Skip Tracing Leads and Information

There are so many ways to develop leads on finding people these days that it literally requires staffing an in-house data analyst. If used properly, the leads and information available can be a tremendous help in managing your business needs, especially when it comes to Risk Analysis.

The other day we got in a new deal on a guy who lived in Riverside, CA. When we pulled a public record report on him it showed he had a pending legal case. My Tracer went to a web site called Black Book on line, and through a link from that site, she found out he was in court all week, standing trial for the offense that was reported on his public record database document. We signed the deal out to a repo company and by the time that guy needed to go to lunch when the judge called for a break in the case, he also needed a ride because we had taken his from a surrounding parking lot near the court house. The Black Book on line site was free, and that example is one of the reasons why I've been so intrigued at getting back into the skip tracing business.

Skiptracing in today's world in comparison to how it used to be in the 80's when I first started is like the difference between Night and Day. In terms of available leads, it's almost as if we were blindfolded with our hands tied behind our backs when we had to find new leads in comparison to the data available today via the internet.

In the old days we relied on huge, outdated Criss Cross books, old microfische property records, Dozens of yellow page directories you had your friends and relatives collect from wherever they were going on vacation, and a number of other stale sources of information. The credit application, if properly filled out with some good, legible references, was worth it's weight in gold.

Skip tracing has always been all about finding people who know the person you are looking for. These people are "leads", and the more leads you have, the better shot you have at finding the person you are looking for.

In today's world, there are more leads than most skip tracers know what to do with in most cases. It's almost data overload when you pull some of the available reports, which is why you need a data analyst.

On the down side, the debtors and skips also are working with more knowledge, more information at their fingertips. They are smarter, craftier, so in a way it has balanced itself out. We worked a guy earlier this year who used his real name to go in and buy a million dollars worth of collateral over a two week period, which he did with his 770 FICO score and because he showed a long term, high paying job and he was a homeowner. On the surface, it looked like identity theft. Once you dug down a level, you could see the house had been flipped between he and his relatives multiple times over the past several years, depending on who needed it for their scam. The job appeared legit, but it was a business in foreclosure by the property landlord and the Franchise Tax Board. The business address also contained 26 different shell companies using 53 different spellings he had used for one scam or another, and all of these things didn't leap out to the people approving his loans based on his 770 Gold Balls FICO score.

So, as you can see, there are many sources of leads and information, but what really matters is how you use these tools to improve your specific business needs.