Shield Report Methodology

Last updated: 2026-10-05 · Version 1.8 · Beta · Questions: [email protected]

This page enumerates every public-record source Shield checks per tier — and what we don't yet check. We tell you what's actually in the report so you can decide if it answers your question before paying.

Status: Beta (from 2026-10-05). Report format and source coverage are under active development and may change. Beta status does not narrow anything on this page: the per-tier scope and covered floor list remain binding per Terms §4.3 and §8.5.1, and the Process Guarantee is unaffected. Every finding cites its public source.

Information only — not advice Shield aggregates publicly available records from official sources. Every claim in a Shield report includes a direct citation to the source record. Shield does not provide legal, financial, or investment advice. Shield does not recommend, approve, endorse, or disapprove of any sponsor, principal, deal, or investment. Its verdict is Shield's reading of the public record — an opinion, not advice. All interpretation is the sole responsibility of the customer. A Shield report is not a consumer report under the FCRA and may not be used for purposes covered by the FCRA.

Quick Shield — $97 (LIVE)

The entry-level Shield report. Covers the sponsor company across every US public-record source Shield has — federal, state, and county. Nothing about managers, related companies, or projects. Delivery within 5 business days.

Core sources in every report (company-keyed)

LiveOFAC SDN — US Treasury Specially Designated Nationals list. Direct API. Sanctions, terrorism, narcotics screening (entity-named).
Livetrade.gov CSL — Consolidated Screening List. One query hits 5+ federal sanctions and export-control lists (OFAC CSL, BIS DPL, DDTC Debarred, more).
LiveSEC EDGAR — Form D and other filings by the company. Filings since 2008.
LiveSEC IAPD / ADV (firm-level) — Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, firm records.
LiveGDELT + US press — adverse news, US layers.
LiveState business registries — registration, status, officers-as-filed (wired states).
LiveUS courts & dockets — federal RECAP (entity-named parties), state courts where wired, bankruptcy.
LiveCounty property records — deeds, parcels, permits, hazard lookups in wired counties.
LiveUS licence registers — entity-level (incl. real-estate commission registers).
LiveCommunity listening — forums and review surfaces, company-named (US lanes).
LiveState AG & regulator enforcement — where wired.

The screening pipeline probes every US source Shield has for the company name; anything it finds appears in your report with citations. Person-keyed screens (IAPD individual, SALI) and every related company for the same managers are included from Sponsor Shield ($247) upward. Sources marked Soon below are not queried.

What you get in the PDF

Report verdict (our reading of the record): STOP / CAUTION / PROCEED WITH DILIGENCE / LOW CONCERN — an opinion, not advice
Per-principal engine screen: PASS / REVIEW / BLOCK / UNRESOLVED (feeds the report verdict)
Prior offerings: list of prior Reg D filings + RIA firm affiliations with links
Discipline history: any SEC bars/suspensions/C&Ds with case numbers and URLs
Adverse news: article list with title, source, date, URL, matched keywords
Direct citations: every claim includes source URL + retrieval date

What's NOT in Quick Shield Nothing about managers or related companies (Sponsor Shield, $247), nothing about projects or contracts (Structure Shield, $347), and nothing outside the US (World Shield, $497). Person-keyed screens (IAPD individual, SALI, person-named court parties) run from Sponsor Shield upward. Federal banking regulators (FDIC / FRB / CFPB), DOJ criminal press releases, and TX/NY/WA/FL state securities regulators ship only after our internal FCRA review clears them. No outside counsel has reviewed these data categories.

Sponsor Shield — $247 (LIVE — launched 2026-08-31)

Sponsor Shield launched 2026-08-31. Every Sponsor Shield report initiates a search of the covered floor list within 48 hours of cleared payment — the Process Guarantee in our Terms §8.5, which also provides a covered-source-match refund.

Covered floor list (live as of 2026-09-29): U.S. SEC EDGAR · U.S. Treasury OFAC SDN · SEC IAPD · trade.gov CSL · GDELT · CourtListener RECAP (entity-named parties).

Google CSE was removed from the floor list on 2026-09-29: Google closed the Programmable Search Engine JSON API to new customers (EOL 2027), so the lane can no longer run.

Process Guarantee Effective Date: August 31, 2026. From this date, the §8.5 Process Guarantee (Terms of Service v3.3) applies to every Sponsor Shield purchase.

Sources on top of Quick Shield (as of October 1, 2026)

LiveRecords about each manager — sanctions and watchlists (person-named), person-level SEC enforcement (IAPD individual, SALI), person-named court parties, and news. Managers become full search subjects.
LiveOther companies for the same managers — every related company found for each manager is searched across the same US source set, with no numeric cap on the number of related companies searched.
LiveConnections between them (entity graph) — how the managers and their companies connect.
SoonFDIC enforcement orders — federal banking enforcement (person-level prohibitions).
SoonFRB enforcement actions — Federal Reserve individual prohibitions.
SoonCFPB enforcement — consumer finance (mortgage-adjacent).
SoonDOJ Criminal Fraud Section — securities / mortgage / Ponzi prosecutions.
SoonTX SSB + NY DFS + WA DFI + FL OFR — top-4 state securities regulators.
SoonSEC Form ADV bulk — firm-level RIA data with disciplinary yes/no flags.
SoonSEC EDGAR full-text (all forms) — 10-K / 8-K / 10-Q mentions.

Structure Shield — $347 (LIVE — launched 2026-09-22)

Structure Shield launched 2026-09-22. It adds upload-based document analysis on top of Sponsor Shield: offering documents (PDF) are parsed and screened by seven clause detectors (GP skin-in-the-game, no-down-month language, fee waterfall, distribution-suspension clause, personal guarantee, escrow terms, tenant-registry verification — tenant names extracted from a lease schedule in the uploaded documents are checked against company registries, UK Companies House today, and the registry results are reported as facts), with entity extraction from the uploaded documents and a cross-check of those extracted entities against the entities identified in the sponsor's public-source scan, appended to the report. Information-only: findings are quoted, not characterized.

Investor questions with verification

Investor questions with verification (added 2026-10-03). Every Structure Shield report carries a set of questions for you to put to the sponsor, derived from the report's open findings. Each question is paired with how the answer is verified, on one of two paths: where Shield has a source lane, the answer is re-checked against that public record automatically (for example, an SEC/FINRA registration number is re-checked against SEC IAPD records); where verification requires a document or a call, the question states the manual check — for example, a bank confirmation letter is checked by contacting the bank officer through the bank's publicly listed number, never a number printed on the letter itself.

You can rerun the report with the sponsor's answers at no additional charge (up to two reruns per order); each rerun records one outcome row per question — verified, contradicted, answered (with how to verify stated), or open — and questions the sponsor did not answer stay listed as open. Registry results are reported as facts; Shield does not characterize them.

Process Guarantee Effective Date for Structure Shield: September 22, 2026. From this date, the §8.5 Process Guarantee (Terms of Service v3.3) applies to every Structure Shield purchase.

World Shield — $497 (LIVE — launched 2026-09-28)

Adds on top of Structure Shield: a macro overlay that screens the sponsor's market and asset class against public data sources (5 of 20 data points live today; this page is the source of truth for which are live — future additions are not promised).

Also adds a contract×market cross-check showing where live macro conditions intersect with the clauses in your uploaded documents; and worldwide screening layers — sanctions lists, global regulator warnings, and news coverage. All findings carry source links and no characterizations.

FAQ

Does Quick Shield include federal court cases (PACER)? Yes — entity-named federal docket screening is included from Quick Shield ($97) upward, via CourtListener's RECAP (a free public archive populated from PACER filings); person-named parties are screened from Sponsor Shield ($247) upward. Coverage is partial: RECAP archives many, not all, dockets; PACER remains the complete paid system of record. The results ship with strict controls: identity disambiguation anchored to case number and filing date, records-only surfacing with no per-record verdict or score, and per-record citations. PACER itself — the federal judiciary's paid docket service — is not queried while our internal FCRA review of additional litigation paths continues. No outside counsel has reviewed this data category.

Why doesn't Quick Shield include FINRA BrokerCheck? FINRA's Terms of Use explicitly prohibit creating a database from BrokerCheck data. We don't scrape sources that prohibit it. The SEC's IAPD (which we DO use) covers similar ground — RIA representatives — under the SEC's Fair Access policy.

What if my principal has a common name? Each source uses exact-phrase name matching. When multiple individuals share the name, we surface ALL candidates and flag the ambiguity rather than guessing. You can clarify via the post-order email.

What if a source is down when my report runs? That source returns UNRESOLVED in the report. We don't guess. You see exactly which sources ran cleanly and which didn't, with the reason.

Refund policy? Refunds are governed by our Terms of Service §8.4: one-time Shield purchases carry a 14-day full-refund window from delivery. Sponsor Shield, Structure Shield, and World Shield purchases additionally carry the §8.5 Process Guarantee (covered-source-match refund, 90 days from delivery); Quick Shield is not covered by §8.5. If you order a report for a principal we cannot screen — for example, an Israeli resident principal (Israeli Registrar of Companies does not license direct commercial access to officer records; coverage is gated on a CofaceBdi reseller agreement we have not yet signed) — you get a full refund.

What if I submit an Israeli principal? Currently Shield does not have direct or reseller access to the Israeli Registrar of Companies officer records (the Israeli Privacy Protection Authority §2(5) restricts direct commercial access). If you submit an Israeli resident principal, we will notify you before running the report that the person-level officer-history check is not available, and offer you either (a) a full refund, or (b) proceeding with the report minus the officer-history source (still includes OFAC SDN, SEC EDGAR, SEC IAPD, SEC SALI, GDELT where the principal has US filings). Israeli coverage is planned for v2.1 via a CofaceBdi reseller agreement.

What we don't do

Shield reports are built to be trusted. Part of earning that trust is saying plainly where the product's lines are.

We don't promise real-time

Every report is a snapshot of the sources searched, on the dates shown. A filing can land an hour after a sweep. A report shows what was on record when it ran — not a live feed.

We don't replace professionals

A Shield report is information and our reading of it — an opinion — not advice. It is not legal advice, not a title search, not a consumer report, and not a recommendation to buy or to walk. The decision is yours and your attorney's. Our job is making sure it rests on records, not on a pitch deck.

We don't treat one source as truth

Every finding carries its verification status, so you can see what the record supports. A claim standing on a single source is labeled as such — not dressed up as more.

We don't bypass locks

No cracked paywalls, no borrowed logins, no pretending a locked door is open. When a source can't be reached, the report says so — it doesn't fill the silence with something else.

We don't hide gaps

If a source was unreachable when your report ran, the report lists it. A silent lane is not a clean lane.

We don't keep what the job doesn't need

We retain what serves your report and its receipts, per our privacy policy.

If a report ever shows a finding without a source, treat it as a bug — and tell us.

FCRA notice: Shield Reports are not consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). They may not be used for employment screening, tenant screening, credit eligibility, or any other FCRA-covered purpose. Shield Reports contain public-record data only and are provided strictly as information for the customer's own investment due-diligence.

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