Pre-employ Background Check Errors

If a Pre-employ background check — now delivered under the brand JDP — is standing between you and a job, an inaccurate report is not something you have to accept. Pre-employ.com, Inc. is a consumer reporting agency under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), so you can demand your file, force a real investigation, and recover damages if a wrong report cost you the position. Our Employment Background Checks page explains employment screening generally. This page is about Pre-employ specifically: the rebrand that confuses people, the conflicting dispute addresses the company itself publishes, and the healthcare exclusion-list errors that end nursing and caregiving careers overnight.

What is Pre-employ.com (JDP)?

Pre-employ.com, Inc. is an employment background-screening company that has operated since the 1990s out of Redding, California and now trades under the brand JDP, with a headquarters address in Wexford, Pennsylvania. It describes itself as a founding and accredited member of the Professional Background Screening Association, and JDP claims more than 10,000 client organizations and over six million screenings a year — the company's own marketing figures, not audited numbers.

Pre-employ, JDP, and JD Palatine: what we can and cannot confirm

Here is what is verified. The company's own about page carries a post titled "Pre-employ is Now JDP." Its contact page redirects to jdp.com, and the consumer dispute intake form at candidate.pre-employ.com now redirects to a JDP-hosted address. The footer social link points to JD Palatine, and jdp.com names that entity. Source.

Here is what is not verified, and we will not pretend otherwise. The two brands tell different founding stories — pre-employ.com says it has served clients since 1994, jdp.com says JDP was founded in 2009 — and JDP keeps offices in both Wexford and Redding. Whether this was a merger, an acquisition, or purely a brand consolidation is not something public records established, and we make no claim about it. What matters practically: the legal entity named in recent federal court captions is Pre-employ.com, Inc., and that is the name the CFPB carries on its list of consumer reporting companies. If your report says Pre-employ and the website says JDP, you have not landed on the wrong company.

What Pre-employ actually screens

The product set is wider than most screeners: criminal-record searches; employment, education and professional verifications; registry searches; OIG searches, healthcare sanctions checks and FACIS continuous monitoring; credit reports; drug and occupational health screening; motor vehicle reports; I-9 and E-Verify; and social media screening. The stated customer concentration is in healthcare, education, staffing, retail and nonprofits — which is why so many of the disputes we see come from nurses and caregivers rather than office hires.

How to contact Pre-employ.com (JDP)

Use both of these. The reason is explained immediately below.

• CFPB-published address: Pre-employ.com, Inc., Attn: Compliance Department, P.O. Box 491570, Redding, CA 96049
• Company-published address: Attention: Compliance Department, Pre-employ.com, 10675 Perry Highway #607, Wexford, PA 15090
• Phone: 855-940-3232 (main and file review); 530-629-5296 Option 3 and 267-200-2728 are also published for disputes; JDP lists 844-899-9424
• Email: compliance@pre-employ.com; disputes@jdp.com
• Consumer pages: pre-employ.com/consumer-resource-information and jdp.com/consumer

The dispute-address conflict — and how to handle it

This is the most consumer-hostile thing about this company, and it is entirely documented on its own live pages. The CFPB's official list gives a Redding, California P.O. Box addressed to the Compliance Department. Source. The company's own consumer page gives the Wexford, Pennsylvania suite address instead. Source. JDP's contact page and privacy policy give different phone numbers again. And the ZIP code printed in JDP's published privacy policy for the Wexford address is not a valid ZIP code at all — the correct one is 15090.

Our advice: send your dispute to both the Redding P.O. Box and the Wexford address, by certified mail, return receipt requested. Call first and ask the compliance line to confirm in writing which address is current. Two envelopes cost a few dollars; a dispute that dies in a mailroom can cost you the thirty-day reinvestigation window and the job.

Your report link expires 24 hours after you open it

JDP's consumer page states that report links expire twenty-four hours after first access. Source. That is a real trap. People open the link on a phone during a work break, intend to read it properly that evening, and find it dead. The moment you get the link, download the file and save it in two places. If you never captured your report, you cannot show anyone what was wrong with it.

The full-file request the company concedes in writing

Most screeners describe your disclosure right as narrowly as they can. Pre-employ does the opposite, and you should use it. Its consumer page expressly acknowledges a "Free Copy of Full File" under 16 C.F.R. Part 610, noting only that the full file "takes longer than a standard background check copy." Ask for the full file, in those words, and cite the regulation they cited. To process it they ask for your full name, confirmation or ID number, Social Security number and date of birth (expressly not by email), contact details, a copy of your photo ID, supporting documents, your signature and the date.

Common Pre-employ / JDP errors we see

Built from this company's actual product mix:

• Healthcare exclusion and sanction hits — OIG/LEIE, FACIS, GSA, state Medicaid lists — matched to the wrong person
• Registry hits (sex-offender, abuse, professional-discipline) matched on name alone
• Criminal records belonging to a different person with a similar name or date of birth
• Expunged, sealed, dismissed or non-conviction records still reported
• Employment dates, job titles, degrees and licenses returned as "unable to verify"
• Credit-report errors, sourced from the national bureaus, republished into a hiring decision
• Motor vehicle report errors affecting CDL, delivery and medical-transport applicants
• Drug-screen and occupational-health results filed under the wrong candidate
• Social-media findings attributed to an account that is not yours

Healthcare exclusion lists: the false "excluded individual"

This is the error category that matters most here, and almost nobody explains it to the people it happens to. Federal and state exclusion databases — the HHS Office of Inspector General's List of Excluded Individuals and Entities, GSA's exclusion list, state Medicaid lists, and the commercial FACIS compilation that aggregates them — are matched on names and rough identifiers, with no fingerprint and often no full Social Security number. Share a name with an excluded provider and you can be reported as excluded having never been sanctioned by anyone.

For a nurse, CNA, home-health aide, pharmacy technician or medical biller, that single flag is career-ending across an entire sector at once: no facility that bills Medicare or Medicaid will employ someone listed as excluded, so there is no "try a different hospital." Worse, FACIS 1M-style products are continuous monitoring — the check re-runs indefinitely, so a false hit can land months after you were hired and get you fired from a job you were doing well. If that happens, get the report, look up the OIG's own record for the person actually listed (the LEIE is public and searchable), and dispute with proof that the excluded individual is not you: different middle name, date of birth, license number, state.

Registry searches matched on a name alone

The same weakness runs through sex-offender registries, abuse registries, and professional-discipline databases, which frequently publish a name and a city and little else. A screener that reports a hit without confirming identifiers is not assuring maximum possible accuracy — it is passing along a guess. Registry false positives are also the hardest to shake informally, because employers treat them as disqualifying without discussion.

Records that are wrong, stale, or legally erased

Criminal-record mismatches, cases reported without their dismissals, and expunged or sealed matters that reappear are all live problems here. Pre-employ's own newsroom tracks expungement-law changes, including implementation delays in Minnesota and new Pennsylvania ordinances — evidence the company knows court data lags the law. Knowing it and reporting accurately are different things.

How a Pre-employ error hurts you

Screening reports land after the offer, when your leverage is lowest. In healthcare the fallout is often worse than a withdrawn offer: an exclusion or registry flag can pull a credential into question, get you removed from a shift schedule, or cost you a placement your school or staffing agency arranged. Because the flag comes from a database rather than a court, employers assume it has been verified. It frequently has not been, and the FCRA puts that burden on the reporting company — but you have to invoke it.

Pre-employ.com's track record with regulators

No enforcement action we could find

We found no Federal Trade Commission action, no CFPB enforcement action or consent order, and no state attorney general action against Pre-employ.com, Inc. or JDP; the company does not appear in the CFPB's published enforcement database. Source. What is confirmed is that Pre-employ.com, Inc. is on the CFPB's official list of consumer reporting companies, which establishes that it is FCRA-covered and owes you disclosure of your file. Source.

A decade of federal FCRA filings

The court record does show a steady run of individual Fair Credit Reporting Act suits naming Pre-employ.com, Inc. across California, Oregon, Arizona, Missouri and Florida from 2013 to 2023, with a cluster of California filings in 2016. Two examples: Speers v. Pre-Employ.com, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-01849 (D. Or.) Source, and Rogers v. Pre-Employ.com, Inc., No. 0:23-cv-61537 (S.D. Fla.), filed August 10, 2023 and voluntarily dismissed with prejudice about a month later. Source. The docket does not say why Rogers ended, and we will not tell you it settled — we do not know. We found no class certification and no reported settlement amount, and we publish no raw docket-search count, because those searches are not strict and overstate the total.

Zero CFPB complaints does not mean zero errors

Search the CFPB's public complaint database for Pre-employ.com, Inc. and you get nothing — the company does not even appear in the database's company index. Source. Do not read that as a clean record. Employment screeners are systematically under-represented in that database for a structural reason: the CFPB is a financial regulator, and a rejected job applicant almost never thinks to file a banking complaint about a hiring decision. Many never learn which company reported on them at all. A zero here measures consumer awareness, not accuracy.

Your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

Four FCRA duties do most of the work in a Pre-employ dispute. The company must use reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of what it reports (§1681e(b)) — a duty that squarely covers matching an exclusion-list or registry entry to the right human being. It must reinvestigate your dispute rather than simply reconfirm what its database already said, and delete what it cannot verify (§1681i); the company's own FAQ acknowledges the thirty-day period. When it reports public-record information for employment purposes, it must notify you at the time or keep strict procedures ensuring the information is complete and up to date (§1681k). And before an employer acts on the report, you are entitled to a copy and a summary of your rights, with a genuine chance to respond (§1681b(b)(3)).

How to dispute a Pre-employ (JDP) background check

1. Download and save your report the moment you get the link — it expires twenty-four hours after you first open it.
2. Ask the employer for the copy of the report and summary of rights required before any rejection, and ask in writing that the decision be held.
3. Request your full file under 16 C.F.R. Part 610, citing the company's own published acknowledgment of that right.
4. Dispute in writing to both the Redding P.O. Box and the Wexford address, certified mail, return receipt requested, enclosing proof — court dispositions, expungement orders, the OIG's public listing for whoever is actually excluded, licenses, W-2s, ID.
5. If the report is not corrected, or it already cost you the job or the shift, contact an FCRA attorney.

This information is general and is not legal advice for your specific situation.

Did an inaccurate Pre-employ background check cost you a job?

A Pre-employ or JDP screening report is a consumer report under the FCRA, and the company must meet strict accuracy standards when it sells one about you. If a false exclusion hit, a stranger's criminal record, or a wrongly unverified credential cost you a job, a clinical placement, or a position you already held, you may be entitled to money damages including lost wages. The case review is free and we handle these matters nationwide.

Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.

How The Kim Law Firm helps

We are consumer-protection lawyers handling Fair Credit Reporting Act cases across the United States. We help people whose Pre-employ or JDP report is inaccurate — an exclusion or registry hit that belongs to someone else, an expunged or dismissed case still being reported, a verification wrongly returned as unverifiable, or a mixed file built on the wrong Social Security number or date of birth.

What we cannot do is make a true record go away; if the entry is correct, the FCRA is not the right tool and we will tell you so early. Where the report is wrong, we pursue both the correction and the money the error cost you, and there is no fee unless we win. If a different screener's name is on your paperwork, see our page on ADP Screening and Selection Services.

Industry accreditation, and what it does not guarantee

Pre-employ.com has been screening since the 1990s out of Redding, California, and now trades as JDP with headquarters in Wexford, Pennsylvania. It describes itself as a founding and accredited member of the Professional Background Screening Association. Accreditation is a real signal about process and it is worth something, but it is a statement about the company's internal standards, not a certification that any individual report about you is accurate. Every accredited screener in the country still gets records wrong, and accreditation neither raises nor lowers the accuracy standard the statute imposes.

• OPENonline — an Ohio public-records aggregator supplying background screening services.
• Backgrounds Online — a long-established California screener operating under a trade name.
• Global HR Research — a Florida screener working the same employer market.
• ScoutLogic — running criminal, employment and education screening on a managed model.
• Data Facts — a Memphis company serving employers and lenders from the same operation.

If a screening company points to its accreditation in response to your dispute, that is not an answer to the question you asked. The obligation is to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, and once you dispute, to reinvestigate the specific item. Ask what the agency did with your dispute: which source it contacted, on what date, and what that source said. Membership in a trade body is not part of that answer.

Screened by a different company? We also handle HireRight background check errors, Sterling background check errors, Checkr background check errors, and First Advantage background check errors — and you can start with our overview of the major background check companies.

Frequently asked questions

How do I dispute a Pre-employ background check?

Get the report, identify each error, and dispute in writing with documents attached. Because the company publishes conflicting dispute addresses, send to both the Redding, California P.O. Box the CFPB lists and the Wexford, Pennsylvania compliance address, certified mail, return receipt requested. Keep copies of everything.

My report says Pre-employ but the website says JDP — is that the same company?

The screening business now trades as JDP, and pre-employ.com pages redirect to jdp.com. The entity named in recent federal court filings and on the CFPB's list is Pre-employ.com, Inc. We do not make claims about the corporate mechanics behind the rebrand, but you are dealing with the same screening operation.

An exclusion list says I am excluded, and I never was. What do I do?

Get the report, then look up the excluded person on the OIG's public LEIE database and document every identifier that differs from yours — middle name, date of birth, license number, state. Dispute in writing with that comparison attached, and tell the employer in writing that the match is disputed and unverified.

Pre-employ says my check is still "verifying" — can a delay violate the FCRA?

A delay by itself usually is not a violation, but a reinvestigation that just re-confirms the original database entry can be. Once you dispute, the reinvestigation clock generally runs thirty days. If the employer is about to move on, ask in writing that the decision be held and give the company your documentation immediately.

Can I sue Pre-employ.com for a background check error?

Possibly. If the company reported inaccurate information about you, failed to reinvestigate reasonably, or the pre-adverse-action rules were ignored, and you were harmed, there may be a claim. Bring us the report, the dispute correspondence and the rejection letter and we will assess it.

I already lost the job. Is it too late?

No — losing the job is the harm the statute is aimed at, and it typically strengthens a claim rather than ending it. Keep the report, the adverse-action notice, your dispute letters and certified-mail receipts, and any record of lost income.

Is the case review really free?

Yes, with no obligation. If your report came from a different screener after an acquisition or rebrand, our page on OPENonline covers a similar dispute-routing problem.

Where we practice, and what to do if you are somewhere else

The Kim Law Firm is licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and that is where we handle matters directly.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act is a federal statute. It applies the same way in every state, it is enforced in federal court, and the deadlines and remedies do not change when you cross a state line. So the answer to "does this apply to me in Ohio" is yes — but the answer to "can you represent me in Ohio" depends on the case and on where it would be filed.

If you are outside Pennsylvania and New Jersey, contact us anyway. Some matters can be handled from here. Some are better sent to a consumer lawyer admitted where you are, and we will tell you that plainly rather than let a deadline run while you wait. Either way you will get an answer, and the review costs nothing.

The one thing that does not wait is the clock. A claim under the Act generally must be brought within two years of the date you discover the violation, and in no event more than five years after the violation occurred. Finding out late does not extend the outside limit.