Hi George,
unfortunately trying to perform a free criminal record check online, is a bit of a minefield, and yes, many websites who advertise free criminal record checks online are usually not free.
It's difficult to do reliable criminal record searches for free and unfortunately the few that are truly free only possess tiny databases that will really only satisfy the curiosity seekers . Private companies invest a lot of time & money into collecting info from various governmental and private sources nationwide, sorting and uploading the information online - they the charge for the convenience.
I perform background record checks and other records checks quite often online and now I always use the private companies as I stand a much better chance of getting complete and accurate information ...
To manually search all this myself is just not realistically possible.
After much changing between various criminal records check sites I use Gov criminal records check , they have a large database, are very fast and the criminal reports are complete, up to date and reliable.
I hope that helps,
All the best with the searches.
