The Expert Podcast

…So how do you find a person that is missing or is a. Potential witness a potential defendant that needs to be served process and they're not readily available well there's a lot of ways to do what's called a skip trace or to locate somebody who may be operating under an assumed name. Maybe they're trying to go below the radar. And obviously there's a place that people will go that's Google. Or online. That may seem like the be all end all of locating but in reality that's not, that's trying to put the work on somebody else That's not doing your own legwork Even within the investigative profession, there are some advanced databases where you can put in a name and it'll give you a list of some information, things like Lexus nexus T L O. or clear there's some other databases that are out there, but again that's offloading the work. That an investigator good investigator can do because in, in those scenarios you don't know how good or bad. the data is. There's nothing magic about that data Other than it's a collection of records that some company put together and who knows if they got all the records, if they really cross reference one form to another. So if you are a person looking to. Locate a missing person. skip trace a hard to find witness…Doing old fashioned legwork and putting some time into it You don't have to go out personally in the streets. But you can do research. Remotely, but you want to look at all of the different…Sources of records and cross-reference them As an example you can start with sending a registered letter to the address that you have. If you send a registered letter to the last known address. If the person is there. They will receive it If they're not there it may be forwarded. If it's not forwarded you may get the letter back with a notation move to Arizona, moved here not here anymore left two years ago. You'll get some feedback from it at least you know you attempted that address. Then you can try things like city directories and telephone directories. Many times those will have an updated phone number or address or even email address. Before you try to call the email or phone number. Don't stop there Cross reference that if you find a phone number. Google search that phone number Cross-reference that email, because you may find that that was used in other places It might've been used on a website. It might've been used in a web form. We have found many many hard to find subjects. Where they use their email address to post an advertisement in a classified that's in a forum that might be two or three years old. And by doing that if you go look at that post, you'll see a picture oh I'm selling this fender for a 65 Camaro. And in the back of the or 69 Camaro in the back of the. picture you might see. building that might be recognizable. Take it further level than just the data data by itself is one dimensional. Cross-referencing it And going deeper is what investigators do It's just time putting into it. Another thing you can do is, is to interview people who are known to be at locations where this person was. If they worked at a building you interview maybe the property manager. If they, worked at a company you might interview other employees. You might look at prior employers on LinkedIn and talk to people there to find out where did Joe go Oh he's worked at some other place after that. Maybe they'll still work there but that's your next level of research to find that person? If the person is a veteran, you may find…interviews with veterans resources in their area might be able to give you a pointer where that person is. We had a case, we worked on a long time ago where a woman was trying to find her her father who had left. You know the family when she was a young girl and come to find out he was homeless. And how do you find a homeless person Well, that's how it was located The person was former military and he was accessing veteran's resources in the area where he was homeless. And by talking to that veterans resource, You know location. They said yeah we know old Joe he, a lot of times hangs out in this corner and that's how he was located through that resource. And that leads to the next one is by canvassing or talking to people. In areas where the person is known or was known to be it's old-fashioned. shotgun approach where you're just talking to a lot of people and 90% of them are never going to know who that person is, but one person might say yeah I think I remember that guy from a long time ago. He used to go to that store all the time or he used to always drive a red car and these pieces of information when you start putting them together. We'll add up to be a bigger picture. Then you can start looking at business connections. Where did they do business Did they, frequent a store did they buy their cigarettes at the corner store? If they were in business where do they buy their materials? Did they hire employees from a temp agency? The. Other common element is a medical providers. Everybody has a doctor a dentist. even if it's an emergency room even if it's not somebody they go to for an annual checkup, but they do go to some medical facility many times. If it's a legal case you can access those records through a subpoena of Medicare Medicaid, and find out who the doctor is And sometimes those records will have forwarding addresses. Next you can take a look at, other institutions such as schools or churches. If somebody is a member of an organization or attended an organization, there may be somebody there who knows them. And sent him a Christmas card or kept in contact with them or knows whether Facebook pages. Speaking of vehicles, you can file a freedom of information act request with the department of motor vehicles. Call the DPPA form and get an address of where their vehicles registered. Look Almost everybody has a vehicle registered even a lot of homeless people have a registered vehicle. So if you know the name, you can run that name through the DMV. And it'll give you a vehicle a tag number and an address but you have to file a certain form. A lot of people even though they're off the grid will still vote. And election records will show what precinct they voted in and that can help narrow down the geographic location. If the person is more down on their luck, you may find welfare records or even police records associated with the person. Most police records are public. So if you search a name and arrest records, it'll show a mugshot It'll show a date. A lot of times it will show an address last known address or other people involved with that incident or that occurrence Of course, there are vital It'll records things like marriage records birth records, even death records So you find out if a person is deceased that ends your. search right there. And those can be obtained through the vital records division of most states. And that's the going to be the hard part finding out which state to search in or you can search a number of states. If the person's known to be in a certain geographic region, again if the person is down on their luck, you may find that their judgments or liens against them Those are recorded in public records at the courthouse. You're not going to find this in a Google search, but if you do diligent research of the primary record source at the courthouse, you may find records that have other information, the name of their attorney. Their address at the time sometimes a phone number or an email address If the person is not down on their luck and they're a little more affluent. You might find, memberships in social clubs or athletic clubs. We had a person who, was a subject of a lawsuit and they were trying to get served with, a subpoena. And nobody could find them well come to find out they were a member of a tennis club. On the other side of the country. And they had come in third at a tennis tournament and their name was posted in that. Newsletter for the tennis club that they had come in third. Well the tennis club also posted their schedule for upcoming events. We just waited for the next event. And they were there and they were easy to serve process. It's just that you have to know where to look. Sometimes you'll find, information on a credit report Although a credit report is something that's more difficult to get but if you have the proper legal authority on a credit report, it will show you. Different things like car loans credit cards and maybe locations where credit is being used it can help narrow down your search for the person So. The moral of the story is if you're looking for a hard to find subject for a subpoena for a judgment, or even for a skip trace. Don't just rely on electronic Google search It's easy to put a name and push a button, but it's easy because it doesn't have the same depth and dimensions of information that you can get from doing more primary records research And that's even without going out and pounding the pavement and talking to people in the field, usually it doesn't resort to that but at least do more than just putting the name of push a button whether it's Google TLO Lexus nexus or anything else, do your work. And you'll find the person a lot higher percentage of the time Time than just running a white pages or info 411 record search.