Obtaining a Police Record and an Apostille Stamp in USA

In USA, there are two levels of police records:

• A state level police record.
• A federal level police record, which is issued by the FBI. This record is nationwide and “covers” all the states in the USA.           

The process of requesting a police record is as follows:

1) You must fill out and submit a request on the FBI's website.

2) You must contact the US Embassy in Moscow and agree on the date and time of a dactyloscopy procedure (fingerprint submission): for this procedure, a special dactylo card (FD-258) is used. The FBI only accepts dactylo cards for processing in paper form (printouts can be made using sticky black ink or scanned).

To ensure that this is the latest information, ask the Embassy as of the date of contact:  

3) A government fee must be paid on the FBI’s website. Payment is completed via bank card, PayPal, or Amazon (if you have an account).

You can check the status of your request using the e-mail you registered in your request. On your dashboard, you can tick one or two options for receiving a police record: you can get the original in paper form or in the form of a certified scan in PDF format.

IMPORTANT NOTE! The FBI will only initiate the record preparation process after receiving a card with your fingerprints on it and payment of the government fee.

After the record is issued, it will need an apostille to be stamped on it. That is done at the Department of Justice of USA and is done over the course of 90 calendar days.

REMEMBER the time periods for producing apostilled police records since in many countries such documents have a limited validity period. For instance, in Russia, foreign police records are only valid for three months following their date of issue.