How do you get an FBI background check apostilled?

Get fingerprinted, request an FBI Identity History Summary under Departmental Order 556-73, and wait for the FBI to return it bearing the FBI watermark and a division official’s signature. Then mail that document to the U.S. Department of State, Office of Authentications in Washington, D.C., which is the only office that can attach the apostille.

No state Secretary of State can do this. No notary is involved. And if the copy of the FBI report sitting in your inbox does not carry the FBI’s authentication marks, you cannot have them added later — you have to run the check again. Those three facts account for most of the wasted months people spend on this document.

At a glance: what you need before you start

• A legible set of fingerprints, captured electronically or on an inked fingerprint card.
• Your full legal name spelled exactly as it appears on your passport and in the destination country’s records.
• An FBI Departmental Order request submitted directly to the FBI or through an FBI-approved channeler. The FBI charges a processing fee; with us that fee is covered by our flat price.
• An acceptable payment method — the FBI does not take personal checks, business checks, or cash for these requests.
• The destination country’s current status under the Hague Apostille Convention, checked on the HCCH status table, not on a blog list.
• Written confirmation from whoever is receiving the document abroad about how recent the FBI report must be and whether a translation is required.

What does “getting an FBI background check apostilled” actually mean?

An apostille does not certify that you have a clean record. It certifies that the signature on your document belongs to a real official who held the authority to sign it. That is the entire function of the certificate under the 1961 Hague Convention: one country’s designated authority vouches for the origin of a public document so a second country can accept it without further legalization.

The document being vouched for here is the FBI Identity History Summary — the formal name for what people call an FBI background check, police clearance, or rap sheet. It is produced by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division from a fingerprint search, under the authority of Department of Justice Order 556-73 and the regulations at 28 CFR 16.30–16.34.

One nuance worth knowing: the FBI describes a Departmental Order summary as being furnished for your personal review and for correcting your own record, not for the domestic licensing and employment purposes listed in 28 CFR 20.33. It is nevertheless the document foreign consulates, immigration ministries, and overseas employers ask Americans to produce, and it is the document the Department of State apostilles.

Which authority issues the apostille, and why not your Secretary of State?

The U.S. Department of State, Office of Authentications, Washington, D.C.

The rule is about whose signature is on the page. A state Secretary of State can authenticate signatures of officials commissioned by that state — county clerks, vital records registrars, notaries public, state court clerks. The FBI is a federal agency and the signature on your Identity History Summary belongs to a federal division official. No state office has any standing over it. Send an FBI report to a state apostille desk and it comes back unprocessed.

The FBI says the same thing in its own guidance: documents it authenticates may then be sent to the U.S. Department of State by the requestor to obtain an apostille if necessary. See the FBI’s Identity History Summary FAQs and the Department of State Office of Authentications page for current submission instructions, mailing address, and the required request form.

Step 1: How do you get fingerprinted?

Everything downstream depends on print quality. A smudged, partial, or over-inked set is the single most common reason a Departmental Order request dies before it ever reaches an apostille desk.

You have two capture methods. Live scan uses an electronic scanner at an enrollment site — an FBI-approved channeler’s location or, if you filed an electronic request directly with the FBI, a participating U.S. Post Office that offers fingerprint capture. Inked cards are rolled by hand at a police department, sheriff’s office, or private fingerprinting service and mailed to the FBI.

Practical points that save reruns: do not use hand cream or sanitizer immediately before your appointment, because moisture blurs ridge detail. Bring government photo identification. Give the technician your name exactly as it appears on your passport, including middle names, hyphens, and second surnames — the FBI states that the name on the response letter will match the name on the request, and a mismatch abroad is a problem you cannot fix with an apostille. If you are outside the United States, you can still have prints rolled at a U.S. embassy or consulate or by a local police agency onto a standard fingerprint card, then handle the request by mail.

Step 2: How do you submit the request to the FBI?

There are three FBI-sanctioned routes, and choosing correctly is where most of your calendar time is won or lost.

A channeler is not a shortcut around the FBI. The FBI’s own description is that approved channelers receive the fingerprint submission and data, collect the fees, forward the submission electronically to the CJIS Division for a national check, and receive the electronic result for release to the individual — they expedite delivery, nothing more. The FBI publishes the current approved list, and we maintain a directory of FBI-approved channelers with notes on how each one delivers results. If you already have a result in hand, see the format notes for a Telos ID / IDVetting result, a First Advantage Biometrics (PrintScan) result, or a National Credit Reporting summary.

Two payment rules from the FBI catch mail-in filers constantly: the FBI does not accept personal checks, business checks, or cash for Departmental Order requests, and any personal or business check it receives is destroyed rather than returned. The FBI also does not accept self-addressed stamped return envelopes, because its mailing is automated. A fee applies to the FBI request itself; when we handle the file, it is covered by our flat price and never billed separately.

For current FBI processing times, check the FBI’s Identity History Summary pages the week you file rather than relying on any figure quoted in an article — volumes shift.

Step 3: What does the FBI send back, and what makes it apostille-ready?

You receive an Identity History Summary that either lists arrest records on file or states that no record was found. Both outcomes are apostillable; a “no record” response is exactly what most visa and residency applicants are asked to produce.

What matters for the apostille is the authentication. The FBI authenticates all fingerprint search results by placing the FBI watermark and the signature of a division official on the results at the time of submission. It no longer places the FBI seal on Departmental Order 556-73 results. If you are reading older guidance that tells you to look for a raised or embossed seal, that guidance is stale — the watermark and signature are the marks the Department of State is looking at.

The FBI will not accept requests to authenticate previously processed results. If the summary you are holding was issued without the watermark and division official’s signature, there is no way to have them added after the fact — you must submit a new fingerprint request and start over. Check your document for those marks before you plan anything around it.

Handle the document as issued. Do not sign it, stamp it, staple it, hole-punch it, write a case number on it, or shrink it to fit a smaller page. If your channeler delivered a watermarked PDF, print it unaltered and in colour, at full page size. If you are unsure whether the format you hold will be accepted for federal authentication, ask before you mail it — confirming takes a minute, and a rejected package costs weeks.

Step 4: How do you submit the summary for a federal apostille?

1. Confirm your destination’s treaty status. Look the country up on the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention. A member country gets an apostille. A non-member gets a Department of State authentication certificate followed by legalization at that country’s embassy or consulate in the United States.
2. Get the current Department of State request form and instructions. Download them from the Office of Authentications page on travel.state.gov the day you file. Form numbers, mailing addresses, and payment instructions there have changed more than once; do not reuse a form saved from a previous submission.
3. Complete the request naming the destination country. The apostille certificate identifies the country the document is intended for. Name the wrong one and the certificate is wrong, even though every signature on it is genuine.
4. Package the unaltered FBI summary with the request and payment. Use a trackable mailing service in both directions. The FBI’s prohibition on self-addressed envelopes applies to the FBI, not to the Department of State — follow State’s current return-mail instructions exactly.
5. Receive the apostille attached to your document. Check the spelling of your name, the destination country, and the date before you send it anywhere. Then, if your destination is not a Convention member, forward the authenticated document to that country’s consulate for legalization.

The Office of Authentications publishes its current processing times for mailed requests. Read them before you book flights or commit to a visa appointment date, and treat the published figure as a queue estimate rather than a guarantee.

Common reasons an FBI apostille request is rejected

• The summary has no watermark or division official’s signature. Usually an old report, a re-saved PDF, or a screenshot. Unfixable — the FBI will not authenticate a previously processed result.
• A state Secretary of State was asked to do it. Federal signature, federal authority. The package comes back.
• The document was altered after issue. Notary stamps, staples through the text, highlighter, handwritten annotations, or a rescaled printout all undermine the presumption that the document is exactly as the FBI released it.
• Black-and-white or low-resolution printing. The watermark has to be visible. A grey smear across the page is not a watermark.
• The wrong destination country on the request. The apostille names the country; naming the wrong one means redoing the submission.
• Name mismatch. The FBI prints the name you submitted. If it differs from your passport, the foreign receiving office may reject a technically valid document.
• Wrong payment instrument at the FBI stage. Personal checks, business checks, and cash are not accepted for Departmental Order requests, and checks are destroyed rather than returned — so you lose the instrument and the time.
• Unreadable fingerprints. Rejected at the CJIS stage, before a summary is ever produced. You are back at Step 1.
• Stale report. The apostille is fine; the receiving authority abroad wants a report issued within its own recency window and yours has aged out during the wait.
• Missing translation. Some receiving authorities require a translation of the FBI report and, occasionally, of the apostille itself. That is a country-level requirement, not a Department of State one.

Does the FBI background check need to be notarized first?

No. A notary authenticates a private signature; the FBI summary already carries a federal official’s signature, and that is precisely what the Department of State authenticates. There is no step in the federal route where a notary belongs. Adding one introduces a private stamp onto a federal document and invites questions about whether the page was modified after issue.

This is the point where the federal route diverges most sharply from the state route. A power of attorney or an affidavit needs a notary, then a county clerk in some states, then the state Secretary of State. An FBI report skips all of it and goes straight to Washington.

Can you apostille a copy instead of the original?

You apostille the FBI-issued summary bearing the watermark and signature — not a photocopy of it, and not a scan of a scan. If the FBI delivered your result electronically through a channeler, the printed, unaltered PDF is the document you work with; print a fresh copy rather than reusing one that has been folded, signed, or marked up.

What you cannot do is take a summary you obtained two years ago, photocopy it, and route the copy for an apostille. Beyond the format problem, the recency rules of most receiving authorities would reject it anyway. And because the FBI will not retro-authenticate an old result, the only path forward is a fresh fingerprint submission.

If you need the same clearance for two different countries, order two apostilles rather than photocopying one. Each apostille certificate names a single destination country, and each is priced at $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.

How long is an FBI apostille valid?

The apostille certificate itself has no expiration date written into it. The Hague Convention does not set one. In practice, the clock that matters belongs to the authority receiving your paperwork abroad, and it runs from the date the FBI issued the report, not from the date the apostille was attached.

Immigration departments, teaching-licence boards, and residency offices commonly insist that a police clearance be recent. The window varies by country and sometimes by the specific office within a country. Get it in writing from the consulate, employer, or ministry that will receive the document, and plan your fingerprint appointment backwards from their deadline rather than forwards from today. Requirements differ by receiving authority, and that authority always has the final say on what it will accept.

DIY mail-in versus using a service: which makes sense?

Doing it yourself is entirely possible and, for someone with a flexible timeline, reasonable. You capture prints, file the Departmental Order request, wait for the summary, then mail it to the Office of Authentications with the current form and payment. The costs are your time, your postage, and the risk that a single format error restarts a multi-week cycle.

Where a service earns its place is sequencing and error-catching: confirming the watermark and signature are present before anything is mailed, matching the name on the report to the passport, naming the right destination country on the request, tracking the package both ways, and knowing whether a Convention member destination needs only the apostille or whether consular legalization follows. Our price is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive — no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-ons — so the agency fees involved are already covered rather than billed on top.

What if you need it fast?

Be honest with yourself about which stage is actually slow. There are two queues, and they respond to different things.

The FBI stage you can genuinely compress by choosing electronic submission. An FBI-approved channeler transmits your prints to CJIS electronically and releases the result to you — the FBI’s word for this is expediting delivery. Mailing an inked card is the slow path by a wide margin. If your appointment is next month, do not mail a card.

The Department of State stage is a mail-in queue with published processing times, and no private company controls it. Anyone who promises to make the federal apostille itself happen overnight is describing something they cannot deliver. What you can control is that the package arrives complete, correctly formatted, and correct on the first attempt, because a rejection restarts the queue from zero.

If your deadline is genuinely tight, book fingerprinting with an electronic-submission provider this week, confirm the receiving authority’s recency window in writing, and check the HCCH status table so you know whether consular legalization has to be scheduled after the apostille.

Country-specific considerations you should check yourself

Country lists published in articles go stale — several states have joined the Apostille Convention in recent years, and a list written two years ago may send you to an embassy you no longer need. Do not trust any list, including a list of non-members. Check the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention on the day you file, and confirm four things with the receiving authority:

• Convention status. Member: apostille. Non-member: Department of State authentication, then consular legalization.
• Recency. How old can the FBI report be on the day it is presented?
• Translation. Is a certified translation required, and must the apostille be translated too?
• Format. Will the office accept a printed electronic FBI summary, and does it want the apostille physically attached to the report?

One more trap: some destinations ask for a police certificate from your state of residence, not a federal one. Read the exact wording of the request. If it says “federal,” “FBI,” or “national,” you are in the right place. If it names a state police agency, a state-level clearance and a state apostille are the correct route instead.

Your next step

Pull up the FBI summary you already have and look for two things: the FBI watermark and a division official’s signature. If both are there and the report is recent enough for your receiving authority, the document is ready to go to the Department of State and you can start an order with the report and destination country in hand. If either mark is missing, book a fingerprint appointment with an electronic-submission provider first — that report cannot be rescued, and every day you spend waiting on it is a day added to the end of the process.