Uber says its background checks are essential for keeping passengers safe, promising that all of its drivers have passed a screening for violent crimes.
The claim, made in marketing materials, ignores a critical detail: The system approves people with many types of criminal convictions, including violent felonies. That is because Uber has limited the criteria used to vet potential drivers, part of a push to speed them onto the ride-hailing network while keeping costs down, a New York Times investigation found.
Uber rejects prospective drivers who have been convicted of murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and terrorism. But in 22 states, The Times found, the company approves people convicted of most other crimes — including child abuse, assault and stalking — so long as the convictions are at least seven years old.
There are also gaps in Uber’s screenings. Background checks in 35 states are based on where a person has lived in the past seven years. The result is that a crime that happened elsewhere could go unnoticed.
Over time, company executives considered and ultimately chose not to expand the types of offenses that would disqualify someone, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times.
They also debated how thoroughly to look back for convictions. “We are def not doing everything we can,” Brooke Anderson, then Uber’s head of safety communications, said in a 2018 email exchange about background checks.
One brainstorming document listed nearly two dozen safety measures the company could adopt. In-person interviews were deemed logistically challenging, the document shows. Fingerprint checks were considered costly and time intensive.
Women who reported being sexually assaulted during Uber rides said that the company’s vetting practices put them in harm’s way, accusations reflected in lawsuits and other court records reviewed by The Times.
In 2020, an Uber driver in San Diego was accused of using his fingers to forcibly penetrate a passenger’s vagina, then choking her and throwing her phone out the window when she tried to fight back. The driver’s record included felony convictions for assault with a deadly weapon in 2002 and 2006. Earlier in 2020, he had been arrested after an allegation of rape but not yet charged. Arrests alone are not disqualifying in Uber’s background checks.
The next year, an Uber driver in Tampa, Fla., was accused of raping a passenger who had been out celebrating her 21st birthday. The driver had eight felony convictions, including for robbery with a firearm in 2002, as well as more than a dozen driving violations.
And in the years since, drivers with convictions for assault, child abuse, armed robbery and other crimes have been accused of sexually assaulting passengers across the country, The Times found.
The incidents are part of a scourge of sexual violence during Uber rides. The ride-hailing giant received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average from 2017 to 2024, according to internal data revealed in litigation, far more than what the company has publicly disclosed.
It is unclear how many people with violent criminal histories have been cleared to drive for Uber, let alone how many of those drivers have sexually assaulted passengers. In one of the most comprehensive audits to date, officials in Massachusetts conducted background checks of ride-hailing drivers in the state in 2017, as new regulations were set to take effect that introduced stricter guidelines for screenings. Officials banned more than 8,000 drivers, or roughly 11 percent, who had previously been approved.
Inside the company, executives have long been aware of the pervasiveness of sexual violence during rides and the risk factors linked to attacks — yet they have repeatedly given priority to expanding their business over introducing stronger protections for drivers and passengers, a Times investigation in August found.
As Uber grew into a $165 billion global behemoth, it successfully lobbied against laws proposed in many states that would have required stricter screenings. A key element of that campaign was positioning itself with criminal justice reform groups, previously unreported internal documents show.
In a statement, Hannah Nilles, Uber’s head of safety for the Americas, said that the company believes a seven-year cutoff for felony convictions “strikes the right balance between protecting public safety and giving people with older criminal records a chance to work and rebuild their lives.”
She said that the time period is grounded in academic research that has found that seven years after an arrest, the likelihood that a person will commit another offense is as a low as a person who never committed a crime. “A lifetime exclusion for every criminal offense would unfairly prevent people from finding jobs long after they’ve served their time,” she said.
Because sexual violence is a significantly underreported crime, public safety experts, lawmakers and others said that ride-hailing companies should do more to scrutinize and train drivers, who are often alone in cars with strangers. That could include in-person interviews and reference checks, as well as more education about sexual assault, consent and a driver’s duty to transport people safely, they said.
“They should hold their drivers to a high standard, knowing they are putting them in situations with vulnerable people who trust them and trust that Uber has checked them,” said Erin Murphy, a prosecutor in Boston who handles sexual assault cases involving ride-hailing drivers.
The safety experts pointed to other jobs where people with violent felony convictions are often prohibited, such as employment in day care centers, schools and elder care facilities. Research shows that perpetrators of rape often have criminal histories, with a Justice Department study finding that more than a third of people arrested on rape charges had at least one prior felony conviction.
Ms. Nilles disputed the idea that driving for Uber is similar to working in a day care or elder-care facility. Fingerprint checks are “inaccurate, ineffective and discriminatory,” she added, and in-person interviews “likely would cause meaningful bias.”
Lyft, Uber’s smaller rival, follows different guidelines. The company bans drivers with convictions for violent felonies, regardless of when they occurred. “They result in lifetime bans from our platform,” Ameena Gill, Lyft’s vice president of safety and customer care, said in a statement.
Still, drivers with criminal records have slipped through Lyft’s screenings. In March 2019, a woman in Fresno, Calif., said her Lyft driver raped her after she requested a ride from a bar. Court records show the driver had multiple felony convictions from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, including for firing a shotgun at a vehicle while two people were inside. The woman sued the company, and the case was recently settled.
Ms. Gill declined to comment about whether there were mistakes with the driver’s screening. “If Lyft becomes aware of a driver on the platform with such a conviction, that driver is immediately deactivated,” she said.
Uber and Lyft are now facing thousands of sexual assault lawsuits from passengers across the country. The companies maintain that rides are overwhelmingly safe and that the vast majority — at least 99.9 percent of more than a billion rides in the United States a year — happen without incident. Uber said that 75 percent of the reports it had received about sexual assault and sexual misconduct were for “less serious” matters, such as flirting or making comments about someone’s appearance.
“Safety is not a static goal,” said Ms. Gill of Lyft. “We’re committed to continuously strengthening our systems and working with safety experts, advocates and regulators to set the highest standards for our industry.”
Ms. Nilles, Uber’s safety executive, said the company’s background checks were “thorough, accurate, fair, and meet or exceed both the law and the practices of peer companies.” She said that the company has invested in rerunning background checks for drivers each year and creating technologies to continuously monitor and flag new criminal offenses.
“We are confident when we say Uber is one of the safest ways to get around,” Ms. Nilles added.
The woman in San Diego who accused her driver of attacking her in 2020 said she had epilepsy and relied on Uber to get around because she saw promotions from the company that said safety was a top priority.
In her case, the screening process did not flag a conviction that, according to California regulations, would normally disqualify a driver.
The driver had previously been convicted of felonies in 2002 and 2006 for assault with a deadly weapon, with the 2002 incident classified as a violent offense for inflicting great bodily injury, according to court records. In California, people with violent felonies are permanently disqualified from driving for ride-hailing companies.
Ms. Nilles said the felony assault convictions had been reported to Uber by Checkr, the background check company that it uses to conduct screenings. But, she said, the classification as a violent offense had not. “Uber’s role is to correctly adjudicate the report we receive, which we did in this case,” Ms. Nilles said. Checkr declined to comment on the specifics of this screening, citing privacy laws.
Uber blocked the driver’s account in October 2020 after receiving a report about the incident. He was later charged with forcible sexual penetration and robbery. He is now in prison for convictions related to this and another incident.
“I am naïve for putting my trust in a corporation,” the woman said. “Can you blame me for listening to what they want me to believe?”
‘Clear’ or ‘Consider’
When someone applies to drive for Uber, Checkr cross reference their name, date of birth, Social Security number and other details against public court documents, motor vehicle records, national criminal databases and other sources.
Uber customized the rules that Checkr uses to review and report criminal records, including how far back to check for offenses, according to Uber’s agreement with Checkr.
While specific guidelines vary according to state and local laws, Uber generally allows convictions after seven years for any felony, including violent crimes. People can be blocked for pending charges.
In a statement, Checkr said that laws require the company to “follow rigorous standards for accuracy and restrict the type of information that can appear on a background check.”
Reports fall into two categories: “clear” or “consider.” A team at Uber reviews reports in the “consider” category, Ms. Nilles said. She added that a background check, on average, takes three days. But if a screening is clear, court records show, the entire process can finish in a matter of hours, without an Uber employee ever meeting an applicant.
In 2022, Uber approved a driver in Florida who was on parole after a decade in prison for two violent felonies. About one month after the driver began with Uber, court records show, a passenger accused him of sexual misconduct. Less than a week later, another reported him to the police for rape. The driver denied the accusation, saying the sex was consensual.
In March 2024, a woman said her Uber driver forcibly groped and digitally penetrated her in a parking lot in the Atlanta area. The driver’s record included a conviction for child abuse, with an eight-year prison sentence, after three teenagers had accused him of sexual assault, court records show.
In December 2024, a driver picked up Katilyn Woodworth, then a 29-year-old mother of two in Oregon who had been out drinking. Instead of taking her home, she told the police that he raped her. Uber had cleared the driver despite a 2012 conviction for felony assault.
At a criminal trial in late October, the driver pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, rape and sodomy charges, saying that the sex was consensual. In a ruling after a bench trial, the judge acquitted the driver, saying that prosecutors had failed to prove that Ms. Woodworth was legally incapacitated at the time of the incident or that the driver knew she was incapable of consent.
Ms. Nilles said all three drivers were screened correctly and in accordance with state laws.
Ms. Woodworth has sued Uber for negligence. The company said in court filings that it was not responsible for the incident.
“You had all of the red flags,” she said. “You had all of the information you needed to protect me.”
She said that the incident has left her suffering from night terrors and insomnia, leading her to stop working and abandon creative pursuits like painting. She said she holds in panic attacks when her sons, who know that “mommy got hurt,” give her a hug. She now sits alone in silence after she puts them to bed.
‘Indefensible’
The debate over who should be allowed to drive for Uber dates back to the company’s early days.
In 2015, Uber executives outlined a strategy to “shift the conversation about safety from background checks to [less costly] initiatives,” according to an internal document.
An essential part of the strategy was pushing for criminal justice reform, an issue that was gaining momentum among politicians across the country. The document discussed plans to poll passengers to understand how “palatable” the company’s arguments were, including “to what degree they will be willing to ride in a car with someone who’s formerly incarcerated or has a misdemeanor on their record.”
The plan included striking partnerships with groups that worked with formerly incarcerated people and recruiting allies to promote the “discriminatory nature” of fingerprinting, drug testing and other similar requirements. One of those allies was Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general who had been hired by Uber to advise on safety issues.
Over time, many states passed laws that created a patchwork of rules governing ride-hailing companies. New York City is now the only place in the country that requires fingerprinting for potential Uber and Lyft drivers.
As the company worked to reframe the background check conversation, people inside Uber raised concerns about the limits of its screenings.
In 2018, Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s chief marketing officer, and Ms. Anderson, then head of safety communications, discussed in an email exchange concerns about how background checks were based, in part, on the past seven years of people’s residence history.
That means that if a person committed a crime in a different county from where they had lived — even a permanently disqualifying offense like murder — the screenings might not catch the conviction.
“The fact this is an internal policy that we don’t feel comfortable talking about externally highlights the need for improvement here,” Ms. Anderson said.
The two executives pushed to upgrade Uber’s package with Checkr so that background checks would review a person’s entire residence history.
The proposed changes were estimated to cost an additional $16.8 million to review active drivers, plus $15.2 million each year for new applicants, according to the email exchange.
Another executive cautioned that the proposal could increase the amount of time it would take to complete a check.
Ms. Hazelbaker argued that it was “indefensible” not to use the more thorough checks. “The reputation costs associated with not doing it far exceeds the dollar amount,” she wrote.
Uber did not adopt the upgrade.
Now, Uber pays Checkr for two different levels of screenings, according to its agreement with Checkr. Service A, at $7.15 per check, reviews seven years of a person’s residence history, then searches criminal records based on those places. Service B, at $13.80, reviews a person’s entire residence history for criminal records.
Uber uses the more expensive option where required by local laws — in 15 states, seven cities and Washington D.C. Elsewhere, Uber uses the cheaper seven-year check.
Checkr said in a statement that its “criminal record searches include multiple databases and courthouses, and can extend beyond seven years of residence history, depending on the scope ordered.”
In a statement, Ms. Anderson, who is still a communications executive at Uber, said that the email thread was “not representative of the comprehensive, intentional approach Uber takes toward safety and background checks.”
She said that the company had given priority to other initiatives, including the rerunning of background checks for existing drivers and building a program with Lyft to share information between companies about drivers banned for sexual assault and other safety incidents.
‘He Took My Soul Away’
In September 2021, Anthony Oliveras-Rivera was cleared to drive for Uber after Checkr reviewed his criminal and driving records, according to a copy of his background check.
He accepted a ride request in Tampa at about 10 p.m. one Thursday night that December.
The passenger was a 20-year-old woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe. Earlier, she had met up with friends to celebrate her upcoming birthday. She drank more alcohol than she ever had in her life, she said in a deposition, and started blacking out. She was eventually separated from her friends outside a nightclub.
A young woman spotted Ms. Doe and ordered her a ride.
Mr. Oliveras-Rivera drove Ms. Doe to her home 24 miles outside Tampa and marked the ride complete at 10:59 p.m., according to a trip receipt. She did not have her keys, however, and he eventually drove her back to the hotel where she had met her friends that evening.
At the hotel, he told a security guard that he needed help with a girl who had passed out in his back seat. Her underwear was down, the guard later told police officers, and she had urinated on herself.
The next day, Ms. Doe went to work but felt like something had gone horribly wrong. She went to the emergency room and later underwent a sexual assault forensic exam. The DNA was a match to Mr. Oliveras-Rivera, according to to police reports. He admitted that he had sex with Ms. Doe.
Mr. Oliveras-Rivera, who continued driving for Uber through the next month, eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual battery and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The public defender’s office that represented Mr. Oliveras-Rivera referred requests for comment to the Florida Department of Corrections, which did not respond.
Ms. Doe is now suing Uber, claiming that she was sexually assaulted because of the company’s negligence in hiring and supervising Mr. Oliveras-Rivera.
“I felt like he took my soul away,” Ms. Doe said in a deposition.
Ms. Nilles said that Mr. Oliveras-Rivera passed a background check in accordance with Florida law.
The screenings of Mr. Oliveras-Rivera, however, did not catch eight felony convictions from 1999 and 2002, including one for invading a home armed with a machine gun. He had prison sentences totaling 18 years, according to court records. He had more than a dozen driving violations, including multiple license suspensions and an arrest in North Carolina for driving under the influence nine years before he began with Uber.
He had also been investigated over allegations that he physically and sexually abused a 5-year-old girl one year before the incident. He denied any abuse, and the complaint was deemed unfounded after the girl declined to speak to investigators, according to police reports.
Mr. Oliveras-Rivera’s criminal record would probably have banned him from driving a taxi in Tampa, according to local regulations that prohibit drivers with a record of any violent felony.
Over the years, Uber had lobbied for a separate, statewide standard for ride-hailing drivers with a less prohibitive disqualification period — banning drivers if, among other considerations, they were convicted of a felony in the last five years or are listed on the National Sex Offender registry.
“There was no way for Uber to know that Oliveras-Rivera had a propensity to commit sexual assault prior to the subject incident,” Uber said in court filings.
During a hearing in October, the judge presiding over the lawsuit agreed with the company, saying that the driver’s record did not include anything that “would have resulted in his disqualification under the Florida statute when he applied.”
Since the incident, Ms. Doe said in depositions that she has felt “dead inside.” She has missed work, withdrawn socially, experienced trouble sleeping and received treatment for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.
“I’m trying my hardest just to survive this,” she said.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Emily Steel is an investigative reporter covering business for The Times. She has uncovered sexual misconduct at major companies and recently has focused on the ride-hailing industry.
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