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Woman Falsely Reported to Have Done Drugs with Porky Pig Save Email Print
One Background Reporting Agency's Mistake A Nightmare for One Woman
Posted: 8:17 PM Nov 20, 2007
Last Updated: 8:43 PM Nov 20, 2007
Reporter: Jessica Zartler
Email Address: jessica.zartler@nbc11news.com

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A background reporting company's mistake has turned into a nightmare for one Grand Junction woman after she was placed on administrative leave for doing drugs with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.

Sue Jones almost lost her job and her reputation even though she's never committed a crime.

Jones got a job at City Market but when the background check came back with a do not hire flag she was placed on administrative leave and missed several days of work.

The background check said she had mutliple charges including a prior felony for drug possession and a misdemeanor for gambling.

When 11 News pulled the cases from El Paso County, Colorado we found the date of birth didn't match the real Sue Jones and the name Jones was listed as the plaintiff in the case. To top it off the defendants were named as Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudrucker.

The cases weren't even real, they were phony test cases, practice for people working in the court system.

Mary Perry, the Clerk of the Court for El Paso County says they often use arbitrary names for test cases. The cases also list "test" on several areas of the documents. Perry also said that there was no social security number or other identifying information that would have tied the cases to Jones.

So with nothing tying these fake cases to the real Jones, how would the background reporting agency report the findings to City Market?

General Information Systems, also known as G.I.S., is the South Carolina based background reporting firm. Its website touts several awards in the industry and says it has more than 2,500 clients including several Fortune 500 companies.

The Executive Vice President of the company, David Bartley, says the company pulls cases and reports it to employers but didn't want to comment on what happened in this particular instance until he read the cases and information. 11 News faxed Bartley the paperwork but Bartley never called us back with a comment.

G.I.S. claims cases like these are rare and people can dispute the findings to clear their name. The company says there is no system to track these kinds of errors.

But for Sue Jones of Grand Junction the damage is already done.

Jones says she doesn't fault City Market, she says she's glad to know they wouldn't hire a criminal.

She's just hoping that a mistake doesn't happen to anyone else.

Jones has disputed the records and is now back to work at City Market.

A City Market spokesperson said the company will look into what happened and possibly make a complaint with G.I.S.

City Market says until then, it can't say whether or not it will continue to use G.I.S. to do background checks on its employees.

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