NYS OCA Liaison did not offer satisfactory information regarding all booking records in question, Screening Logic, when contracted for additional services, will reach out to the jails to obtain the court information. We will then follow up with said courts in order to obtain the final disposition information for each charge. There are dead ends, and not every booking record results in a corresponding passable conviction.

We did reach out to the Wayne County Jail, as well as the Oswego County Jail, in order to obtain the court information for the remaining two booking records. Per the records department of the Oswego County Jail; the booking record dated 04/11/2016 was in relation to the case out of Volney Town Court. The subject was held in that jail for a continuance of sentencing. The Wayne County Jail had similar records in regard to the 05/08/2016 booking record. The subject was then transferred from the Oswego county jail to the Wayne County jail in order to complete the 180 day jail sentence. These particular booking records are prime examples of when a booking record does not necessarily equate to a conviction.

A registered sex offender did not have results come back on the NYS OCA; however, through thorough research and due diligence, Screening Logic came to the rightful conclusion below.

Extensive research and follow up did reveal that two convictions were indeed passable to our client. The first is the Sexual Abuse case for which the subject was a level one registered Sex Offender. Figure 5 displays the completed results provided by the court. The NYS OCA did not have any results in relation to this case other than an incident date and the court information, and only after asking the NYS OCA to take a second look because their original results were No Results Found. The NYS OCA Information was only provided to Screening Logic after contact was made regarding their reporting of no records. Without PF NY we would not have known to ask for more from the NYS OCA.

Figure 5 - Developed Criminal Record Results

The second case we were able to provide to the client was a pending forgery case. A second case that the NYS OCA did not have any other information on, besides the court control number and the incident date, after originally reporting No Results Found. Figure 6 shows the final results sent to the client.

Figure 6 – Developed Criminal Record Results

End Results

This evidence is in favor of the Pointer File New York inquiry. If used in conjunction with the New York Office of Court Administration, the results are the most accurate and compliant within FCRA guidelines. However, cases of this nature should not be missed by the NYS OCA or any researcher providing a background investigation. PF NY was on the client’s side in properly locating and identifying a convicted sex offender. As a result of our staff’s due diligence, thorough research, and not accepting the NYS OCA’s lack of results, we delivered a complete criminal history on the subject for our client.

Additional Information

New York State Office Of Court Administration Has Its Limitations

The New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) is a fantastic entity for obtaining various convictions for individuals with a criminal history.

However, it is a severely flawed system. There are quite a few restrictions to the cases that are provided by the NYS OCA, one being they do not report a misdemeanor conviction after ten years if it is the sole conviction.

This is part of the New York Misdemeanor Redemption Policy. In addition, they do not provide vehicular misdemeanors unless it is an Operating Motor Vehicle under the Influence conviction. The most alarming, is the extreme number of cases missing from the results.

The NYS OCA has yielded zero results, even for convicted criminals, some of which have multiple convictions. The NYS OCA will only provide fingerprinting convictions based on the exact name, and exact date of birth submitted. They do not search for additional spellings, aliases, or suffixes, of any name. Each submission to the NYS OCA is exactly what is searched. One practice that can be problematic is if the subject has a suffix reported on one conviction and does not have the suffix reported on another. In this case, you will not get both convictions back in your search results. The same follows for any alias or changes in spelling for any given name, as well as date of birth variations.

Pointer File New York™ (PF NY) pulls the booking records for individuals all over the State of New York. When contracted for additional services, Screening Logic uses this information to research each record and determine if it resulted in a passable conviction, which we then provide to our clients. There are times when courts are unwilling to assist in providing additional information and we have to utilize the New York State Office of Court Administration. More frequently than not, the NYS OCA provides only a fraction of what PF NY discovers.

At Screening Logic, we do our due diligence when it comes to all aspects of the background investigation. We are determined to do the right thing, always. This is particularly true in our criminal research. The Pointer File New York™ (PF NY) database is an essential diligence tool that allows us to view a history of booking records. When contracted for additional services, we then research these findings to determine whether the arrests resulted in passable convictions. The only passable offenses we provide are misdemeanor and felony convictions. We developed PF NY in conjunction with the NYS Sheriffs’ Association, as an alternative method to obtaining criminal information in New York State. By digging down to the level of booking data, Pointer File New York™ overcomes the fundamental and systemic flaws associated with the NYS OCA search.

Michelle Pyan 5/28/19 Michelle Pyan 5/28/19

Not Every Arrest Results in Conviction

This case study takes an in-depth examination of when Pointer File New York (PF NY) hits do not result in passable convictions. This happens more frequently than not, so what happens when an individual has a huge number of booking records and only one or two cases are reportable? The individual we are studying had several booking records that we researched fully. Since we were contracted for additional services, only two cases were reportable, and only one matched the PF NY results. See Figure 1 for the PF NY results.

PF NY Records — Figure 1 – Pointer File New York Booking Records

As shown in Figure 1, this individual had seven booking records that spanned from 11/2002 to 10/2013. All records are from the same county. The Onondaga County Jail will provide court information for booking records, but never the charge information. When contracted for additional services, the process of obtaining said court information from the jail is a multi-step process that requires a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request. An additional validation of authorization from the candidate that we have the permission to request that information. When there are this many hits, sometimes it is more cost- effective to run the name through the NYS OCA as a starting place to locate these arrests. Frequently, courts require a money order for each offense date we are searching. While we did receive a passable conviction from the NYS OCA, we only received one.

Figure 2 shows the email indicating that there are results found provided by the NYS OCA. Figure 3¹ shows the actual detailed results that were provided by the NYS OCA.

NYS OCA Records — Figure 2 - NYS OCA Results Found

Figure 3 - NYS OCA Actual Results
¹ Names have been changed to protect their identities.

Clearly, we were provided only two cases from the NYS OCA. One was from 1987 and showing in their system as “Not disposed” or incomplete. As the PL 155.25 00 AM – Petit larceny was reduced to the PL 110-155.25 00 BM Attempted petit larceny, we are not able to pass both charges. As shown in Figure 4, we reached out to our liaison at the NYS OCA to see if they had any additional information about the charges that were absent from the results provided.

Figure 4 - NYS OCA Results Passed to Client

Our liaison provided eleven incomplete cases from Camillus Town Court, not including the case provided on the NYS OCA Statewide that was not disposed yet. A case from Solvay Village Court was also provided. See Figure 5.

Armed with this new information, and realizing many of these cases are not listed in the PF NY results, we reached out to the court to obtain as much information as possible to provide the best results to our client. We also reached out to the Onondaga County Jail to obtain information on the PF NY records. While we were not provided the offenses, we were provided the courts. After conducting the procedural research on each record, all of the PF NY hits were either non-reportable offenses or sealed cases.

We reached out to the Solvay Village Justice, and the offense from 10/27/1993 was a sealed case. This was not a reportable offense, but the case was completed, which is information that the NYS OCA should have. We heard back from Camillus Town Court on all offenses, and only one of the eleven was passed on to our client.

Camillus had been sent every detail that we were provided, and physically researched the court records in the archives to provide that information to us. The rest had been pled down to violations, infractions, or were covered by other cases, which in turn were sealed or dismissed. Figure 6 is what we could pass on to our client. Note that this case was not provided to us in completion by the NYS OCA and was not a hit on PF NY.

End Results

Pointer File New York (PF NY) furnishes booking records for individuals across New York State. Many of these records end without results that are passable to our clients.

That is what transpired with this case study.

Additional Information

New York State Office Of Court Administration Has Its Limitations

Michelle Pyan 5/28/19 Michelle Pyan 5/28/19

No Records?

This case study will take an in-depth examination of when PF NY hits do not result in passable convictions. This happens more frequently than not, but what happens when an individual has numerous booking records and no records are reportable? When contracted for additional services, it was determined that the individual we are studying had several booking records.

See Figure 1 for the PF NY results.

Figure 1 – Pointer File New York Booking Records

As shown in Figure 1, this individual had three booking records all from the same county. Onondaga County Jail will provide court information for booking records, but never the charge information. The process of obtaining said court information from the jail is a multi-step process that requires a FOIL (Freedom Of Information Law) request, and then an additional validation of authorization from the candidate that we have the permission to request that information.

When there are this many hits, sometimes it is more cost effective to run the name through the NYS OCA as a starting place to locate these arrests. Frequently, courts require a money order for each offense date we are searching. In this instance, that was the case. We had multiple courts to reach out to and various money orders required to obtain the information. We decided that submitting the name through the NYS OCA was the best possible method to obtain the case information.

Figure 2 - NYS OCA No Results Found
¹ Names have been changed to protect their identities.

Figure 2 ¹ shows that the NYS OCA had no results found. We did not accept that there were no results and we reached out to our liaison with the NYS OCA to find out what happened with these cases. We received this response from the NYS OCA:

In accordance with performing our due diligence, we did reach out to each of the courts to verify the information received from the NYS OCA. Courts are sometimes more willing to provide information once a NYS OCA statewide has been run and we have the documentation to prove it. All three courts stated that there was no public record. The cases were all sealed, so there was nothing we could pass on to our client.

End Results

Pointer File New York furnishes booking records for individuals across New York State. We were able to see in this case study that when we were contracted for additional services, although we had booking records, none of them were reportable cases. Therefore, the report would be marked as “clear.” Had Screening Logic only run the Statewide, we would never have known there were three possible records to be researched. This is where PF NY displays its greatest strength.

Additional Information

New York State Office Of Court Administration Has Its Limitations

Michelle Pyan 5/28/19 Michelle Pyan 5/28/19

Screening Logic Obtains New Court Records

At Screening Logic (SL), we do our due diligence when it comes to all aspects of the background investigation. We are determined to do the right thing, always. This is particularly true in our criminal research. The Pointer File New York™ (PF NY) database is an essential diligence tool that allows us to view a history of booking records. When contracted for additional services, we then research these findings to determine whether the arrests resulted in passable convictions.

The only passable offenses we provide are misdemeanor and felony convictions. We developed PF NY, in conjunction with the NYS law enforcement, as an alternative method to obtaining criminal information in New York State. By digging down to the level of booking data, Pointer File New York™ overcomes the fundamental and systemic flaws associated with the NYS OCA search.

In this case study we will take a look at an individual who had court records that were pending, and one so recent that the New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) did not provide it. We will be exploring how Pointer File New York™ (PF NY) was useful. We had previously run this individual for one of our clients back in April of 2017. This particular client runs new background investigations every time their employees are up for a promotion. Our client’s package includes the PF NY, a Sex Offender Registry search, and an Origin Search. For this particular individual, our client requested a NYS OCA as well. We ran the PF NY search first, see figure 1 for the PF NY.

We have a specific protocol involving the research of PF NY “hits,” when contracted for additional services. The common practice for the majority of our clients is to open up a Developed Criminal Record. Wherein we call on each individual booking record, and locate the court in which we need to reach out to in order to obtain the final disposition. We then ran the NYS OCA as the client requested, which came back with no records. See Figure 2 ¹ for NYS OCA results.

Figure 2 - New York State Office of Court Administration Statewide Results
¹ Names have been changed to protect their identities.

When contracted for additional services, every instance where Screening Logic receives PF NY hits that are not obtained by the NYS OCA search, we recommend that further research is performed. After receiving no results from the NYS OCA search, we reached out to our liaison at the New York State Office of Court Administration, requesting information on all booking records for this individual. Our liaison told us that she did not have any records relating to our subject. We reached out to the arresting agency and discovered that the case had gone to Volney Town Court. Our researcher then reached out to the court to obtain the case information.

When the NYS OCA Liaison does not offer satisfactory information regarding all booking records in question, we will reach out to the jails to obtain the court information. We will then follow up with said courts in order to obtain the final disposition information for each charge. Not every booking record results in a corresponding passable conviction and there are often dead ends.

We did reach out to the Wayne County Jail as well as the Oswego County Jail in order to obtain the court information for the remaining two booking records. Per the records department of the Oswego County Jail, the booking record dated 04/11/2016, was in relation to the case out of Volney Town Court. The subject was held in that jail for a continuance of sentencing. The Wayne County Jail had similar records in regard to the 05/08/2016 booking record. The subject was then transferred from the Oswego county jail to the Wayne County jail, in order to complete the 180 day jail sentence. These particular booking records are prime examples of when a booking record does not necessarily equate to a conviction.

As a result of thorough research and due diligence, we came to the rightful conclusion that a registered sex offender did not have results come back on the New York State Office of Court Administration search.

Figure 3 - New York State Sex Offender Registry Results

Figure 4 displays the completed results provided by the court. The case was completed; the NYS OCA did not have any results in relation to this case other than an incident date and the court information. Furthermore, that information was only provided to Screening Logic after contact was made regarding their reporting of no records.

Figure 4 - Developed Criminal Record Results

The second case we were able to provide to the client was a pending Forgery case. This is a second case that the NYS OCA did not have any other information on besides the court control number, and the incident date, after originally reporting no records. Figure 5 are the final results sent to the client for the forgery case.

End Results

This evidence is in favor of the Pointer File New York inquiry. If used in conjunction with the New York Office of Court Administration, the results are the most accurate and compliant with FCRA guidelines. However, cases of this nature should not be missed by the NYS OCA or any company providing a background investigation. PF NY was on the client’s side in properly locating and identifying a convicted sex offender. Due diligence and thorough research by our staff did not accept the NYS OCA’s lack of results, and thus, delivered a complete criminal history for the subject.

Additional Information

New York State Office Of Court Administration Has Its Limitations