Uber driver screening missed ex-convicts, DA’s say

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon speaks during a news conference at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco on Wednesday, August 19, 2015.

From that “small sample”, the district attorneys have found drivers with criminal convictions that would block them from working for Uber who nonetheless passed the company’s background check, according to the filing.

One of the Uber drivers highlighted in the amended complaint was convicted of second-degree murder in Los Angeles in 1982, prosecutors said.

One of the drivers in question is a convicted murderer who spent 26 years in prison before being released on parole in Los Angeles in 2008, the complaint says.

The Uber driver worked for the ridesharing service in Los Angeles until May 28, 2015 and provided 1,168 rides to consumers, according to the complaint.

“Uber’s process cannot ensure that the information in the background check report is actually associated with the applicant since it does not use a unique biometric identifier such as a fingerprint”, the prosecutors said in the complaint. That driver became an Uber driver in LA until May of this year. This concern has been punctuated by certain incidents, including a kidnapping, assault with a hammer, rape, and more.

While traditional cabs are required to use Live Scan, Uber is not, but prosecutors believe the company has oversold the effectiveness of its own checking methods.

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc said in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle that safety is a top priority for the firm and that no screening system is flawless.

State lawyers in California first accused Uber of letting its drivers work at airports without permission last December.

“The reality is that neither is 100 percent foolproof, as we discovered last year when putting hundreds of people through our checks who identified themselves as taxi drivers”, she said.

It is alleged that the criminals were allowed to drive passengers until they were banned for giving illegal rides.

Since the initial suit, systematic failures in Uber’s background check process have come to light through the discovery process, said the complaint, which was filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco county. Live scans can go back in time to a person’s birth, whereas other kinds of checks are limited to seven years by law.