If a job offer stalled, a start date slipped, or an employer sent a pre-adverse action letter after a Truescreen background check, the report behind that decision is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Truescreen is one of the larger names in employment screening, but the rules are the same as for any screening company: you have the right to see the report, to dispute it free of charge, and to be compensated when an error costs you the job.
What Truescreen is
Truescreen, Inc. is a subsidiary of Vertical Screen, Inc., headquartered in Warminster, Pennsylvania, in the same corporate family as Certiphi Screening (which serves healthcare) and Business Information Group (financial services); the company traces the family to 1989. Its own FACT Act page states that Vertical Screen and Truescreen are a consumer reporting agency, and the company announced PBSA general accreditation in June 2024, which the Professional Background Screening Association lists under its accredited firms. The reports cover county, state, and federal criminal records, sex-offender registries, driving records, employment and education verification, drug testing, and electronic fingerprinting; universities are among the visible clients, and applicants usually meet the company through its ApplicationStation or myTruescreen portals. When it assembles those records and sells them to an employer, it is acting as a consumer reporting agency with every duty the FCRA imposes.
Where these reports go wrong
The failure modes follow the data. A criminal-record search matched on name and date of birth alone can attach a stranger’s record to your file — the same matching failure that produces a mixed credit file. A charge that was dismissed can be reported as if it were pending or resulted in a conviction; a misdemeanor can be graded as a felony; an expunged or sealed record can resurface from a stale database; and a non-conviction record older than seven years can appear even though the FCRA bars it. Verification errors are quieter but just as costly: wrong employment dates or a degree marked “unable to verify” read to a hiring manager as dishonesty. Every one of these reaches the employer as fact.
How to get your report and dispute it
Truescreen runs disputes and file requests through a Consumer Care department shared across the Vertical Screen family. According to the company’s own dispute page and the contact sheet employers such as George Mason University hand to applicants, you can reach it online at consumercare.truescreen.com, by phone at 1-800-260-1680, by fax at 1-888-495-8476, or by mail at Truescreen, Inc., Consumer Care Department, PO Box 541, Southampton, PA 18966. A request needs your full name, address, date of birth, phone number, and Social Security number, plus the details of what you are disputing and any documents that support it. A copy of your own report is free, and the FCRA gives the company 30 days to reinvestigate and correct or delete anything it cannot verify. Put the dispute in writing, attach the court disposition or the employment records that prove your point, and keep copies of everything — the paper trail is what later shows the company had notice and kept reporting anyway. Our guide to disputing a background check walks through the letter.
When it becomes a legal claim
Consumer reporting agencies must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, must reinvestigate disputes, and must keep reporting within the FCRA’s time limits. A stranger’s conviction on your report, a dismissed charge reported as a loss, or a report that survives a documented dispute unchanged is the exact failure the statute makes compensable: actual damages for the job you lost, statutory and punitive damages where the violation is willful, and attorney’s fees, which is why we handle these cases on contingency. If the employer acted on the report without giving you the pre-adverse action copy and summary of rights the FCRA requires, that is a separate claim against the employer. Truescreen sits alongside Cisive, Sterling, and the other companies in our background check company directory — and our background check error lawyer practice covers the rest: when and how you can sue a background check company, and what the rescinded job offer is worth.
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Published by The Kim Law Firm, LLC — about attorney Richard Kim. Last updated August 2026.