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.
What has to happen before an employer can act on a Truescreen report
Status labels in an applicant portal change while a check runs, and a delay or a flag is not a decision. The step that matters legally comes later. Before an employer takes adverse action based in whole or in part on a background report — withdrawing an offer, pushing back a start date with no end, ending a placement — the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires it to give you a copy of the report and a written description of your rights under the Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(3)(A)). The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance to employers describes the same two documents. That letter is your window: it is the time to read the report line by line and dispute anything wrong, before the decision is final.
If the employer goes ahead anyway, a second notice has to follow. According to the FTC, it must give the name, address and phone number of the company that supplied the report, a statement that the screening company did not make the decision, and notice of your right to dispute the report and to get an additional free copy from the screening company if you ask within 60 days. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s summary of rights says the same: your file disclosure is free if a person has taken adverse action against you because of information in your report.
Records that should not be on the report at all
Some entries are errors however faithfully they were copied from a courthouse. The Act bars a consumer reporting agency from reporting civil suits, civil judgments and records of arrest that antedate the report by more than seven years from the date of entry (or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, if that is longer), and any other adverse item more than seven years old — except records of convictions, which the federal statute does not time-limit (15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(2), (a)(5)). An eight-year-old arrest that never led to a conviction should not appear on an ordinary employment report. One exception matters for professional hiring: those seven-year limits do not apply to a report used for a job paying, or reasonably expected to pay, $75,000 a year or more (§ 1681c(b)(3)).
The notice owed when public records are reported
When a screening company reports public-record information for employment that is likely to hurt your chances of getting the job — a criminal case, a civil judgment — the Act gives it two choices. It must either notify you at the time it reports the record, with the name and address of the employer receiving it, or maintain strict procedures designed to ensure the record is complete and up to date (15 U.S.C. § 1681k(a)). The FTC’s guidance to background screening companies describes the same either-or. A case reported without the dismissal that ended it is the kind of incomplete record that second option exists to prevent.
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. Your copy is free if an employer took adverse action based on the report and you ask within 60 days, 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 October 2026.