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Americans are waking up to a new kind of theft: AI-fueled fraud that is undermining trust in hiring, lending, and everyday commerce. San Francisco-based Checkr, the background-check firm that began with Uber drivers, reported gross revenue of roughly $800 million in 2025 — a 14 percent jump as businesses scramble to spot AI-generated résumés and forged pay stubs.
Checkr’s CEO says the scale of deception is staggering: about 40 percent of the job and loan applications his company reviews contain inaccurate or fabricated employment or financial information, often assembled with generative tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. That’s not a tech hiccup, it’s a systemic attack on employers and honest workers who play by the rules.
This isn’t the same problem the country faced a decade ago; Checkr evolved from screening gig workers into a global verifier operating in nearly 200 countries and has expanded into white-collar verification and income checks. The company even bought Truework to beef up income and employment verification, showing that market demand for real identity checks has exploded as AI fraud matures.
Checkr has rolled out identity verification tools — biometric selfie-to-ID checks, liveness tests, device and location fingerprinting — because employers can no longer trust a polished PDF. The private sector is moving faster than government here, and it’s right to do so after Checkr’s own product launches and corporate restructuring following layoffs in 2024 that forced the company to refocus on profitable, high-demand services.
This crisis has real victims: honest businesses bleed money and time when fake hires slip through, and Checkr’s surveys show managers are alarmed — many report losses into the tens of thousands and admit candidates are now better at faking identities with AI than hiring teams are at spotting them. Worse still, Forbes reports overseas criminal networks — even state-backed actors — have exploited these weaknesses to land tech jobs and launder access, making this a national security problem as much as a corporate one.
The remedy is straightforward and unapologetic: employers must harden verification, invest in in-person identity checks where practical, demand verifiable records, and hold platforms and schools accountable for credential fraud. Market solutions like Checkr’s IDV are a start, but lawmakers should back policies that mandate stronger verification standards and criminal penalties for large-scale deception so honest Americans and small businesses are protected.
Let’s be clear — Checkr profiting from this mess is a sign the private sector is fixing a problem Washington let fester while Silicon Valley chased novelty. Patriots who care about work, safety, and the rule of law should push for tougher verification, smarter enforcement, and an America where your résumé, your paycheck, and your family are safe from fake actors hiding behind AI.
