OFAC Employee Screening for New Hires and Contractors
Type a candidate or contractor name below and get a risk rating against the OFAC SDN and consolidated lists in seconds. Sign up to save a PDF record for the personnel file and to rescreen your roster when OFAC changes a list.
What OFAC employee screening means for an employer
OFAC employee screening is a check of each new hire, contractor and payee against the U.S. sanctions lists before you pay them. U.S. employers may not provide funds or services to a person on the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, and a paycheck is a transfer of funds. No OFAC rule names employees specifically, but the general prohibition applies to every U.S. business, and civil liability is strict: you can be penalized even if you did not know.
In practice the risk is not your local warehouse hire. It sits with independent contractors, remote workers paid abroad, staffing agency placements and anyone whose identity you never verified in person. That is where a documented check pays for itself.
OFAC civil penalties under IEEPA reach $377,700 per violation or twice the value of the transaction, whichever is greater (the 2025 inflation adjustment). A $49 a month screening plan with a saved record is cheap insurance against that number.
Who HR teams should screen
Most employers start with the groups below. Everyone else can follow your normal background check process.
New hires at offer stage
Screen the full legal name and date of birth once the offer is accepted and before the first payroll run, so a match never reaches a paycheck.
Independent contractors
1099 contractors and freelancers are paid like vendors, often without an interview in person. Screen the person and any company they invoice through.
Remote and international workers
People paid outside the United States carry the most sanctions risk, especially when payments route through a third country or an employer of record.
Staffing and agency placements
Your contract with the agency does not move the OFAC duty off your company. Screen the names on the placement list or ask the agency for its records.
Board members and officers
Directors, officers and owners who sign for the company are a common request from banks, insurers and investors during due diligence.
Your current roster
Lists change without notice. Rescreening existing staff and contractors after each OFAC update catches people who were clear when you hired them.
Screen contractors before the payment run, not after
Payroll is where an OFAC problem becomes a violation. Once money leaves your account to a listed person, the check is too late. The safest place for screening is the onboarding step in your HR or contractor platform, with a second pass before the first payment to anyone new.
For a small team, that means typing each name into the console above and saving the PDF. For a larger roster, upload a CSV of contractors with the batch sanctions screening tool and let ongoing sanctions monitoring rescreen the whole list every time OFAC publishes a change. If your finance team also screens vendor and wire payments, the same account covers payment screening.
- One check per person, with date of birth to cut false alarms
- Company name screened too when a contractor invoices through an LLC
- Alerts by email or webhook when a list update affects someone on file
How to run an OFAC check on an employee
About a minute per person, from any browser, with nothing to install.
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01
Enter the full legal name
Use the name from the ID or I-9 documents, not a nickname. Add the date of birth and country to sharpen the score.
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02
Read the rating
Each result is rated Clear, Review or Likely match, with a score from 0 to 100 and the listed entries that came closest.
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03
Clear or escalate a Review
Compare the date of birth, nationality and address with the listed entry. Most Review results are namesakes and can be cleared with a short written reason.
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04
Save the PDF to the file
The certificate shows the name checked, the rating, the list version and the time. Store it with the onboarding records.
Which plan fits your hiring volume
Public prices, no setup fees and no overage charges. Yearly billing saves 50 percent.
| What you need | Starter | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $49, or $24 a month billed yearly | $499, or $249 a month billed yearly |
| Checks per month | 1,000 | 50,000 |
| Users | 1 | 5 |
| Lists | OFAC SDN and consolidated non-SDN | OFAC plus UN, EU, UK, Canada and Australia |
| CSV upload of a whole roster | No | Yes |
| Rescreening on every list update | No | Up to 50,000 people and companies |
| Case notes for cleared matches | Clear with a reason | Full case workflow |
| Record retention | 12 months | 60 months |
| Best for | Small employers checking new hires one at a time | HR teams with contractors, remote staff or several locations |
Limits as listed on the pricing page. New checks pause at the monthly limit; nothing is billed on top.
Remote hiring is where screening earns its keep
U.S. agencies have warned employers more than once about North Korean IT workers who apply for remote developer and support jobs under false or borrowed identities, and OFAC has designated people and front companies tied to those schemes. Paying one of them sends wages to a sanctioned government.
A name check will not unmask a stolen identity by itself, so pair it with identity verification and a video interview. What screening does is catch the listed names, companies and payment intermediaries, and give you a dated record that you looked.
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Screen the payee, not only the person
If wages go to a company or an account in another name, screen that name too.
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Watch the country
Payments into comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea need a hard stop and a compliance review.
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Rescreen after updates
OFAC adds names whenever an action is ready. A contractor clear in March can be listed in June.
What to keep in the personnel or vendor file
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The PDF certificate for each person and each company they bill through
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The written reason for any Review result you cleared
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The date of the check and the list version, both printed on the PDF
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The name of the employee who ran the check
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A note if onboarding or payment was held for compliance review
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The date of the latest rescreen for long term contractors
Screening supports the decision, it does not make it
OfacScanner tells you whether a name is close to a listed entry and why. Whether to hire, pay or hold is your call, ideally with your compliance lead or employment counsel. If you buy OFAC searches as part of a background check from a consumer reporting agency, the FCRA rules on disclosure and adverse action apply to that report, so keep your screening policy in writing and apply it the same way to every candidate.
OFAC employee screening questions
Another question? Write to [email protected].
Do employers have to run OFAC checks on employees?
Is an OFAC check part of a background check?
What happens if you hire someone on the OFAC list?
How often should employees be screened against OFAC?
Do I need to screen independent contractors?
Can I use the free Treasury search for employees?
Keep exploring
Screen your next hire before the first paycheck
Check a name now, then create your account to save the PDF and keep every record in one place.
Results support your compliance decisions, and the final decision stays with your team. OfacScanner is not affiliated with OFAC or the U.S. Department of the Treasury.