Turo CEO: The attackers had clean records, so they couldn’t have been stopped by a background check

Two people rented cars from and used Turo, a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform Committing acts of violence Earlier this week.

First, a military veteran drove a Ford F-150 Lightning into a crowd of people, killing at least 15 people. An active-duty Green Beret then rented a Tesla Cybertruck and parked it in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. and He allegedly blew it. The driver died by suicide.

On Friday, Toro CEO Andre Haddad said in a statement that he was “outraged” to think about “how horribly the two individuals who committed these heinous crimes have abused our platform.” He noted that Turo is working “around the clock” to figure out how the platform could be abused in this way.

And there is a rub. How can Turo or any similar platform prevent this?

Turo has been described as being like an Airbnb for cars, a platform where vehicle owners can rent out their cars for extra money or even as a full-time job; Many Turo hosts rent three or more vehicles on the platform at a time.

Turo says it screens each tenant with a “multi-layered, data science-driven trust and security algorithm” called Turo Risk Score, and that the company uses 50 internal and external data sources to build, maintain and improve that. a result. It’s not clear what that means – does Toro run regular criminal background checks? Turo did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification.

Over the years, some bad actors have managed to slip through the cracks, implicating Tooru Controversy After it became clear that the cars on its platform are used for humans and drugs Trafficking. And people claiming to be hosts regularly post on the Turo subreddit page about renting out their cars to people who have them Criminal history.

But even if Toro’s background checks were foolproof, the perpetrators of this week’s crimes in New Orleans and Las Vegas had valid driver’s licenses, clean criminal backgrounds, and were U.S. military service members, according to Haddad.

“They could board any plane, check into any hotel, or rent a car or truck from any traditional car rental chain,” Haddad said. “We do not believe these two individuals were reported by anyone — including law enforcement.”

Turo says it has facilitated 27 million trips over 12 years, and less than 0.10% of them ended in a serious incident such as a car theft.

So what’s next for Toro next? Haddad noted that in addition to investing in improving the risk score algorithm, he has also assembled a team of former law enforcement professionals to help assess future risks.

“We are consulting with national security and counterterrorism experts to learn more about how we can improve and do our part to help prevent anything like this from happening again,” Haddad said.