Executive and C-Suite Background Investigations in Florida

Licensed Florida agency A3400127 · Investigator C3400073 · Veteran-led, 12 years Army military intelligence · Phone answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week · Silver, Best Private Investigator, Bradenton’s Best 2025 and 2026

Insight Investigative Group, LLC is a licensed Florida private investigative agency, agency license A3400127, that runs background investigations on executives, founders, directors and business principals for boards, investors, family offices and companies entering a deal. Every engagement is scoped and quoted in writing before work begins, and every finding is cited to the record it came from by a licensed investigator, license C3400073.

A senior executive’s history is spread across more places than an ordinary background check reaches: court dockets in every county and state where they have lived or run a company, corporate registries, securities and licensing regulators, bankruptcy court, and years of press. The question is seldom whether someone has a criminal record. It is whether the career they describe matches the one in the record, and whether anything in it becomes your problem once their name is attached to your company or your money.

Who orders an executive background investigation?

Boards and search committees before appointing a chief executive, a director or another officer. Investors before backing a founder or a management team. Buyers in an acquisition, checking the sellers and the managers who will stay on. Family offices before a co-investment, a partnership or a new advisor. Companies about to sign a joint venture, a distribution deal or a large contract with a principal they have not worked with before. Attorneys who need the same picture of the other side of a deal or a dispute.

What does an executive background investigation include?

The base is everything in our Premium background investigation: identity and address history, criminal records, federal civil and criminal records and watch lists, business affiliations, employment history, vehicle records, social media and open source analysis, nationwide property, liens and judgments, and corporate filings. An executive engagement then goes further, into the places a senior career leaves a record.

• Litigation, read at the docket. Civil and criminal cases in every county and federal district tied to the subject, as a party or as an officer of a party, with how each one ended. A case index tells you a suit exists; the docket tells you what it was about.
• Corporate history. Every entity where the subject has served as an officer, director, manager, member or registered agent, in Florida through Sunbiz and in the other states that matter, including dissolved and inactive companies and how they ended.
• Bankruptcy, judgments and liens. Personal filings, filings by companies the subject ran, and judgments and liens against either. The public record asset research behind this is the same work we do before a lawsuit or a collection.
• Regulatory and licensing record. Securities industry registration and disciplinary history, SEC enforcement actions, and state professional licenses and discipline, wherever the subject’s career touches a regulated field.
• Sanctions. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control lists, checked for the subject and for the companies tied to them.
• Credentials. Degrees, licenses and past positions the subject claims, checked against the issuing source where that source will confirm them.
• Political contributions. Federal and Florida campaign finance records, which show money, affiliations and sometimes employers the subject did not mention.
• Media and reputation. News archives, trade press and the subject’s own published statements, read for patterns rather than headlines.
• Source interviews, when the scope includes them. Discreet conversations with former colleagues, business associates and others who know the subject’s work. Nobody is contacted unless your written scope says so.

The result is a written report that separates what the record confirms, what it contradicts, and what could not be confirmed, with a citation for each finding so your counsel can pull the same document.

Is it due diligence or a hiring decision?

The purpose decides the rules, so it is the first thing we ask.

When the investigation will inform a decision to hire, promote, reassign or retain someone as an employee, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act applies, and the executive suite is not exempt. The employer gives the candidate a written disclosure in a document of its own and gets the candidate’s written authorization before the report is ordered, and if the report leads to a no, the employer follows the adverse action steps (15 U.S.C. sections 1681b and 1681m). If the scope includes interviews with people who know the candidate, the Act treats the result as an investigative consumer report, and the candidate must also receive a written notice within three days of the request (15 U.S.C. section 1681d). We handle hiring engagements by phone as managed engagements and build those steps in. Our guide to a background check before hiring walks through each one.

When the purpose is a business decision, such as an investment, an acquisition or a partnership, we scope it as due diligence and confirm the purpose with you in writing before we start. If you are not sure which side of the line a decision falls on, a board seat for example, ask your attorney before we start. This is general information, not legal advice.

How an executive engagement works

1. Scoping call. You tell us the decision, the date it has to be made by, and what the subject has told you about themselves: the résumé, the biography, the pitch deck.
2. Written scope and quote. Which records, which jurisdictions, whether interviews are included, the price and the delivery date. No work starts until you approve it.
3. Research. Records first, then open source, then interviews if the scope includes them. If something turns up that changes the decision, you hear about it before the report is finished.
4. Report and walk-through. A written, sourced report, and a call with the investigator who did the work.

What does an executive background investigation cost?

It is quoted in writing before any work begins, and the quote is the price. Cost tracks the record: how many states and counties the subject has lived and worked in, how many companies they have run, how long their public life is, and whether the scope includes interviews. County records that exist only on paper cost more to retrieve than records that are online. Florida sales tax applies to investigative services.

If your decision does not need this depth, our fixed price background checks run from $175 to $1,200 and can be ordered online for purposes outside the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What an executive background investigation will not include

We do not obtain bank balances or account records, brokerage holdings, telephone call records, credit reports, medical records, or sealed or expunged records, and we do not pose as anyone to get information. Those records are protected by federal and state law, and reaching them lawfully takes a subpoena, a court order or the subject’s own written authorization. A firm that offers them on an executive without one of those is offering to break the law on your behalf, and the exposure lands on the client who paid for it.

This is background research, not protection. We do not provide executive protection, bodyguard or guard services.

Who does the work

Joshua Goldberg, Florida investigator license C3400073, owns the firm and leads every executive engagement. He served twelve years in Army military intelligence, including nearly two years as a targeting analyst attached to a special mission unit, where the job was establishing who a person actually is and who they are connected to, from fragmentary sources, to a standard a decision could rest on. The same public record method runs our political candidate vetting, where a claim that cannot be sourced does not go in the file.

Your file stays confidential

Under section 493.6119 of the Florida Statutes, a licensed agency may not divulge or release the contents of an investigative file to anyone other than the client or employer, absent the client’s prior written consent or a narrow statutory exception. Who you asked us to look at, and what we found, stay with you. Section 493.6121(2) requires the agency to keep the file for at least two years.

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Executive background check questions, answered

How is an executive background check different from a standard one?

A standard background check confirms identity, criminal records, address history and basic business ties, and is typically delivered within 48 hours. An executive background investigation reads the full litigation, corporate, regulatory and media record of a senior career, checks the subject’s own account of it against the sources, and can include interviews. It is scoped to the decision rather than sold as a fixed package.

Does the executive have to know about the investigation?

For a hiring, promotion or retention decision, yes: the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires the candidate’s written authorization before the report is ordered. For a deal or an investment, the research works from public records and lawful open sources, and nobody who knows the subject is contacted unless your written scope says so.

How long does an executive background investigation take?

The delivery date is set in the written scope, working back from the date of your decision. A subject who has lived in one county and run one company takes less time than one with companies in three states. Court records held only on paper at a county clerk’s office add time, and we tell you up front if that applies.

How much does an executive background check cost?

Insight Investigative Group quotes executive background investigations in writing before any work begins, because cost tracks the length and spread of the subject’s record. The fixed price background checks, from $175 to $1,200, cover narrower decisions.

Do older records still count for a senior hire?

Often, yes. The Fair Credit Reporting Act bars a consumer report from including civil suits, civil judgments and arrest records more than seven years old, or bankruptcies more than ten years old, but those limits do not apply when the job is expected to pay $75,000 a year or more (15 U.S.C. section 1681c). Under the Act, records of criminal convictions are not limited by age at any salary.

Can you check an executive’s bank accounts or credit?

No. Bank records and account balances are protected by federal law, and obtaining financial records under false pretenses is a federal crime under the Gramm Leach Bliley Act. We do not obtain credit reports. What we can show is the public record of what someone owns, owes and has been sued over, which is often the more useful picture.

Related: background checks, asset searches, background check before hiring.