The Tax Cheapo

Intelius, Inc. based in Bellevue, Washington, provides data and personal verification services including identity backgrounds, criminal checks, employee screening, and character verification. They also employ technological products for tracing phone numbers, finding property deeds, and for locating people.

Its services are only currently available to businesses and individuals within the United States. An information network that gathers public records of American citizens powers Intelius’ services. India-born innovator Naveen Jain, Intelius’ CEO, conceptualized it.

Intelius has yet to procure public records of entire companies so the records are limited to personal documents that are recorded and categorized within federal and state agencies. Presently, Intelius’ holds records such as death and birth certificates, marriage and divorce records, courthouse transcripts, telephone directory listings, real estate deeds, and email addresses.

Intellius’ founder is Naveen Jain, a former senior executive at Microsoft Corporation and the previous CEO of InfoSpace. He emigrated from India, came to New Jersey at the onset of the 80s, and later transferred to Washington for his position at Microsoft.

Intelius started operations in January 2003, and has received and garnered industry acclaim from different award-giving bodies for its ingenious use of technology on public-access record gathering and dissemination. Intellius took the honor of receiving the “Best New Company” award from the 2006 American Business Awards. In 2007, Intelius gained a nomination to the category of “Most Innovative Company.” The company’s reverse cell phone directory service claimed a nomination for “Best New Service” the succeeding year.

Intelius also twice received a citation on Inc. Magazine’s prestigious list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in America. That accomplishment also extends to North America as according to Deloitte and Touche.

For his part, Naveen Jain almost won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2006 for founding the metasearch company.