Office of Foreign Assets Control Search

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a part of the US Teasury, enforces sanctions against countries and individuals involved in terrorism and drugs. Following 9/11, it has become increasingly common for businesses doing deals with foreign nationals to run an "OFAC Search." Generally, this involves checking whether the names of the individuals or businesses appear in OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list which is updated regularly. To run a search, download the PDF version of the list and then run a "find" using Acrobat's search feature. The SDN list is also available on Westlaw but, from what I've been able to determine, there doesn't seem to be any clear benefit using their database over the free version.