Turns Out a Top George Santos Donor Is in the Background-Check Business
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(Bloomberg) -- Another twist in the never-ending saga of George Santos: One of his top donors owns multiple employment screening companies. One simple search and the whole mess could have been averted.
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Josh Eisen, a former congressional candidate and long-time Republican donor, owns and operates two background investigation companies: Morningside Evaluations, a foreign work and education credential verification firm, and SpanTran, a company that offers more granular evaluations of foreign academic credentials for international students who want to apply to American universities.
Eisen donated over $35,000 to various Santos-related fundraising committees from 2020 to 2022, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
"I own background check companies, and I'm thinking, wow, for $50 I could have known,” Eisen said of the moment he first realized Santos had lied about nearly everything in his background. The disgraced New York congressman was a "virtuoso," Eisen said, who played the game perfectly — until he got caught.
Read more: George Santos's Defense That Everyone Lies on Their Résumés Has Truth to It
Since being exposed, Santos has become something of a walking billboard for background check companies, with some jumping on the opportunity to promote their services.
SRA Screening, a Manhattan-based company, is planning a social media ad campaign with the slogan: “Don’t get Santos’d.”
In addition to screening criminal records, the company verifies employment and education history.
“Those are very simple database searches. We would’ve known that George Santos never went to Baruch, we would’ve known George Santos never worked at Goldman Sachs,” said John Sherman, managing partner at SRA Screening. “We would’ve known in a matter of minutes. Employment verification costs $10.”
Sherman, who met Santos himself in passing a couple of times, said he had no reason to doubt he was who he said he was. “He seemed like a well-spoken guy, no one questioned it — that’s the problem.”
A Santos spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.
Background check providers have proliferated in recent years, and since records have been digitized and consolidated into databases, screening services are now much more affordable and accessible.
While the market for background checks is already fairly saturated — a 2019 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 92% of employers run employment screenings — the demand for new and different kinds of checks is growing.
Employers have started to expand screening beyond full-time hires to temporary help like volunteers and contractors, according to Kelly Uebel, general counsel for screening company Asurint and former chair of the Professional Background Screening Association. Some employers are also beginning to adopt continuous background check policies, screening employees on a regular basis. Analysis of job candidates’ social media profiles is another small but growing segment of the industry.
At the same time, a patchwork of new legislation has curbed the use of screening tools, especially the use of criminal background checks as cities and states aim to help those with convictions gain greater access to employment opportunities.
One group of job applicants that so far hasn’t been subject to mandatory background checks or security clearance investigations: members of Congress.
“It’s strange, we live in a society where the people who flip our burgers are screened, but we don’t do a background check on people running our country,” SRA Screening’s Sherman said.
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