What It Felt Like to Find Your Own Mugshot That Doesn’t Exist

Picture this. You’re applying for a new apartment. The landlord runs a check. Days pass. Then you get the call: there’s a problem with your background. You don’t know what it says. You don’t know how to fix it. You don’t even know what service the landlord used.

So you do what any reasonable person does. You look yourself up. You find TruthFinder or Instant Checkmate. You type in your own name. And there it is. Before you’ve even paid a cent, a banner screams at you: “The arrest records section of your report WILL SHOW arrest or conviction records associated with [your name].” Fake case numbers appear. The clock ticks. The interface pulses with urgency.

You pay the $27 subscription fee. Maybe the $34 one. The report loads. The “criminal records” section is empty — or it lists a speeding ticket from 2011. The terror you felt was manufactured. The money is gone. And the inaccurate data that started this whole spiral? Still in the database. Still visible to every employer, landlord, or suspicious ex-partner who searches your name tomorrow.

Now imagine you try to fix it. You find a button that says “Remove.” You click it. The item vanishes from your screen. Relief. Then you find out — maybe months later, from a family member who looked you up — that nothing changed. The item is still there. TruthFinder’s own FTC complaint confirms that removed data stayed visible to every other user. The company took no action, ran no investigation, and told no one that the information had been disputed. They just made it disappear from your view, like closing your own eyes and calling the room dark.

You try “Flag as Inaccurate.” A pop-up arrives. It asks you to describe the problem. You fill it out carefully. You click the green button. A second pop-up tells you the data “has been flagged” and “Our data team will review this information.” That was a lie. The FTC says flatly: Defendants took no action to investigate, modify, or correct flagged reports. The pop-up was theater. The data team review that never happened was a promise designed to make you stop complaining and keep paying.

The people most exposed to this harm were ordinary people searching for safety — parents trying to vet a nanny, tenants with no money to fight an inaccurate background check, job applicants who couldn’t understand why they kept getting rejected. These consumers were not collateral damage in a complex financial scheme. They were the product. Their fear was the revenue model.

And the company knew. Thousands of consumers filed complaints about inaccuracies. The FTC complaint documents that in numerous instances, consumers told TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate their data was wrong — and were directed to click the useless “Remove” or “Flag” buttons as if that would help. The company did not fix the data. It fixed the complaint. Two entirely different things.

There is a specific quality to the humiliation of being falsely tagged as a criminal. It is not the same as a billing dispute or a broken product. It attaches to your name. It follows you into job applications, lease agreements, first dates, family Google searches. You cannot recall it the way you return a defective appliance. And TruthFinder’s business model depended on that stickiness — the harder the false record is to remove, the more desperate consumers become, and the more likely they are to stay subscribed, keep clicking, keep paying.

Verbatim: What the FTC Complaint Actually Says

The following are direct quotes from the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint filed September 11, 2023 in the Southern District of California. Every word is sourced. Nothing is paraphrased.

The Population-Scale Damage

Public Health: The Psychological Cost of False Criminal Records

The FTC complaint documents a pattern of consumer harm that extends well beyond financial loss into documented psychological distress, erosion of trust, and barriers to basic life stability.

• Thousands of consumers filed complaints with the companies about inaccuracies in their own background reports. These were not passive observations; they were active distress signals from people whose reputations, housing access, or employment were on the line.
• The false criminal record display — complete with fabricated case numbers and language stating reports “WILL SHOW arrest or conviction records” — is a documented vector for acute psychological harm. Being falsely identified as having a criminal history triggers fear, shame, and anxiety, even before any third party has seen the report.
• The company’s routing of consumer disputes into fake resolution buttons (confirmed dead ends) extended the harm indefinitely. Consumers who believed they had corrected their records continued to be exposed to denial of housing, employment, and financial services with no actual recourse taken on their behalf.
• The Guardian Protection Suite, available to TruthFinder subscribers from 2018 to 2020, allowed subscribers to edit reports about other people — adding information that TruthFinder made no attempt to verify. This created a secondary harm vector: anyone with a grudge could contaminate a target’s background report with unvetted information.

Economic Inequality: Who Bears the Cost of Manufactured Fear

The revenue model at the center of this case transferred money from ordinary consumers — many of them searching for basic safety information — to a corporate structure generating nearly $200 million per year through manufactured urgency and false data.

• Subscriptions cost $27–$34 per month and auto-renewed unless the subscriber took explicit action to cancel. Consumers tricked by false criminal record claims into subscribing were not simply buying a product; they were being enrolled in a recurring billing trap on the basis of a lie.
• The consumers most harmed by inaccurate background reports are systematically those with the least power to fight back: renters with limited housing options, job seekers in competitive markets, and gig workers whose income depends on passing screening checks run by platforms and landlords using services like these.
• Because the “Remove” and “Flag as Inaccurate” buttons created the appearance of a complaint resolution mechanism, many consumers likely believed they had resolved the issue and did not seek legal remedies, file CFPB complaints, or consult attorneys. The fake UX effectively closed the door on legitimate recourse.
• Employers and landlords who used these reports for screening — and the FTC documents that Defendants knew this was happening and allowed it to continue — may have rejected qualified applicants based on fabricated or inaccurate data. Those rejected applicants paid the price; the companies collected the subscription fees from both the screener and potentially from the screened person trying to see what the screener was seeing.
• The FCRA’s requirements for employment-purpose consumer reports — prior written disclosure to the subject, written consent, and adverse action notification — were entirely bypassed. Workers lost jobs or were denied them, with no notice that a background report was the cause and no copy of the report to contest.
• The incentivized HighYa reviews scheme suppressed authentic negative reviews from consumers trying to warn others. The mechanism for collective consumer self-protection — public peer reviews — was actively neutralized by corporate money. The people who needed the warning the most never got it.

What the Numbers Actually Mean

Your Move: Who to Contact and How to Fight Back

The FTC filed this complaint in September 2023. Pending resolution, the corporate structure under PubRec, LLC remains operational. The people holding positions of authority at The Control Group — the entity that actually employs everyone and runs the operation — are the ones who can be held accountable. Here is where pressure belongs and what you can do.

Key Defendants (Per FTC Complaint Filing)

• PubRec, LLC — Parent holding company; wholly owns all other defendants. 375 Camino de la Reina, Suite 400, San Diego, CA 90218.
• The Control Group Media Company, LLC — The entity that employs all staff, runs all marketing, engineering, legal, and finance. Same address. This is the operational brain of the enterprise.
• TruthFinder, LLC — Consumer-facing brand at TruthFinder.com; no employees of its own.
• Instant Checkmate, LLC — Consumer-facing brand at InstantCheckmate.com; no employees of its own. Previously subject to 2014 FCRA consent order.
• Intelicare Direct, LLC — Runs customer support for all defendants; 9596 Chesapeake Avenue, Suite A, San Diego, CA 92123.

FTC Attorneys on This Case

• Katherine E. McCarron — D.C. Bar No. 486335; Division of Privacy and Identity Protection; (202) 326-2333.
• Robin L. Wetherill — CA Bar No. 323912; Division of Privacy and Identity Protection; (202) 326-2220.

Regulatory Watchlist: File Complaints Here

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — ReportFraud.ftc.gov. File a complaint about background check services, false criminal records, fake review schemes, and auto-renewing subscription deception.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — ConsumerFinance.gov/complaint. The CFPB enforces consumer financial protection laws and can receive complaints about background screening companies operating as consumer reporting agencies under the FCRA.
• California Attorney General — oag.ca.gov/contact. All five defendants are registered in California. The state AG has independent authority to enforce consumer protection laws.
• Your State Attorney General — Most states have consumer protection divisions that accept complaints about deceptive business practices. If you paid a subscription based on a false criminal record claim, that is a documented deceptive trade practice in your state too.

Grassroots and Mutual Aid Actions

• If you or someone you know was denied housing or employment while these companies were running their FCRA-violating screening business, document it. Write down dates, names, the company that ran the check, and the outcome. This documentation can support a private lawsuit under the FCRA, which allows individual consumers to sue for actual damages and statutory damages.
• Share this article in tenant-rights, workers-rights, and housing justice community groups. The people most targeted by deceptive background check services are renters and gig workers — the same communities already running mutual aid networks. This information is relevant to their daily survival.
• Contact local Legal Aid organizations in San Diego and your own city. Several tenant-rights and employment-rights Legal Aid groups actively pursue FCRA cases on behalf of consumers who were harmed by inaccurate background checks. Many do this for free.
• If you are a current or former subscriber who was told an individual had criminal records that turned out to be empty or only traffic violations, you may have a private right of action under the FTC Act and the FCRA. Consult a consumer protection attorney. Many take these cases on contingency.
• Organize at the local level. If your city or county uses background check services for any public purpose — housing authority screening, city contractor vetting — ask your city council representative what services they use and whether those services comply with FCRA requirements for maximum possible accuracy.