Identity Theft in the News

Journal of Business Interview with President of CheckMySSN.com

Former security-business owner starts dot-com here

CheckMySSN.com offers report that tips off users to fraud 

Jim Schoenleber, a former cop who built a security-guard business here into a 2,000-employee regional powerhouse before selling it to retire to a fishing lodge, has come out of retirement to launch a dot-com venture that helps consumers know if someone else is using their Social Security number.

The new venture, CheckMySSN.com, uses a Web site to offer consumers an instant online report showing how their Social Security numbers have been used, says Schoenleber, its CEO. The site, at www.CheckyMySSN.com, went live early this week. Using the site, consumers can pay $4.95 for a report that provides just enough information to know if someone is using their Social Security number, but not enough for the report itself to be used fraudulently, Schoenleber says.

He says he got the idea for the business from work being done by Argus-Search Inc., an arm of his former Argus Services Inc. business that he sold off in pieces in late 2003. He sold many of the assets of Argus Services’ security-guard business to Securitas Security Services USA Inc., a unit of the Swedish conglomerate Securitas AB, but separately sold Argus-Search, which does pre-employment background checks for employers, to its manager, Jeannene Kurtz. He later married Kurtz, now Jeannene Schoenleber, and the two run Argus-Search together today.

That company, which is located at 18303 E. Corbin Place, in Spokane Valley, has about 400 national clients and employs eight people. Schoenleber says he noticed that a surprising number of the people Argus-Search did background checks on turned out to have multiple names attached to their Social Security number or whose names didn’t match the Social Security number they provided. He then studied 1,000 such searches the company had done and he says he found that 28 percent of them showed such inconsistencies.

“We do thousands and thousands of them and the numbers are consistent,” says Schoen­leber. “We see a lot of mismatched Social Security numbers, a lot of activity that isn’t consistent.” The idea of offering a quick check to the public “just seemed too simple,” he says.

Schoenleber says it took about six months to get the new business up and running, and it launched the Web site early this week.

CheckMySSN.com, which for now is operating as a division of Argus-Search, gets its information for the reports it produces from the federal Social Security Administration and national credit bureaus, he says.

He says it’s the same information companies such as Argus-Search have been using for years for the pre-employment screenings they do for clients.

The reports that CheckMySSN.com provides, however, are “sanitized” so they can be provided online to consumers without the risk that they might be used fraudulently by others, Schoenleber says. For instance, the top of the report includes the consumer’s first name and middle initial, but only the initial of the last name, and only the last two digits of his or her Social Security number.

Below, it lists the partial names and partial addresses of everyone who has used the Social Security number for which the report was ordered, as well as a date range for when the number was used each time.

In a “clear” report, one in which there are no inconsistencies, the only names to appear on the report would be ones the consumer would recognize as his or her own—usually just one name unless, for instance, the person’s name had changed at some point due to a marriage or divorce. Similarly, such a report would include only addresses the consumer recognized as ones he or she had used in the past.

In what’s called a “compromised” report, however, multiple names might appear for the specific Social Security number, along with addresses that don’t look familiar to the consumer who ordered the report.

In those cases, CheckMySSN.com has a place on its Web site that offers advice on what to do next, and provides telephone numbers for identity-theft hotlines operated by the federal government and major national credit bureaus.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, 8.3 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2005, its most recent report, and it says a person’s Social Security number is particularly valuable to identity thieves because it can be a key piece of information enabling them to create new credit accounts fraudulently.

Schoenleber says that the company’s CheckMySSN.com site uses secure encryption when handling orders and delivering the reports, and doesn’t retain the Social Security numbers of the people who use it.

He says the venture must pay other services for some of the information it receives for the report, and that the profit margins for CheckMySSN are “pretty tight.” He adds, “We’re looking for volume.”

Reports similar to what the site produces have been done routinely for years for employers who want to pre-screen potential employees, he says, but he believes no one else is offering this specific service directly to consumers.

Schoenleber says he has committed to spend about $400,000 on a national radio advertising campaign that was to start this week and will focus on AM talk radio. The package of nationally syndicated shows during which the ads will run, including the Rush Limbaugh show, together reach around 150 million listeners, he says.

He says he doesn’t know what kind of response the ads will get, but says if he could get 6 percent to 10 percent of those listeners to respond, “That would be phenomenal.”

The radio ads began airing just after midnight on Monday, and within minutes, the site began receiving orders, Schoenleber says.

For now, the new venture has just a handful of employees, some of whom are shared with Argus Search, but long term he hopes to grow the company to 30 to 50 employees and annual revenues of $30 million or more, he says.

Schoenleber, an animated ex-detective and former fishing guide who drives a black Hummer, doesn’t blink when offering such ambitious goals. When he bought Argus Services here in 1987, it had just 35 employees, and by the time he dismantled it in 2003, it had roughly 2,000 workers at 26 offices in eight Western states, and annual revenues of over $20 million.

He sold off the pieces of Argus Services, which in addition to the security-guard business and Argus-Search included a division that sold security surveillance equipment, largely because he was having heart problems at the time.

Schoenleber now says he feels fine, adding, “I quit smoking and got in shape.”

Initially after the sale, Schoenleber, now 60, retreated to a former fishing lodge on the Rogue River in Oregon, which he since rebuilt himself and has been spending month-long stints at over the past four years. Rather than operating it as a business, he uses it for himself and friends.

“It’s good to be back in the game,” he says.

Source: Paul Read, Journal of Business, Spokane, WA -  View Original Article Here
January 10, 2008