Applicant Screening

[Timothy M. Morella]

Hey everyone.  Hope your Sunday is going well.

So, I have an Applicant who has some issues on his credit report, specifically a few matters in collections.  Two of them relate to cellular companies, and one relates to another rental matter.

He has said that, for the cellular companies, they are both issues of identity theft (in a way, makes sense, as they both showed up on his report on the same month).  With regard to the rental matter, and being as brief as possible, his claim is that he had asked to be removed from a lease (found his roommates smoking weed), but that, in between the time when that request was made and the time when he was supposed to be removed, the other roommates abandoned the rental.  He has also said that he is disputing/fighting each of these matters.

I'm wondering ... how can I verify if his story is accurate?  For my part, I have (finally) found the rental company, and am hoping to get in touch with them tomorrow, but not sure if that will go anywhere.  With regard to the cellular companies (Sprint and AT&T), I highly doubt I will get anywhere.  If I recall correctly, there was a podcast episode where Kassandra had indicated there were ways in which a PM can verify identity theft and other collections issues, but I don't recall which one (and would rather not listen to all of them today).

Thanks in advance!