Our office is putting together a significant fraud/money laundering case. One of the suspects has over 30 bank accounts that we know of so far. We would like to look at her credit report to see if there are more accounts that we do not know of. Someone said that we need a court order to do this? Has anyone ever encountered this issue before and do you know what I need to do?

Please help.

Why not use a grand jury subpoena, which if it is out-of-county, would be signed by the judge?

That's what we have done so far. I was thinking that perhaps a judge could just sign an order permitting us to run a credit check. Our probation department has that ability. This would save some time and avoid the credit bureaus from possibly objecting to the subpoena due to some federal law on financial privacy (assuming there is one) or something.

We will see. Thanks Ken.

yes, there is such a privacy law. Its called the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). It has some pretty heavy penalties for the illegal accessing of a person's credit report.

I am interested to know how your probation department is able to pull credit reports. I am not aware of any exception under the FCRA for probation departments, absent written consent from the probationer. See Title 15 USC sec. 1681 for more on the FCRA.

Both the FCRA and the Right to Financial Privacy Act (RFPA) embody traditional 4th Amendment protections. See Title 12 USC chpt. 35 for more on the RFPA. And they all carry significant penalties for violators!

Hmmm. If it embodies 4th amendment principles, then it must embody the principle of standing. If the info is readily availble on the commercial market, then the owner of the information has no reasonable expectation of privacy. Hence, we shouldn't need a warrant, just a check.

I find it abhorrent that any privacy nut that wants to can simply buy a credit report on me, but can cry foul if I have some basis to believe he might have committed murder but don't get a warrant.

The credit info is NOT readily available (at least legally). As far as the other, when you are engaged in a business transaction you sign a document giving permission to access your credit. The same is true on an application for employment. You have to give written permission at some point in the process for someone to LEGALLy access your credit files. Of course, there are always people willing to break the law to gain access, as evidenced by a recent political "scandel" involving some election group a year or two ago. The got some guy's credit history and bank records / cell records by "phishing", I believe.

Sigh ...

Of course our probation department only runs credit checks with the permission of probationers.

While I appreciate your faith in your fellow prosecutors that we are up to something illegal, we are NOT. We are conducting a criminal investigation involving money laundering. We are looking for accounts where proceeds of this crime may be located, not trying to refinance the defendant's beach house.

ah shucks the beach house would be a great for office morale...