A banker friend told me recently that, as part of the loan process, someone in risk told him to run a Google search in addition to pulling a Lexis report. That is not bad advice. It is just incomplete.
A Google search is not a background investigation. It is a search of what Google has decided is most responsive to the words typed into the box. Change the inputs- add a middle initial, use a former company, search an alias, include a spouse, add a city, search a related entity, and you may get a completely different picture.
Database reports have limits too. They’re aggregators. Useful, but imperfect. They can miss context, surface stale data, confuse similar names, or fail to connect the individual to the entity that actually matters.
Google is also shallower than most assume. Thomson Reuters notes adverse media searches can produce significant false positives—before accounting for what never shows up at all. (1)
Meanwhile, the threat landscape is evolving. The Federal Reserve calls synthetic identity fraud the fastest-growing type, pegs losses around $20 billion in 2020, and notes it routinely escapes “today’s identity verification and credit-screening processes.” There’s now a business version of it, because criminals know a company qualifies for bigger loans than a person does. (2)
Even sophisticated institutions get caught. In 2021 JP Morgan bought a fintech called Frank for $175 million, and later found Frank fabricated millions of customers. The issue wasn’t discovered until after closing, when outreach emails bounced at scale. The founder was convicted in 2025. The most sophisticated acquirer on the planet desk-checked a fabrication and bought what the prosecutor called “a crime scene.” (3)
You cannot desk-check your way out of a lie that was engineered for the desk.
So tell your risk department they’re right. Google the borrower. But treat Google as a lead source, not a conclusion. Then verify anything material through primary records and make sure the search covered the person, the companies, the principals, aliases, locations, litigation history, regulatory history, and adverse media.
A Google search and a database report are the floor, not the ceiling.