This article is about the outliers, the hard-to-find specters who elude our databases. While the methods vary—depending on which someone we are looking for—there is one proven method of finding almost anyone, even the hard to find: persistence.

For most of the U.S. population, a simple database query is all it takes. According to the FDIC’s December 2009 “National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households,” only 7.7 percent of the U.S. population is unbanked, meaning they don’t own bank accounts. Although this issue was not addressed by the FDIC’s survey, it is fairly safe to assume that unbanked people are also the most likely not to have any credit, which is significant because the investigative databases we use rely primarily on data from credit applications.

Since most of us have some level of debt, most people show up in our databases. Therefore, when an investigator like me searches for your name, I can usually find your last known address in about three or four clicks of the mouse. Other searches can determine if you own your house, have any criminal or civil records, and whether you have any liens or judgments against you.

However, it is much trickier when we are trying to find that 7.7 percent of the population that does not have any debt. These are the folks on the margin, usually working for cash under the table. They are homeless people. They are immigrants. And, sometimes, they are just people who have learned how not to be found, by taking on new identities or keeping their money tucked away in their mattresses.

As I mentioned, people who do not have any debt generally do not show up in investigative databases. Luckily for us, however, there tends to be a reverse correlation between the extent that people show up in databases and their criminal history. In other words, homeless people and people who don’t want to be found typically have more contact with law enforcement, which makes it more likely that they’ll have arrest records that may indicate their whereabouts. However, this is less true for recent immigrants.

I used to think that I could find anyone anywhere if I was given enough resources, but then I considered James (“Whitey”) Bulger, who has been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for decades. He has a $2 million bounty on his head, and he still hasn’t been found. Osama bin Laden, who was recently found and killed at a compound with no phone or Internet service, didn’t have anything on Whitey. It took all of the U.S. government’s resources nearly ten years to catch up to bin Laden—but at least they finally did catch up with him.

Whitey is a ghost. (No pun intended). In fact, he is the king of the specters. Surely, if the FBI can’t catch Whitey, then there are plenty of other phantoms out there who would be a real challenge to find.

Ghosts are people who are apparently alive and walking among us but who fail to show up in any significant way on anything that is connected to a computer. Ghosts live paycheck to paycheck, if they even get a paycheck. They eschew contact with the police. Any money they have is spent immediately in the form of cash or it is hidden in a mattress. They generally don’t drive, relying on public transportation or the kindness of cohorts to get them around. They exist in a purgatory between the legitimate world that we know and the netherworld.

The only reliable way to find these apparitions is to get out of your office and knock on doors, or to use informants. The problem with ghosts, though, is that you need to know where to look for them. Consider the following example, based upon a hypothetical non-ghost named James Smith, which is reportedly the most common name in the United States.

Assume for a minute that we have no other information about the James Smith we are looking for. In fact, let’s pretend that we don’t even know which city he lives in—and that we don’t have access to an investigative database. James may just as easily live somewhere in the tundra of Alaska as in the urban jungle of New York City. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there are around 130 million households in the United States, making our chance of locating the correct person about one in 130 million, if we pick a house randomly somewhere in the country, knock on the door, and ask for James.

Now, in theory, if we had the time and resources to knock on all of those 130 million doors, we would eventually find James—assuming, of course, that he is not homeless and that everyone we talk to is honest.

Let’s assume now that we do have access to a database that will help us narrow down those households, but that we still don’t know exactly where James lives. According to Terry Kilburn, the CEO of Tracers Information Specialists, there are around 46,000 people named James Smith in the United States. Naturally, if we visit any one of those addresses randomly, our chances of locating the correct James (again, assuming he’s not among the 17 million unbanked) are about one in 46,000. Although these odds are still not great, it is clear that the ability to use an investigative database offers a clear advantage.

Also, the more information we know about James, the better our odds of finding him. For example, if we know that James lives in Washington, DC, where there are about 92 or so people with that name (again, according to Kilburn), a random visit would yield a one in 92 chance of success. If we know that James’ middle initial is A, then our odds jump to one in about a dozen. This is obviously a much more manageable number.

But what if James is a ghost? When we are searching for the Whiteys of the world, the statistics become innumerable, because there are a nearly infinite number of variables at play. For example, what if James is using a pseudonym? Since he could be any of the 150 million or so men living in the United States, we are back to looking for a needle in a haystack. And what if he is outside of the United States? There are close to 7 billion people in the world!

But let’s assume that we have an idea of where James is living—we’ve tracked his I.P. address to a general neighborhood—and we know some of his associates. We could ask his friends about his whereabouts, and they will either lie to us or tell us the truth. For example, let’s say that you knock on a door, and a woman inside tells you she’s never heard of James. She may be telling you the truth, or James could be standing behind the door, just beyond your view. If we believe the lie, then we will cross the address off our list of possibilities and actually decrease our odds of finding James. If we assume she is lying—but she is really telling us the truth (that she has never heard of James)—then we face the same dilemma, because we will likely spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out if James is in that house or not. Since we can’t completely trust anyone, we have to carefully scrutinize each new piece of information.

I recently spent nearly six months tracking down a transient witness for a capital murder case, and at the end of it all we sat around the courthouse for eight hours, while he was under subpoena and waiting to testify, talking about his life and why he was so difficult to find. I was astounded by all of the misinformation I had received along the trail—and also how close I had been to him at various times without realizing it.

What I learned most from this post-investigation debriefing session is that there is no correlation between the price you pay for information and its veracity. In other words, offering a $2 million bounty doesn’t make the information you receive any more reliable. The primary difference between finding a ghost and anyone else is that, with regular folks, the denominator representing the number of possibilities is finite. There may be about 92 people named James Smith in the District of Columbia, but that’s at least a known quantity.

For ghosts, the denominator is only limited by your ability to differentiate reliable leads from the superfluous noise that comes with not knowing who you can trust. At the end of the day, however, it is still a math equation that becomes more soluble with each new piece of reliable information you uncover.

The only question is, on how many doors are you willing to knock?

Philip A. Becnel is the managing partner of Dinolt Becnel & Wells Investigative Group LLC and is the author of Private Investigator Entry Level (02E), an introductory textbook on conducting private investigations. Philip is a licensed private investigator in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC.

His book may be found at Amazon, among other venues.

Link to purchase book:  http://www.amazon.com/Private-Investigator-Entry-Level-Investigations/dp/1440194114
Link to company:  http://www.dinolt.com

Access to professional databases, then and now, unquestionably give investigators the opportunity to make more money- even if you are one of those complaining about the cost. (You should have been around when the database companies charged you by the record and the time you were connected to their server! I have it on very good authority, that if it had been a slow month they would throttle back the connection speed to that they could charge more money for the time their clients were connected.) Taking 15 years of inflation and economic adjustments into account, a “comprehensive report” could cost as much as $45 in today’s currency.  Eventually, these commercial database providers evolved and acquired staggering amounts of data and technology made the data cheaper to serve then faster to sort through and obtain, which also made data more affordable.

What I didn’t immediately recognize back then was the legal minefields these databases would eventually become…

The days when just about anyone could gain access to data and pull information on friends, relatives, enemies and “lost loves” out of mere curiosity and a touch of voyeurism were short lived!  This fast and unfettered access to shocking amounts of “private information” horrified an unaware American public in a series of highly publicized stories of major data breeches, murders and an alarming rise in identity theft, which were all being connected in one way or another to professional information brokers.  This sudden awakening also gave rise to a new breed of political crusader; the privacy zealots were born.  It wasn’t long before these neo-politicos would begin to curry favor with their constituents by changing existing laws and producing new laws in an effort to protect consumer privacy.  Thankfully, the database and information brokers did form a trade group, Individual Reference Services Group (IRSG), and made earnest attempts to police themselves through what was coined the “IRSG Principles” whose aim was to educate their clients about the use of reference data, improve data quality, limit access to non-public data, improve security of sensitive data and to promote consumer choice in the marketplace.  While the effort was a little too late in coming and the IRSG eventually disbanded, these early attempts at preserving the professional investigator’s access to restricted information paid off.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was originally enacted in 1970 in an effort to address a growing credit reporting industry in the United States that collected and sold “consumer credit reports” and “investigative consumer reports.”  It was the first official act of Congress to define and place access/use restrictions on “non-public personal information.” Sweeping and substantial amendments to the FCRA were made in the Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 1996 that further limited access to information contained in a consumer credit report through a set of “permissible purposes” that were loosely based upon the IRSG principles of access and would later be adopted by the Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) and the GLBA.  The FCRA also more narrowly defined how non-public personal information could be used and what disclosures had to be made when adverse information was used to make credit or employment decisions deemed unfavorable to the consumer.  While the FCRA did have a widespread effect on access to restricted data, it had the most chilling effect on private investigators and agencies that were in the business of pre-employment background screening. Background screening and FCRA compliance is a topic best served under a separate title.

The DPPA was passed as an amendment to the “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994” in reaction to a series of abuses of information contained in State motor vehicle registration and driver’s license databases.  The murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989 was paraded as one example of such an egregious misuse of this information. In that instance, a private investigator obtained Rebecca Schaeffer’s address through her California motor vehicle record and sold it to an obsessed fan who used that information to eventually stalk and kill the actress.  The act was amended again in 2000 to provide for even stricter privacy protocols; it more narrowly defined the available permissible purposes used to gain protected records and gave individual states increased power to enact broader protections than those authored by Congress in the DPPA.

A little over 10 years ago Congress also enacted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999 (GLBA) “to enhance competition in the financial services industry by providing a prudential framework for the affiliation of banks, securities firms, and other financial service providers, and for other purposes.”  These other purposes would famously include comprehensive privacy protection and access restrictions to non-public personal information derived from data obtained, developed and shared by financial institutions.

In the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) article, “Victoria’s Secret and Financial Privacy,” the author wrote, “Outside the Beltway, it is not well known that a Victoria’s Secret catalog is one of the key reasons that Congress included privacy protections for financial information when passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). The GLBA sought to “modernize” financial services- that is, end regulations that prevented the merger of banks, stock brokerage companies, and insurance companies. The removal of these regulations raised significant risks that these new financial institutions would have access to an incredible amount of personal information, with no restrictions upon its use…”

“In a session where House Commerce Committee Members “marked up” a draft version of the GLBA, Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced an amendment that would add privacy protections. The Markey Amendment was strongly opposed by the banking industry. It added “Title V” to the Act, giving individuals notice and an ability to control some information sharing…” and “Prospects for privacy protection remained dim despite a series of testimonials by Members who recounted their experiences of having their Social Security Numbers and financial information sold…”

However, critical support for the Title V Amendment came from Representative Joe Barton, a conservative Republican and privacy advocate from Texas, who was outraged and embarrassed that he started receiving Victoria’s Secrets catalogs at his Washington, D.C. residence- the address to which he had only given to his Credit Union.

The article went on to say that, “Barton expressed concern that his credit union had sold his address to Victoria’s Secret. Representative Barton noted that he started receiving Victoria’s Secret catalogs at his Washington home. This was troubling- he didn’t want his wife thinking that he bought lingerie for women in Washington, or that he spent his time browsing through such material.”

On the heels of that experience, Barton supported prohibiting financial institutions from selling their customer’s personal information.  The GLBA, with the newly appended “Title V Privacy” amendment, was then approved by Congress.  It should also be noted that Barton’s ex-wife went on to become a victim of identity theft as well and he has used these issues to further identity theft and personal information privacy legislation.

Thus protecting the privacy of consumer information held by “financial institutions” became the heart of the financial privacy provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999 and there are essentially three principal parts of Title V, the privacy provision in the GLBA: the Financial Privacy Rule, Safeguards Rule and pretexting provisions.  The Financial Privacy Rule regulates the collection and disclosure of customers’ personal financial information by financial institutions. It also applies to companies, whether or not they are financial institutions, who receive such information.  The Safeguards Rule requires all financial institutions to create and deploy safeguards to protect customer information. The Safeguards Rule applies not only to financial institutions that collect information from their own customers, but also to financial institutions “such as credit reporting agencies” that receive customer information from other financial institutions.  Subtitle B of the GLBA titled “Fraudulent Access to Financial Information,” prohibits the practice commonly referred to by private investigators as “Pretexting” in order to obtain personal financial information.  It is important to note that this law also makes soliciting of others to engage in pretexting a crime as well.  In several (very well-publicized) instances the Federal Trade Commission has brought cases against information brokers who engaged in obtaining protected information under false pretense.

So what does the GLBA really mean to the professional investigator as it relates to gaining access to sensitive, non-public personal information on subject’s whom they may be investigating?

Statistically speaking only 458 words out of the over 60,000 words in the GLBA apply to professional database providers and their clients. If an investigator has in the past several years attempted to gain access to GLBA protected data from a professional provider these words should be very familiar as they form the basis of the general exceptions under which non-public personal information can be disclosed to our clients:

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TITLE V – PRIVACY

Subtitle A – Disclosure of Nonpublic Personal Information

SEC. 502. OBLIGATIONS WITH RESPECT TO DISCLOSURES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION.

Subsection (e):

GENERAL EXCEPTIONS. – Subsections (a) and (b) shall not prohibit the disclosure of nonpublic personal information-

(1) as necessary to effect, administer, or enforce a transaction requested or authorized by the consumer, or in connection with-
(A) servicing or processing a financial product or service requested or authorized by the consumer;
(B) maintaining or servicing the consumer’s account with the financial institution, or with another entity as part of a private label credit card program or other extension of credit on behalf of such entity; or
(C) a proposed or actual securitization, secondary market sale (including sales of servicing rights), or similar transaction related to a transaction of the consumer;

(2) with the consent or at the direction of the consumer;

(3) (A) to protect the confidentiality or security of the financial institution’s records pertaining to the consumer, the service or product, or the transaction therein;
(B) to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims, or other liability;
(C) for required institutional risk control, or for resolving customer disputes or inquiries;
(D) to persons holding a legal or beneficial interest relating to the consumer; or
(E) to persons acting in a fiduciary or representative capacity on behalf of the consumer;

(4) to provide information to insurance rate advisory organizations, guaranty funds or agencies, applicable rating agencies of the financial institution, persons assessing the institution’s compliance with industry standards, and the institution’s attorneys, accountants, and auditors;

(5) to the extent specifically permitted or required under other provisions of law and in accordance with the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, to law enforcement agencies (including a Federal functional regulator, the Secretary of the Treasury with respect to subchapter II of chapter 53 of title 31, United States Code, and chapter 2 of title I of Public Law 91–508 (12 U.S.C. 1951–1959), a State insurance authority, or the Federal Trade Commission), self-regulatory organizations, or for an investigation on a matter related to public safety;

(6) (A) to a consumer reporting agency in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, or
(B) from a consumer report reported by a consumer reporting agency;

(7) in connection with a proposed or actual sale, merger, transfer, or exchange of all or a portion of a business or operating unit if the disclosure of nonpublic personal information concerns solely consumers of such business or unit; or

(8) to comply with Federal, State, or local laws, rules, and other applicable legal requirements; to comply with a properly authorized civil, criminal, or regulatory investigation or subpoena or summons by Federal, State, or local authorities; or to respond to judicial process or government regulatory authorities having jurisdiction over the financial institution for examination, compliance, or other purposes as authorized by law.

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Generally speaking, private investigators should really be more concerned about running afoul of individual state privacy breach laws that have far-reaching civil and criminal implications.  Data breach laws are vastly different from state to state and some have provisions in them allowing state agencies to pursue enforcement actions against violators located well beyond state lines.

This new reality means that someone with access to GLBA protected data has to be extremely careful when considering whether or not they really have a “permissible purpose.” In an age when information returned in database searches are most probably obtained from sources outside of the state in which the investigator is conducting his or her investigation, it is entirely possible to run afoul of several state data breach laws if not extremely careful.  For example, did you know that it is against North Carolina data breach laws to even speak about protected, personally identifiable information with someone who is not authorized to be in possession of that data?

Generally, the GLBA affects professional investigators in the following three ways:

1.  The GLBA reaffirms, reinforces and then expands upon the FCRA’s definition of “non-public personal information;” most importantly, the GLBA limits access to credit headers because they are a part of the consumer credit report, which is information developed by financial institutions. Credit header information forms the basis of almost all of the information contained in “people search” products and is the foundation upon which all “comprehensive report” database products are built!

Information in the header, or top most portion, of the consumer credit report was once not considered to be derived from financial information because it did not include banking information, credit accounts or financial profiles, per se. The credit header only contained personal identifier information, (name, aliases, date of birth and social security number) current reported address and a list of previously reported addresses. That changed in 2002 when the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed rulings in TransUnion v. FTC, No. 01-5202 (D.C. Cir. 2002) and in IRSG v. FTC, 145 F. Supp. 2d 6, No. 00-1828 (D.D.C. 2001) when both TransUnion, one of the top three consumer reporting agencies, and the IRSG were both unsuccessful in lawsuits against the FTC that were filed in their efforts to overturn GLBA privacy regulations and to have certain data (i.e. credit header information) excluded from the Financial Privacy Rule and the Safeguards Rule specifically.

2.  The GLBA requires those who possess GLBA-protected data to secure and prevent the unauthorized distribution of that data unless the intended receiver is also permitted by exception under the GLBA.

3. The GLBA provides severe civil penalties for unauthorized access to data (a data breach) and those who access the information in contravention of the GLBA.  States also have the power to provide for broader protection of non-public private information and to further define what constitutes a data breach and the “reasonable risk of harm” to their citizens.

Why is GLBA compliant data more expensive to obtain than non-GLB compliant data?

It’s better. Plain and simple- you get what you pay for.  The difference between the investigator barely making it and the one who is successful in his or her own business comes down to the quality of their tools.  The investigator using the $.50 “people search” or the $1.00 “criminal history search” is using the same information being marketed and sold to the average consumer.  I have never purchased data at cut rate prices and not expected to get stale, outdated data.  It is more expensive for the top-tier, professional data provider to obtain fresh updates to the information I need and I understand that.  Using data sourced from a professional provider, I can find the lead that will close those cases that others cannot.

I also want access to non-traditional sources of information.  Professional database companies are actively out looking for data from other “buckets of information” in order to be the best database provider in the industry.  This creatively sourced data is usually only available to companies with the financial capital to afford it.

Ultimately, I want access to billions of records updated everyday… not hundreds of thousands updated once a year and only the top-tier companies can manage that- they also happen to be GLBA compliant.

Database providers have become the convenient, if not vogue, coat hook on which the privacy hawks have hung their hats lately.  It will not be long before they begin to target the consumers of that data as well.  So, the bottom line for me is this:  I choose professional, top-tier GLBA data providers because…

1.  I have a PI license.  I had to go through a great deal of effort and expense to get and keep that license and it is valuable to me.  I want access to information not available to the public and I want to do a better job than my competition.  There are permissible purposes that allow me, as an investigative professional, access to non-public personal information and I understand that I will have to prove that I run a legitimate company, which will mean extra paperwork and time getting properly vetted before being approved for access.  I don’t want to do business with a company that is double-dealing while trying to compete with me by playing both the “business to business market” (me) and the “business to consumer market” (John Q. Public) at the same time.

2.  I need to know where my data comes from, where it was sourced and when it was last updated.  If (when) I am called to court to justify the findings of my investigation, I expect that the foundation upon which I built my investigation is solid. An established professional database provider knows where, when and how his or her data is sourced and takes steps to make sure that it is not collected or shared contrary to the law.  Cut-rate providers don’t usually know exactly where their records are sourced- are they GLB-protected or not? I NEED to know in order to stay out of trouble.  Who will be there to stand behind their data if called upon to do so?  I want to know more about where my data comes from, too, and a professional is not afraid to share that information.

3.  Professional database providers take the time and effort to train me to be a better investigator and how best to use their product and gain maximum advantage over non-clients, while potentially saving some money on my monthly search bill.  I respect the professional database provider that will tell me that his or her product is not the same as other database providers and helps me understand the strengths and weaknesses of each so that I can use the right tool for the job.  My database providers of choice each regularly tell me that I need to subscribe to multiple sources of information.

4.  I am not an expert on the GLBA, FCRA, DPPA, FDCPA, HIPPA, the Identity Theft Act of 2004 or the data breach laws of 50 individual states; when I have compliance questions I can call someone who understands complex compliance issues.  Professional database companies spend a great deal of time and money to educate their clients.  I expect that level of quality customer service and that if I use their service as prescribed that I will not get into trouble.

5.  Professional database companies materially support the investigation industry.  National and State industry associations do very important work and need the financial support of sponsors.  Database providers contribute to important causes and fund the ongoing fight to preserve my access to the information vital to the success of my business.  I will support those who support me.

Have you ever read the fine print on a credit application you’ve signed?

It says that you give the creditor permission to inquire about and share credit information with other creditors. This has long been the “Secret Weapon” used by ALL bill collectors! Essentially, they can call any of your other creditors and share information about you. This tightly guarded network of skip tracers has worked in cooperation with each other for at least 30 years despite the fact that almost no one outside of the investigation trades knows that the network exists!

Almost every credit grantor (credit cards, banks, etc.) has a skip-tracing department. Although some restrictions apply when contacting these companies, they are usually either very easy or very difficult to deal with, but they are all FREE! The usual restrictions are: they will only assist other creditors or skip tracers; they will only help you during certain hours and days of the week, etc.

These skip-tracing departments offer a wide variety of data. In most cases, you must be able to supply the full name, date of birth, last known address, social security number and occasionally an account number. I have easily obtained addresses, telephone numbers (published and non-published), relatives, employers, bank and credit card references and similar subject data, all without ever having to pay an information broker or database provider! Yes, the skip tracing process does not have to be difficult, but there is a catch. Skip-tracing department phone numbers are not published and practically all companies that have such a department either do not know or will not give them out.

With a little effort you can obtain the telephone numbers. Most credit inquiries come with a telephone number. In the event that they do not, call the credit bureau for the number. They maintain this contact information in case of a consumer dispute.

Start by contacting the creditors most likely to have current information. Ask for the “Skip Trace Department.” If they respond by telling they do not have one or do not assist anyone outside the company, tell them you have information to share that they will need soon. You will most likely be put through to another person, who will be a tracer.

What you do next follows a time honored tradition and “code”:

1. When you first make contact with the tracer, tell them that you have a tough
one and would like to trade some information in return for their help.
2. Offer your call back telephone number immediately. This insures you won’t forget to, and it also lets them know that you are serious about helping them.
3. Also, ask them if they would like a call back when you do find the skip, or if you acquire any new information on the skip that may be of use to them.
4. Verify all of the information you have and ask if they can update any of it. They want to know that you have done some work prior to calling.
5. After you have verified and corrected your information ask for references. The key word is “references.” They will almost never offer or give additional information otherwise. Ask for employment, credit and banking references, as well as alternate contact information.

As a general rule, a person can usually obtain this information without pretexting. This kind of networking will become one of your most valuable tools as a skip tracer. Write down every skip trace number you get your hands on. Always return phone calls and follow up on promises to call back. The tracer on the other end of the phone has recorded your callback number and may call you one day!

I have used skip-tracing departments in used car sales companies and local loan agencies to obtain the most current information. These types of companies require the most information on the application and have a larger stake in their creditors; consequently they are usually the friendliest. The skip’s car may have already been repossessed but they may still have some information to share, such as which agency did the repossession and where the collateral was located.

This article is a small excerpt from The Art of Skip Tracing and Missing Persons Investigations, an online skip tracing course for private investigators.

Take the case of Amy Lynn Boyer of New Hampshire; a man obsessed with this young lady since high school, Liam Youens, hired a private investigator to find Ms. Boyer and obtain here date of birth and place of employment. A credit header search and a pretext call later and the investigator was successful. Youens subsequently shot and killed Ms. Boyer. The private investigator was sued for wrongful death; invasion of privacy through intrusion upon seclusion; invasion of privacy through commercial appropriation of private information; violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act; and violation of the New Hampshire Consumer Protection Act. All of this tragedy occurred over a $45 assignment. This is just one highly publicized event among dozens in the last decade.

Is this increased scrutiny going to stop the business of skip tracing? Not hardly, but as prudent people I hope that you will take precautions against giving information to potentially bad people with nefarious plans for any amount of money. I believe that we have a duty to protect the public to the extent that we should never facilitate the harm or death of the subjects of our investigation. How do we accomplish this when we cannot always know the ultimate intent of our client with 100% certainty? We have to act responsibly. This is part of the ethics of skip tracing and the bottom line is that the more instances like the Boyer homicide that make it to press, and then on to the legislators, you will find that our tools are going to be taken away and our jobs will become increasingly difficult and less profitable.

For skip trace assignments on behalf of non-commercial clients that do not fall under permissible purposes as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, many private investigators have instituted a, for lack of a better description, “Subject’s Right of Refusal,” which states that a client will not be given a subject’s sensitive or personal information, including their whereabouts, without the subject being notified of the investigation and given the opportunity to decide whether or not the information is shared with the client. We get the decision of the subject in writing as well.

Will this cause some clients to go elsewhere for the investigation? Absolutely. I’ve lost probably a dozen or so potential clients since we first instituted this into our own operation in 2000. My feeling however, is that if the client is not willing to follow this protocol then something is certainly wrong and my own personal well being and that of the subject is not worth any amount of money or sleepless nights. My gut feeling with the majority of these potential clients was unsteady anyway; their refusal just helped me make the final decision not to provide investigative services

I am not an attorney and do not take what I am sharing with you as legal advice. Here is a copy of the “Subject’s Right of Refusal” clause we use in our own investigative contracts and retainer agreements:

“Furthermore, if this investigation is an attempt to locate a person (family member, adoption, reunion, former family member, friend or significant other), for non-commercial purposes that do not fall within “permissible-purpose” guidelines of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, I understand that I will not receive information concerning the subject’s whereabouts, or additional sensitive personal information, until they have signed a waiver authorizing the release of this information to me. In the event that they decline the release of their information, I authorize CompassPoint Investigations to release my home address, email address, telephone number or other contact information to the subject for the purpose of contacting me directly. In any case, I understand that I will still be liable for the cost of the investigation conducted whether the subject authorizes the release of their information or not.”

Are we going to be able to avoid liability in skip tracing assignments? Never, but I certainly feel better about completing them.

We’ve discussed the liability of skip tracing but how about the legality of these assignments? Well it turns out that there are legal guidelines we have to work within when accessing certain types of personally sensitive information and that not understanding or abiding them can have additional legal consequences.

This article is a small excerpt from The Art of Skip Tracing and Missing Persons Investigations, an online skip tracing course for private investigators.

DELIVERY NOTICES AND DELIVERY POSTCARDS

I developed this idea several years ago to increase my success rate with process serving. It was an incredible concept that never failed me, not one time. With the concept of the traplines and calling cards, I developed the use of delivery notices. I used them to determine non-published numbers, times when the subject would be home, verifying they were home when I was attempting service, or that they possibly moved.

The tools are: pre-printed door hangers or peel-and-stick notices (that easily peel off), and your toll-free number. The message is simply that you attempted to deliver a package, requiring a signature, and to please call the delivery dispatch center. I use a custom number that has the business acronym (i.e. US Rapid Delivery – 877-123-USRD). This is not the number I use, but you can find one by searching Kall8 for a usable acronym and number.

The premise is simple – if there is uncertainty that a subject is at the address or I need verification, a notice is left and the caller will either confirm it, indicate the subject is not a resident, or sometimes offer a new address and/or telephone number. For other situations, such as PO Boxes, I use a delivery notice postcard and the same premise. The key to effective trapline use is the message left to entice a return telephone call – greed and messages that get immediate attention work best, and I have had a success rate of better than 80% using the postcards. I also reserve these for cases that have me stuck or my investigation leads me to believe this is the best method to determine or verify an address. This is because once used, it may not work again and I have had numerous occasions requiring me to find a subject two or even three times.

CELL PHONES

Cell phones are much like non-published numbers – we know the information exists, but how do we get it. As cell phones are gradually replacing traditional landline service for our voice communication needs, these names and numbers are becoming more and more frequent in common databases. Start with entering the number into various search engines and then databases. Two of the best resources for this are www.reachdirect.com and www.telequery.net; the latter allows you to use wild card searching. Telequery.net also has a ‘Caller-ID’ function that will tell you the information as it appears on the Caller-ID but is often not in other data records. This is the same information that is presented when a number is trapped on a toll-free service. Credit headers and other resources tend to be the next steps to acquiring both cell phone and non-published data.

Using a trapline to determine related information about a cell phone user is next. First you will need to setup a few things. Your trapline and use the ‘blocking’ feature to block payphones and the cell phone number of the subscriber. I broaden this with the cell phone prefix (i.e. if my target phone is 123-555-1234, I block 123-555) – this prevents the target from using their cell phone (or any cell phone with that prefix) from calling you back on the trapline number. You will want blocked numbers to go directly to voicemail and unblocked numbers to go to a different destination phone number (I recommend MagicJack – you can answer that or let it go to a different voicemail). Next change your trapline voicemail greeting to something like ‘We are experiencing technical difficulties – please hang up and try your call again. If you continue to experience this problem please try from a different phone to assist us in isolating the problem’; using a female voice is best). This will force the caller to use a different phone, hopefully a traditional landline that is their residence phone, employer phone or possibly a neighbor.

Once you have this information all it takes is a little bit more work to develop your target’s location. But first you need to persuade the target into calling your trapline. Sometimes no message is best – just a name and number, depending on your specific situation. The above delivery notices and postcards work wonderfully. New generation communication has given other unique opportunities, as detailed below.

VOICEMAIL, TEXT MESSAGES, EMAIL, PAGERS AND WEB PAGES

All of these are simply methods of communication. If you know the cell phone number, use SlyDial to bypass calling the person and be sent directly to their voicemail. You will want to use the calling card feature of Kall8 in case they have a feature that tells them the number that left the message. This serves two purposes – it protects your identity and encourages them to call the trapline number back out of curiosity. Remember, all you want is a call back to trap the new number – nothing more is necessary (but more is helpful). You can also use the paging feature of cell phone voicemail (‘to page this person press ‘#’). Use the SlyDial method above and enter your trapline number setup to reject calls from the cell phone.

Text messaging is nothing more than using the voicemail and pager methods, except you want to remain anonymous. Yahoo mail has a unique feature to send a text message to any cell phone; it is as anonymous as your Yahoo email address. This is because they send two messages – the intended message and a special message that tells the recipient that Yahoo user ‘your Yahoo username’ is trying to send you a text message. Another somewhat anonymous web based text messaging is www.textyourbuddy.com. You will need to enter an email address and the message. Your delivered message will show the email address you entered and ‘sent from textyourbuddy.com’. It is not so bad to have an email address appear, as long as it is a generic and anonymous email address. They may be enticed to send an email to you (less than infrequent in my experience) – giving you their IP address (at least their general location) and their email address. You can then use various email tracing methods to develop additional information. Likewise, if you have an email address but nothing else, use the same message delivery theories already outlined to craft an anonymous and enticing email message for them to call your trapline. These theories can also be used for persons that have webpages and contact forms. Finally, you can setup your own webpage and contact form enticing them to contact you or call your trapline.

CALLING CARDS

Identical to calling cards you purchase; however, these are pre-paid by you and mailed to the subject. These are only available from the commercial providers.

The specialized calling cards are essentially the same as the trapline. This is especially useful when all you have is the target’s mail drop address or the address of a relative. The commercial company will send a free calling card in a marketing package, hoping your subject will call someone or be called by the relative. The uses of these are as vast as your imagination. With the extensive use of cell phones and no associated long distance charges, calling card use is rapidly declining.

As with all calling cards, you will be able to see the date, time and telephone numbers called from and to; and just as with the trapline, not just once a month – but virtually any time it is used and in the same notification manners. Due to the cost, in the past I have used these only on the subjects that are sure to bite and have avoided any other trick I could think of. The costs can be $25- $75.

COMBINING THESE RESOURCES

Each of the above services have unique stand alone uses – but when combined create powerful investigative tools. The uses of these services are really up to the legal and creative imagination. Calling a cell phone with Slydial and leaving an enticing message with a toll-free number is just the same as sending an email, text message or other communication – get your number to the subject and get them to call you back. Be creative and think like your subject. What would prevent them from calling you? What messages, letters, emails or other communications have you received that enticed you to call a number? The answers to these questions are the beginning to the answers of where your skip is hiding, living and working. All of these methods have proven beneficial to me – some more so then others. This article is generally written from the most successful methods to the least. It is important to practice safe, legal, and common sense investigative strategies. DO NOT use any pretext or form of communication that may jeopardize your case, your client, or your profession. If you are not permitted to contact a subject (i.e. an opposing party represented by an attorney) you cannot use these methods.

Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas with me and your fellow investigators.

This article is an updated section from Dean Beers’ book, ‘Professional Locate Investigations;’ and is one of the most popular subjects on which he receives requests for advice.

Dean A. Beers is the owner and Senior Legal Investigator of Forensic Investigators of Colorado, LLC, based in LaPorte, Colorado. He has been a legal investigator since 1987 with extensive experience in skip tracing. He left the private sector from 2005 to 2008 to work as Deputy Coroner / Certified Medicolegal Death Investigator for the Larimer County Medical Examiner’s Office. He returned to the private sector in late 2008 and now focuses primarily on the legal investigations of Personal Injury, Negligence and Death, as well as Criminal Defense. His wife, Karen, handles agency administrative matters and is also an Associate Legal Investigator. Please visit the agency website for detailed information at www.Forensic-Investigators.com. After ‘retiring’ from the private sector, he completed his book ‘Professional Locate Investigations’.

Dean has extensive training, experience, skill sets and knowledge in Personal Injury, Negligence and Death, and all contributing causations. Related areas include motor vehicle collisions, workplace incidents, elder abuse, child abuse, slip and fall, premises liability, as well as related evidence collection and analysis. In addition, he continues to provide detailed Criminal Defense investigations, now with the benefit of POST certification and extensive familiarity with the local law enforcement community and judiciary.

Over 20 years ago, when I started my investigative agency, I asked as many investigators as I could what the most valuable tool in their arsenal was. The dominant answer (other than our skills) was the telephone. About 10 years ago I asked the same question and was surprised that it was the computer, and all the accessible information. At that time I still thought the telephone was the most useful tool. When I ask that question today it is usually the computer followed by the telephone. With many of the changes that have taken place regarding the access, or lack thereof, to information, many investigators have turned back to the ‘old’ methods of the telephone. In my opinion the answer is both. We can now take the benefits of the telephone and computer and develop some unique tools. The key is to first understand that virtually every person and business has a telephone, especially cell phones.

Technology has seen some significant changes since I presented my original article on traplines. Some are to our favor and others work against us. I hope to impart some new wisdom that I have experienced in the most recent several months. The toll-free trapline is a very useful and powerful tool. You no longer need a telephone number to call and pretext; you can now take advantage of cell phones, text messaging, email, website contact forms, social networking sites, and other forms of communications. The goal is to get your trapline number to the subject and entice them to call it. I freely endorse the vendors I mention in this article, but I am not compensated in any manner or responsible for the services they provide.

The idea is that your subject will call your trapline number, at least identifying the number they have called from, and possibly the subscriber name and address. This will work even if they call and hang-up without completing the call. Of course a message is nice – often telling you when they are home (or at work) and verifying certain information (i.e. non-published numbers, spouses, etc). If they call from the number that you initially called, you have located them (subject to verification); if they call from a different number, it is likely either a work or home number. Those that are suspicious will call from a friend, relative, payphone, or hopefully from work or home. Oftentimes they will leave a different number to call – sometimes a pager, cell phone, friend’s, or relative’s.

The premise is that calls to toll-free numbers are similar to collect calls. When you have a toll-free number, you are essentially agreeing to accept the charges for the long-distance call and are therefore entitled to the number calling you. The billing company must provide the subscriber data for calls on your bill. That is a headache, time consuming and, in our line of work, just not practical to wait for the phone bill. Unlike your common toll-free number and phone bill, which gives you information monthly, your trapline account can notify you by fax, email, website, pager or even connect your caller to you. The use of this is perfectly legal – the pretext you use to get the return call may or may not be, and caution should be used. Illegally obtained information is both a crime and inadmissible as evidence, together with any consequentially developed information. Keep in mind – the fruit of the poisonous tree.

An old trick smarter subjects used was to call a suspect toll-free number via payphone, calling card (not many allow this, some do), or an Internet long distance service (i.e. Net2Phone). Sometimes, especially with calling cards or PC based telephone services, only a one or two digit number or a non-working number is ‘trapped’. The current trend is to use prepaid cell phones and VoIP telephone services (i.e. Vonage, MagicJack, etc.). When ‘trapped’ these may leave a number that is not reversible to the subscriber or the main ‘trunk line’ number (common on PBX phones). If a complete number is provided it will usually not have a subscriber name and will not lead to an address via common search methods. It is new information that should further assist you in your investigation and there are methods to obtain additional information.

Related concerns are services offered by phone companies: Caller-ID, Anonymous Call Rejection, Caller Screening, etc. These services are designed to require you to disclose who you are to the party you are calling or attempting to locate – not exactly in our best interests. How do you get around this? Most use calling cards (try them first), or a ‘Blindline’ offered by any of the toll-free and trapline companies. On the Caller-ID, the calling card usually appears as ‘Anonymous’ or ‘Out of Area’ and the ‘Blindline’ usually returns a generic office number. You can also use this feature with Kall8, as detailed below.

A word of caution about forwarding numbers. Many years ago, more than I care to remember, you could forward a number and be anonymous. This is no longer the case. For example, if you forward your office number to a cell phone or toll-free number and then call your office number from a third phone, that originating number will show up on the Caller-ID. This bit of information is handy to know because that also means our subjects cannot use call forwarding to hide from our traplines.

Deciding which service is right for you depends on your needs and the size of your office. I used commercial trapline companies for many years and still recommend their use. If you have a large business, account volume, and multiple employees, I recommend using a commercial service. The other consideration is if you have the need to send pre-paid calling cards, which are only available through a commercial service [see Calling Cards]. These turnkey solutions come with monthly and per call costs that do have associated benefits. If you have low volume and few employees, you can gain many customizable features and cost savings creating your own trapline system, such as with www.kall8.com.

MY PERSONAL PICKS: MAJICJACK.COM, SLYDIAL.COM, AND KALL8.COM

• MajicJack.com is a very inexpensive device that your phone plugs into and then into the Ethernet port of your computer. It works incredibly well, has your choice of phone numbers throughout the USA, voicemail, customizable greetings and call forwarding features (except to a toll-free number, which would be an added bonus for our profession). The Caller-ID shows ‘Unknown’ and your assigned number. Many people do not answer ‘unknown number’ or ‘blocked’ calls. Although this will not forward to a toll-free number, I have had some luck with the voicemail greeting that says ‘We are experiencing technical issues. Please hang-up and try your call again. You may also call our customer service department at [trapline number]’. This usually entices them to call your trapline.

• SlyDial.com is a free service that connects your call (from any phone) directly to a cell phone voicemail service. This bypasses the possibility of the subject answering if you do not want them to. Be forewarned that although most calls will not even ring to the mobile phone, but some will ring once and show your Caller-ID. To be safe, use MagicJack or a calling card feature to complete this call. The idea here is: 1. listen to the voicemail greeting and see who owns the cell phone; and 2. entice a call back from your subject but from a different phone by blocking the ability to call from the cell phone [see Kall8]. It is also handy if you want to simply leave someone a message, but not talk to them – such as a meeting reminder.

• Kall8.com is my personal choice for a customizable trapline for a small office. The basic service is a few dollars per month. This includes do-it-yourself programming of your account online – voicemail, fax receiving, ring-to destination number, call blocking, etc. For about $10 per month you can add automatic call recording; check your state statutes for use and legalities. This feature starts as soon as they complete dialing the call and before it is answered. You will be amazed at what people will say before you answer the call (let it ring 2-3 times).

After activating the service you should first decide if you want to block calls from payphones. There is a one-time charge for this. In my opinion calls from payphones are useless (have you found one lately?) and you are charged a fee for each call from a payphone. Next decide the ring-to, or destination, number for the call. You can also choose voicemail and record a custom greeting. The last necessary steps are to provide your email for call reports and recordings, as well as activate the automatic name and address record. This service provides the published Caller-ID or subscriber data for each call to the trapline. From here you are ready to begin.

Each time your toll-free number is called you will receive an email(s) that will include the call date and time, length, call from number and (if opted) the name and address of the subscriber. If you have opted for call recording you will receive a separate email of that recording. This information is also stored real-time with your Kall8 account.

After receiving and identifying your calls, what do you do to prevent more calls? Simply login to your account and block that number. You can also block by state, area code, or area code and prefix. This is particularly handy to force your subject to call from a number that is different from the one you already know (see ‘Cell Phones’ below). You may add as many numbers and uses to your account as you need. You may also disconnect any number. One of the most useful tools of Kall8, and the commercial trapline companies, are ‘blindlines’. With the commercial companies you can choose from a variety of options that include spoofed names and numbers, such as ‘Government’ or ‘Customer Service’. With Kall8 you do not have that benefit. Kall8 is simply a calling card that you use to make a call, which I use to disguise where I am calling from. Make the call using your toll-free account and the receiving Caller-ID shows your choice of either your ring-to number or your toll-free number. I use my toll-free number to call a subject (including via Slydial). This works to receive a call back even when I cannot leave a message (some people still do not have answering machines or voicemail); hopefully they have Caller-ID or use *69 and are curious who called them. We are all curious by human nature.

This article is an updated section from Dean Beers’ book, ‘Professional Locate Investigations;’ and is one of the most popular subjects on which he receives requests for advice.

Dean A. Beers is the owner and Senior Legal Investigator of Forensic Investigators of Colorado, LLC, based in LaPorte, Colorado. He has been a legal investigator since 1987 with extensive experience in skip tracing. He left the private sector from 2005 to 2008 to work as Deputy Coroner / Certified Medicolegal Death Investigator for the Larimer County Medical Examiner’s Office. He returned to the private sector in late 2008 and now focuses primarily on the legal investigations of Personal Injury, Negligence and Death, as well as Criminal Defense. His wife, Karen, handles agency administrative matters and is also an Associate Legal Investigator. Please visit the agency website for detailed information at www.Forensic-Investigators.com. After ‘retiring’ from the private sector, he completed his book ‘Professional Locate Investigations’.

Dean has extensive training, experience, skill sets and knowledge in Personal Injury, Negligence and Death, and all contributing causations. Related areas include motor vehicle collisions, workplace incidents, elder abuse, child abuse, slip and fall, premises liability, as well as related evidence collection and analysis. In addition, he continues to provide detailed Criminal Defense investigations, now with the benefit of POST certification and extensive familiarity with the local law enforcement community and judiciary.

Part two of this series will be posted soon…

While skip tracing through online county clerk of court records, I use most often use the civil and criminal indexes (don’t forget the traffic citations and parking violations), marriage records, property conveyances and UCC filings. I often access property tax/ownership rolls, and “business tax receipts” (business and occupational licenses) through the county tax collector.

While not technically the Internet, I have access to Florida Motor Vehicle Registration information for free via a FL State system called “Tag Talk” via the telephone, which is available only to a select few business types.

What’s available varies greatly from state to state, with many states differing greatly on what is and is not considered “public”. For example, until recently some states, such as Tennessee, considered driving records to be “public” while others, such as California, did not. The US Supreme Court ruled some time ago (docket number 98-1464, decided January 12, 2000) that driving records are not “public” records, and therefore will only be available on a VERY limited basis in every state. Certainly, legislation is driving what records are available to the public but so is the speed at which various records holders are adopting the required technology and digitizing their archives. While records in the counties surrounding where I live in Florida are online I come across daily many courts and other sources of public records that are not yet online.

Some states, such as Florida (http://www.dos.state.fl.us/), not only have a plethora of free public record information on the web (such as UCC filings, trademark owner names, corporate records and annual reports), they also provide the actual images of the full public record.

Even when information is considered “public,” agencies still may not provide free Web access to the information. In these instances, we’re no better off than we were 10 years ago, and are forced to use either a fee-based commercial database, court researchers and investigators or send “snail mail” directly to the clerk.

For an EXCELLENT meta-site that lists states providing free public records and links to them via the Web, go to Search Systems at http://www.searchsystems.net, it is honestly the best $5 a month I spend for database access and public records resources! Sure, I could probably find the website of the records I am looking for but why waste the time? Besides, I didn’t even know that some of the records I have used even existed before I started looking through their web site. For example, I didn’t know that the Florida State Employee directory was available but just recently used it to complete a case I was working on.

Search Systems was the first on the Internet to establish a directory of hard-to-find public record databases. Since then Search Systems’ directory has grown and now provides access to over 36,000 databases containing billions of public records. Each link is handpicked for content and usefulness and is offered with a service description. Search Systems’ public record service offers the investigator the chance to get the facts on people or businesses from area which used to be out of reach. Researchers can access a directory of criminal record databases, verify contractor and professional licenses, check out corporations, and look up property records and business permits. The site provides access to marriage and death records, the location of sex offenders, and much more.

BRB Publications puts out a pretty good list of public records sites and reference material too, which can be accessed via www.brbpub.com (and it’s free).

The following are online public records most often used by investigators and a description of each; again, differences are going to occur between states and counties:

Civil Index- A list of civil actions filed through the courts which often include lawsuits, judgments, liens, divorces, foreclosures, affidavits, powers of attorney, etc. The civil index may also include traffic infractions and parking violations in some areas.

Criminal Index- A record of arrests and case disposition concerning the accusation of crimes, including felonies and misdemeanors, committed by persons within the record keeper’s jurisdiction. The criminal index may also include traffic infractions and parking violations in some areas.

Real Property Records- Include deeds, titles, mortgages, easements, gas/oil/mineral leases and UCC filings. UCC or Uniform Commercial Code, filings allow a creditor to notify other creditors about a debtor’s liens or assets used as collateral for a secured transaction by filing a notice or financing statement in the public record. Most UCC statements are now available via a statewide search even though they were filed at the local or county level. UCC filings have help skip tracers find many many many skips!

Tax Collector or Assessor- may provide online information concerning sales and use tax registration, property taxes and assessed values, business licenses, etc.

Recorder’s Office- handles all recorded documents, marriage and birth records, election information, UCC filings, liens, judgments, military discharges, notaries, archives, etc. I love marriage records for the simple fact that you can find dates of birth, states and cities of birth, maiden names, previous married names, NEW names and previous spouses (who ironically, are often more than willing to help skip tracers find debtor-ex-spouses).

Secretary of State Records- May include filing information for UCC statements, Corporate, LLP and LLC records, fictitious business name filings, trademark registrations, and Federal liens.

Take the time to look for direct access to the online records you will use the most; I find that I almost exclusively require records from just two counties and a few different state records resources.

Federal Court Records- Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet. Links to all Federal courts and their criminal, civil and bankruptcy records are provided via PACER. Electronic access is available by registering with the PACER Service Center, the judiciary’s centralized registration, billing, and technical support center.

All registered agencies or individuals will be charged a user fee. Access to web based PACER systems will generate a $.08 per page charge. The per page charge applies to the number of pages that results from any search, including a search that yields no matches (one page for no matches.) The charge applies whether or not pages are printed, viewed, or downloaded.

http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/

Additional online Federal searches are available such as Federal Aviation Administration pilot license and aircraft registration information or the US Coast Guard’s Captain’s License and documented vessel searches as well as many others. I’ll actually discuss how I used the FAA Airman’s database to close a tough case a few years ago in the Internet Profiling chapter. The point here is that you never know where you might find that one sliver of information that leads to a successful locate…

Prisons and Jail Searches- Many times I will find a subject in jail when I come to a dead end or feel as though he or she just fell off of the face of the planet. To check if your subject is in the Federal prison system, you can call the Bureau of Prisons and they will run a search on a name and DOB for free- (202) 307-3126. You might try their online inmate locator at www.bop.gov as well.

For state prison information you can start your search from the “Resources” or “Inmate Locator” page located at www.corrections.com. They have many links to online state offender information and inmate searches.

Another resource you may use to your advantage is www.vinelink.com!

“VINELink is the online version of VINE (Victim Information and Notification Everyday), the National Victim Notification Network. This service allows crime victims to obtain timely and reliable information about criminal cases and the custody status of offenders 24 hours a day. Victims and other concerned citizens can also register to be notified by phone, email or TTY device when an offender’s custody status changes.”

While coverage is still pretty sparse, I once located a subject through VINELINK, who ended up being incarcerated in Shelby County, Tennessee. I was trying to serve with a subpoena and, for one reason or another, the judge would not allow service upon him while he was in jail so I set up an alert through their service number to notify me of the subject’s release from jail. When I was alerted via email a couple of months later, I had a process server out there to serve him on the day of his release.

Don’t forget to check the sex offender registry for possible location information concerning your subject! I prefer to use www.familywatchdog.us. You just never know…

Death Records- The Death Master File (DMF) from the Social Security Administration (SSA) contains records of deaths that have been reported to the Social Security Administration. Try http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/

You might also try search searching through obituaries via online newspaper aggregators such as www.legacy.com or www.obitcentral.com and some county coroners are now placing their unclaimed dead persons into online searchable databases too.

We all gotta go sometime… Perhaps your subject already went.

This article is a small excerpt from The Art of Skip Tracing and Missing Persons Investigations, an online skip tracing course for private investigators.

Caution: Civilian investigators should always work with law enforcement personnel working in an official capacity so as not to hinder or disrupt an ongoing investigation; the ramifications of which should be obvious.

As the Team Hope organization, linked below, notes, “According to Federal law, the police are obligated to take the missing persons report and enter the information into the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) without a waiting period. If you encounter problems reporting your child as missing, please share these laws with your police department.”

USEFUL WEBSITES

• Amber Alert
• Beyond Missing
• National Runaway Switchboard

AGENCIES, PROGRAMS & ORGANIZATIONS

• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
• FBI: Crimes Against Children
• InterPol: Missing Children
• Reunite International
• SafePlaces.org
• Team Hope

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has published an OUTSTANDING reference to conducting missing children investigations for law enforcement titled Missing and Abducted Children: A Law-Enforcement Guide to Case Investigation and Program Management; some of it is certainly applicable to assisting private investigators.

This article is a small excerpt from The Art of Skip Tracing and Missing Persons Investigations, an online skip tracing course for private investigators.

I’d like to describe each type of missing person in the “intentionally missing” category and briefly discuss the typical methodology used while looking for these types of people.

The Fugitive

Fugitives are persons who are actively concealing themselves in an effort to avoid criminal prosecution. In the private sector this often involves bail bondsmen, or bail enforcement agents (commonly referred to as bounty hunters) working on behalf of a bail bondsman or a cosigner on a bail bond, looking for a client who has failed to appear in court, putting in jeopardy the forfeiture of collateral posted with the court to secure the defendant’s appearance.

Techniques used to locate a fugitive will run the entire gamut available to the professional skip tracer and involve commercial databases, telephone calls, pretexting, field interviews, canvassing with wanted posters, public records, private records, utility searches, Internet research, surveillance, “dumpster diving” and finding an informant.

Outstanding books and courses are available that specifically cover the bail enforcement industry. I highly recommend “Apprehending Bail Fugitives” as a complete reference to the bail fugitive recovery business.

The Abductor

Abductor cases typically involve some form of kidnapping; one example may include a non-custodial parent concealing their son or daughter from the child’s legal guardian. Private investigators are increasingly being tasked to handle cases in which an older child, most often a teenager, has run away with an adult as a result of an online seduction. While this is normally prosecuted as a form of kidnapping if the adult is caught, it is often treated as a runaway case by law enforcement and is afforded less priority. We should always treat these types of cases as if the subject could be in danger.

Initially these cases pose the greatest challenge because of the fluidity of the assignment the abductor may be moving very quickly from one place to the next until the paranoia subsides and a suitable cover can be created to conceal his or her location. It is very important to begin these cases quickly and gain as much exposure as possible in order to contain the search area. There is a common belief that most victims of abduction will remain within a one mile radius of the crime, however in cases involving runaways and parental abductions this is typically not true. It is fact that these persons often end up as far away as a different state or country.

When utilized right away, Amber Alerts, law enforcement officials and local media often pay great dividends in abduction cases. Surveillance and field interviews of family members may be important in parental abduction assignments. Never investigate this type of case without first checking in with local law enforcement to ensure that you will not be endangering their investigation. Secondly, it is always a great idea to share newly developed information with that agency, as it may be important to an active investigation on their books.

Computer forensics, Internet research and phone records may be crucial in locating the child who has run off to meet an online friend or love interest.

If the abduction has occurred some time in the past and foul play resulting in the death of the missing person is not suspected, then usual skip tracing techniques involving commercial databases, pretexting and telephone calls may work.

The Runner

In my experience, people who are “running” from their obligations most often end up that way because they were living from paycheck to paycheck or recently lost their job and have not been able to recover. They get behind on their bills and have no idea how to catch up, so they begin to avoid their creditors until they either find a way to begin paying their debts or file for bankruptcy. “Serial” dead-beat parents will often just continue to run until they are required to pay the consequences, either with jail time or through such inconveniences as their inability to renew a driver’s license or obtain a professional license, having surprise wage and tax refund garnishments and by having property seized.

Runners tend to move around a lot, change jobs often or perform odd jobs for cash; 99% of them do not have a listed telephone number (if they have a land-line at all) or leave forwarding addresses. They will often hide behind post office boxes and set up utilities under other people’s names (like children and pets). Runners will not usually attempt a complete change in their identity or habits and may not be familiar with all of the tricks of the skip tracer’s trade; therefore, they frequently leave clues that will lead to their whereabouts.

The Professional Skip

The professional makes it his or her business to live and profit from extensions of credit with no intention on repaying creditors. The professional skip will often be involved in fraud and identity theft too. They commit their fraud through deception; they will outright lie or tell half-truths about their identity while applying for credit or setting up their scheme. They use a carefully crafted web of deceit in order to make it through the routine credit vetting process and lackluster due diligence investigations.

Unlike runners, the professional skip is likely to clean up any loose ends that may lead to his whereabouts. They oftentimes do not maintain contact with family members or known associates and may even go to such extremes as changing their appearance. Most professionals are aware of the techniques skip tracers use and are often not found until they have slipped up, get caught by law enforcement or become careless. Complex financial investigations and banking resources not available to most private investigators may be required to locate these people, though dumb luck has helped in the past- myself included

The Recluse

Regardless of the reason why someone chooses to remove himself from society, you can bet that it will be a challenge to find them if they are maintaining a low profile. You will often experience this with survivalists, members of secretive church sects, cults, communes and particularly with the paranoid conspiracy theorists. I would classify a small percentage of the homeless population as reclusive too. In my experience, the reclusive individual is typically a little strange and has always been the most fun for me to work.

I was once asked by a client to find a gentleman who called himself “River Bill.” “River Bill” was a self proclaimed, free spirit living on boats often moving along the Northern Gulf Coast between Tampa, FL and South Padre Island, TX. My client indicated to me how difficult “River Bill” was going to be to find, simply because he was “living off the grid,” a colloquialism meaning that he did not maintain the normal trappings of a person entrenched in our society of norms.

“River Bill” lived on unregistered boats that he “commandeered” or salvaged. He traveled by water so he did not need utilities, a phone, and he had no credit or banking relationships. He worked small under-the-table jobs for cash, ate what he caught in a trap or on a fishing line, etc, etc.

Without his real name my investigation was a lost cause. I eventually succeeded in obtaining “River Bill’s” real name though. As a result of his ego and a penchant for telling tall tales, “River Bill” landed himself right on the front page of a very small coastal Alabama newspaper’s Local section! A reporter writing a featured piece on Bill’s wild tales of travel arriving in the Gulf of Mexico in a canoe from Davenport, Iowa, and his adventure in riding out hurricane Katrina on his little sailboat in Bayou La Batre, AL and sailing across the Gulf of Mexico with a pine tree trunk for a mast and a blue tarp for a sail. During his recount he gave the reporter his real name, which was unbeknownst to everyone else he had ever come in contact with.

This little bit of information eventually allowed me to track him in the Josephine, AL area. He had been issued a citation by a marine patrol officer, for failing to maintain proper equipment while operating watercraft. After making a few calls to local bars and marinas I had him pegged down as a “regular” at Pirate’s Cove Restaurant and Marina!

The moral of this story is that imagination, luck and dogged determination is often just as important as traditional skip tracing techniques! You will find that this is a reoccurring theme throughout this manual.

In this instance I had set up an account with a search engine that crawls and indexes online newspaper articles, not often found by traditional search engines like Google, simply as a stab in the dark- hoping to find some shred of news about this waterborne-transient, even if that information was in an obituary. Typical skip tracing techniques are often useless in these cases but you’ll have to use them in the event you find one small overlooked detail which may blow your case open.

The Assisted

The assisted missing person involves those who have sought help from someone or some organization to facilitate hiding or obscuring their identity. This may include biological parents, battered-women shelters, those who have joined a cult or entered a witness protection program. I also classify teenage runaways who may be getting help from friends as assisted. Increasingly, attorneys, private investigators and others are setting up anonymity services under the guise of asset protection or identity theft protection as well.

Typical skip tracing techniques are often useless in these cases but you’ll have to use them in the event you are able find one small overlooked detail which may blow your case wide open. I had a skip hiding behind an attorney last year who I knew was in the Austin, TX area. In another last ditch effort I planned to call every mail drop (private mail box, or PMB, providers like the UPS store and Mail Boxes Etc.) in town with the same pretext, “Hi this is John Doe, can you tell me if I have any mail in my box? It’s like a 30 minute drive for me to get there today.” I believe I heard “I’m sorry I don’t recall you having a box here.” or some such, at least 30 times before I heard, “Yes, Mister Doe you do have a few pieces of mail here.” I then sent the skip a standard kitchen broom to the mail drop address, minus the PMB number since I did not have it, and set up surveillance. John Doe showed up a few days later (he was the one carrying the broom out of the mail drop) and followed him to his luxury apartment. Mission accomplished again through imagination, perseverance and luck.

If someone has left abandoned property behind, you may be able to ascertain where they were going or with whom they were working to disappear; years ago I found a lady in New Mexico who left her husband and joined a cult when I recovered deleted emails on the family computer that contained some literature published by the religious sect. Additionally, some of these types of people will maintain relationships with friends or family and a well planned and supported pretext may work; a visit to known associates during the holidays may also be similarly appropriate.

Good luck!

This article is a small excerpt from The Art of Skip Tracing and Missing Persons Investigations, an online skip tracing course for private investigators, bail enforcement agents, skip tracers, collateral repossession agents and other professionals who are looking for people everyday.

Many times as a private investigator you’ll receive a desperate phone call from a worried parent begging for help in finding a runaway. The novice PI might refer the parent to local police and call it a day. They know that databases are useless in finding a runaway since they are likely under 18 and have no reported credit history reported to credit headers.

Although it’s unlikely you’ll find a runaway using standard locating or skip tracing techniques it is possible to use old fashioned investigation methods and state of the art forensic technology to find runaways. But you’ll need to think outside the box.

In the rest of this article we will attempt to provide a game plane for finding runaways.

1. Make a police report. Be sure to advise the parents to make a police report and establish a rapport with the detectives assigned to the case. These detectives are overworked and you need to make a persona; impression on them.

2. Make a detailed list of all the child’s friends. Especially boyfriends and girlfriends. You’ll need names , addresses, pictures, names of their parents and their friends too.

3. Secure the child’s computer, cell phone, blackberry etc. These devices will have evidence like detailed emails, text messages pics and caller Id. All these things can be recovered by a forensic examination but not unless the devices are secured. If you use them or tamper with them in any way you’ll be overwriting evidence.

4. Locate secret emails, blogs, Myspace and personal ads. These are valuable clues into finding where the child has run off.

All of the above information will be a wealth of solid leads for you to follow up with. Interview their friends and the friends of friends. Locate emails and trace the emails to see where they are being read. Usually in the first weeks a teen that has run away they will stay with friends. Contact the people on their Myspace list to see what they know. Contact the people on their personal ads to see if they know anything.

Kids that run away will have little to no resources so they will rely on their parents. They will use the family cell phone and email accounts. This activity can be traced by a private investigator that has experience in this area. If they leave behind a laptop or cell phone these devices can be examined forensically to uncover deleted emails and text messages, pics and address book entries.

If you are going to take on a case that involves finding a runaway you should be experienced in digital forensics, online investigations and email tracing. If you are not you should outsource that portion to an investigator that is experienced in those areas and how they apply to finding a runaway.

Email tracing is especially valuable in locating a runaway. An investigator experienced in email tracing send an email to the child and when that child opens the email to read it, the investigator can locate exactly where they are. The same can be said for social network sites like Myspace. These are incredibly valuable recourses that are often overlooked by the local police departments when it comes to finding a runaway.

Article by Ed Opperman

Ed Opperman is president of Opperman Investigations Inc. He is considered an expert in locating runaways via digital forensics, locating by email and internet investigations into blogs and Myspace accounts. If you need help in finding a runaway visit www.EmailRevealer.com