Work for an overseas airline for 5 years and then you have a clean FAA record.
You may have a clean FAA record, so discrepancies when you do your medical may not be found, but you won't have a clean FBI record, and you never will. That's the one you need initially for employment.
People get turfed out regularly from new-hire classes for failing to disclose convictions from the dim & distant past. These are the ones brought up by the company mandated FBI checks, not discrepancies on the FAA database. At that point, your career (at least in the US) is over.
Equally, plenty of folk have got hired while being honest and listing DUIs etc from the past.
If they find the skeleton, you've had it.