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.

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 LexisNexis, TLO, or Clear, there's some other databases that are out there. But again, that's offloading the work that an investigator—a good investigator—can do because 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, a skip trace, a hard-to-find witness, doing old-fashioned leg work and putting some time into it—you don't have to go out personally in the streets but you can do research remotely—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 and it may be forwarded, if it's not forwarded you may get the letter back with a notation: moved 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 it was used in other places. It might have been used on a website, it might have 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. 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" or "69 Camaro"—in the back of the picture you might see a building that might be recognizable.

Take it a 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 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 this 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 that 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 father who had left the family when she was a young girl. 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 veterans resources in the area where he was homeless. By talking to that veterans resource location, they said, "Yeah, we know old Joe. He a lot of times hangs out in this corner."

That's how he was located through that resource.

When that leads to the next one, which 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.

Ninety percent 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."

These pieces of information, when you start putting them together, will 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?

Another common element is 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 or Medicaid and find out who the doctor is. Sometimes those records will have forwarding addresses.

Next, you can take a look at other institutions such as schools or churches. If somebody's a member of an organization or attended an organization, there may be somebody there who knows them, sent them a Christmas card, kept in contact with them, or knows what their Facebook page is.

Speaking of vehicles, you can file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Motor Vehicles, called the DPPA form, and get an address of where the vehicle is registered.

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 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. 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.

If you search a name in arrest records, it'll show a mug shot, it'll show a date, a lot of times it'll show an address—last known address or other people involved with that incident or that occurrence.

Of course, there are vital records—things like marriage records, birth records, even death records. You find out if a person's deceased, that ends your search right there. Those can be obtained through the vital records division of most states.

That's going to be the hard part: finding out which state to search in or you can search a number of states if the person is known to be in a certain geographic region.

Again, if the person is down on their luck, you may find that their judgment 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.

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. 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, a credit report 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 in 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, you don't resort to that, but at least do more than just put in the name and push a button whether it's Google, TLO, LexisNexis, or anything else.

Do your work and you'll find the person a lot higher percentage of the time than just running a white pages or info 411 record search.