Fingerprinting with Expunged Record?
I’ve been at my BB for a few weeks now and got a request for fingerprint collection. I had a misdemeanor (from 5+ years ago) that was expunged and didn’t show up on the initial background check. Would this fingerprint unearth my expunged record or am I worrying for no reason?
I told HR about a few community service stints I did and they didn't even turn up on the check. (this is in the UK)
I will explain what happened to me and you can decide how relevant it is to you. I had a couple charges (all the same incident) expunged, and nothing was flagged during my standard background check that my employer ran. Then, since I was a fresh grad, FINRA ran a background check when I registered, and this background check included fingerprints. The FINRA background check picked up my expunged records and they notified my employer. The way it was explained to me, FINRA (or whatever company they pay to do their background checks) pulls records regularly from a variety of databases and stores them. So they pulled my records before it was expunged and long before I was applying for this job, and it was stored somewhere in the background check world and was flagged a couple years later. The good news is that my employer understood that it was expunged and should have never been stored and it did not end up being an issue. I also had FINRA delete those expunged records from my FINRA file, which purportedly they had to do upon request since they were expunged. I have been through several background check processes since my arrest and this FINRA incident is the only time it's been flagged, and the FINRA incident is also the only time I've been fingerprinted, so are they related? Who knows.
I’ll have expunged charges as well, so if they’re expunged I don’t need to disclose them right?
OP here. I have an expunged record. Didn’t disclose it and no issues with the fingerprint screen
I have a similar scenario as poster above... Had an incident where there were numerous misdemeanors involved. Was arrested, they obviously took finger prints, and the charges were later all dropped. First job out of college was within 5 years of the incident and even though the chargers were dropped, they were flagged by FINRA. My understanding is anytime there is a finger print involved, it is a DOJ background check. When the incidents came up, I thankfully had documentation to show they had been dropped, and everything was fine after I provided said documentation. I've had numerous employment background checks since, any time they have had fingerprints involved, they found the dismissed charges and wanted more info. Every time it was just a normal search without the finger prints, I cruised through without issue
Tip for anyone going through this now or reading it sometime in the future - A lot of local courts purge records after 3-5 years. This means that the background check will flag the incident, but if they've since purged their records, they will not be able to produce anything for you to help document your dismissal or other verdict. I luckily was able to get the documents from my attorney about a year after the dismissal and have made duplicates for future purposes. Had I not, I probably wouldn't be working in finance. Pretty crazy to me that they can delete all the information they have in this sort of situation but it does happen, so go get copies of everything you can if you don't already have them
To add to the others above, I had an arrest and no charges filed / everything supposedly expunged. But when FINRA did their background check I immediately got flagged to compliance. So it's a pretty good bet it'll come up but no reason to fret as if it was expunged then it's not like you were hiding anything as technically it shouldn't exist.
I had charges expunged in VA and they showed up in NY, because NY doesn’t believe in expunging records or something.
Aren't you getting fingerprinted for bonding? It's not for a second background check or some deeper FBI search, it's for insurance.
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