SafestHires recently introduced the BitCheck Dossier. This is a background check report on the founders and team members of a cryptocurrency startup.

An Intital Coin Offering (ICO) is an event in which a cryptocurrency or blockchain startup sells tokens that represent ownership of its core blockchain, in an effort to raise money to develop the product or scale an existing product.

Because ICOs are almost completely unregulated, the potential for fraud is far greater than investing in a public company or even a non-crypto startup.

The BitCheck Dossier can help people make an informed decision about which cryptocurrency startups to support.

But what’s the BitCheck Dossier consist of?

It begins with an identity verification. We obtain the names, social security numbers or national identification numbers and dates of birth on the founders and team members. This information is provided to us by the startup with written authorization for us to perform the other searches.

We then move to the work history verification, where we contact the Human Resources Department or equivalent person at the companies where the founders and team members have worked. We verify their positions held, dates of employment, most recent salary and eligibility for re-hire. If anyone was self-employed, we verify this by contacting their past clients.

Next, we verify their education credentials by obtaining a copy of their degree certificate and contacting the college or university they attended to verify the degree they provided to us is legitimate. We also verify their major course of study, their grade point average, dates of attendance and graduation date.

Once we’ve verified their identity, work history and education credentials, we move to the next stage where we check court records to determine fiscal responsibility and find out if they have any criminal convictions.

In the USA and overseas, we are checking for bankruptcies, judgements and other civil records and we also check court records, national criminal database records and terrorist  / politically exposed person watch lists

We then package the results into a report (the BitCheck Dossier) and deliver this to the startup. They can feature the dossier as a downloadable file on their website for anyone to see.

What makes the BitCheck Dossier so beneficial is that it’s considered a Best Practice under “Know Your Customer” (KYC) procedures, which assess and monitor customer risk. KYC procedures refer to due diligence activities that financial institutions and other regulated companies must perform to ascertain relevant information from their clients for the purpose of doing business with them.

The idea is that knowing your customers – verifying identities, making sure they’re real, confirming they’re not on any prohibited lists, and assessing their risk factors – can keep money laundering, terrorism financing, and other fraud schemes at bay. 

The first component of KYC is the Customer Identification Program or CIP, which entails obtaining identifying information on a company’s founders and leadership team. Sources may include:

> Certified articles of incorporation

> Government-issued business license

> Partnership agreement

> Financial references

> Information from a consumer reporting agency

> A financial statement

SafestHires is a Consumer Reporting Agency, which makes the information contained in the BitCheck Dossier compliant with KYC procedures.

A background check should be the very first due-diligence step before investing in a cryptocurrency startup. 

Before you buy any Altcoins/Tokens, ask the startup to purchase a BitCheck Dossier on their founders and team and share it with you. They can contact us here.