Frustrating the Skip Tracer This essay is a part of the Flyingifr Method of Aggressive Credit Repair, which is in its entirety at Debtorboards. Several of the earlier essays that are part of the Method are here on CN. Skip Tracing 1. Definition of Skip Tracing A â??Skipâ? is a debtor that a creditor cannot locate or contact for collection purposes. A creditor typically identifies a debtor as a Skip if at least two of the following has occurred: 1. Mail returned from last known address 2. Period of non-payment and delinquent account 3. Unable to contact at any known telephone number B. History of the Skip Tracer. As long as there have been debts there have been people who have not paid them as agreed, and as long as there have been people with debts and legs, there have been Skips. In the old days, skip tracers primary tools were the information available on credit applications provided by the debtor and others and the skip tracerâ??s ability to lie. Letâ??s face it - none of our friends and few of our relatives will answer the question â??Where can I find John Jones so I can sue him?â? with a factual answer. Many of us will answer the question â??Where can I find John Jones so I can give him this check I have for him?â? with Johnâ??s address and as many phone numbers as we can think of. In the â??old daysâ? of skip tracing this was a large part of Skip Tracing, simply because thatâ??s all we (yes, I used to do this) had to work with. There was no Internet, and there were no data mines. All I had was the ability to sound like â??Dr Rosenbergâ? at â??County Hospitalâ? saying â??her kidâ??s been hit by a car and we need a verbal consent to operate or the kid may die.â? [source: â??The Art of the Searchâ? by Anne Rosso, Collector Magazine, January 31, 2006 (published by American Collectors Association)] Fast Forward to the 21st Century. In the data age, many public records have been transformed into a digital format and made available on the Internet. Add to that the ability of computers to store and cross-reference huge amounts of information and you now have the emergence of the â??Data Mineâ? - a figurative place (usually the combination of several or many internet addresses) where a lot of information about you can be found. Weâ??ll look at a data Mine later. The important part now is that a Skip tracer can have a lot of information (some of it accurate, some of it not, some of it relevant, some of it not) about you in a short period of time. What used to take me weeks to put together about a debtor now takes minutes. [source: Ron Brown, president of Collection Services International in Oklahoma City and coâ??author of Manhunt: The Book as quoted by Anne Russo in â??The Art of the Searchâ?, Collector Magazine, January 31, 2006 (published by American Collectors Association)] The Art that Brown speaks of is the ability to get information (often if not usually through subterfuge) from people, the science is the ability to Data Mine and use the information obtained, and the Bulldog Determination is the patience to wade through the Mined Information to find what is factual and useful. B. Costs of a Skip The costs of a Skip, while difficult to determine exactly, have the potential of being very costly, both in terms of dollars lost and in terms of dollars spent trying to recover the lost dollars. While part of the skip tracing procedure is computerized and automated (and therefore can be done quickly and cheaply) the more critical parts (the analyzing the electronic data, sifting through it to determine its potential and then using that data to actually locate the skip) can be very time consuming, labor intensive and expensive. Accurint, one of the principal companies offering data mining services to the Collection Industry, puts it well on their web site: [source: http://www.accurint.com/collections.html ] C. How people skip Since the definition of a skip is simply â??Subscriber (meaning member of Credit Bureau) cannot locate borrowerâ?, the only real requirements of a â??skipâ? status would be the lender does not have current contact information on the borrower (address or phone number) and the borrower is delinquent in an obligation to the lender. Given those two simple elements, one may wonder just how easy it is to become a â??skipâ? That question is best answered by looking into the reason a person is a â??skipâ? in the first place. There are two types of â??skipsâ?: Intentional and Unintentional. An Unintentional skip is typically a person who moved from residence â??aâ? to residence â??bâ? and with all that had to be done simply forgot to notify a lender and didnâ??t leave a forwarding address with the post office. Many lenders send their mail with the notation â??address correction requestedâ? on the envelope. This is a request to the post Office to provide them with a forwarding address the Post office may have on file in the event their customer moves. If the post Office has one, they will provide it (for a fee). If the post office cannot provide one, they return the letter to the creditor and the creditor has a â??skipâ? on their hands. Unintentional skips tend to come forward relatively quickly and notify their lenders of their new address. Once that happens, the person is no longer a â??skipâ?. The Intentional Skip is a whole different person. This person moves and deliberately fails to notify creditors. Sometimes, rather than leave no trail for the skip tracer to follow, this person will lay down a false trail - sending the bill collector to places the debtor knows are false. The debtor in this instance is attempting to lose the Collector and fully intends not to pay the debt. It is for this person the Skip tracer spends the most effort, capital and time. (Part 1 of 4)
Part 2 of 4 Part 2 of 4 2. Tools of the Skip Tracer- Internet Tools I have mentioned Data Mines, and with the merger of Accurint and Lexis Nexus, that company has unquestionably become a major player in the skip tracerâ??s resource book. The Credit Bureaus are another important tool. The fact is, the Internet has become a real wealth of information about people - information that is stored in thousands of different places. Data Mine companies take all these resources and gather all the information that can be found about the subject from all available accessible databases (yes, there are some databases that the Data Miners cannot get to) and place it all in one file, which is then sold to the Skip Tracer. One site lists about 100 different databases that can be accessed I will get into this aspect of Skip Tracing later. -Debtor Provided Tools In many cases, the debtor himself provides a resourceful skip tracer with the tools needed to find him. The principal one is the actual credit application. Obviously, the more information on the credit application the more tools the skip tracer has. People tend to be pretty honest on credit applications for two major reasons: first is the concern that dishonesty will not get them the requested credit and the second is that material false statements on a credit application constitutes sufficient reason for that debt not to be discharged in a Bankruptcy. On the application, the most useful information a debtor provides are the Social Security Number and the â??Referencesâ?. While what is found on the credit application may be very obsolete by the time the Skip Tracer gets to look at it, it is common for the debtor himself to leave a very wide open trail that leads the Skip Tracer right to him. Our society has become more and more technology based, and the passage of the Patriot Act requires Financial institutions (very broadly interpreted) to â??verify the customerâ??s identityâ?. - Personality Tools This would entail any professional licenses or know hobbies that the skip tracer may utilize knowledge of in order to locate the skip. This authorâ??s information can be found in databases that are as varied as: IRS Licensed Enrolled Agents Licensed Airplane Pilots Stamp Collectors Little League Umpires Owners of a Certain Breed of Dog The knowledge of any of these would provide the skip tracer with additional information that would help in locating the author. 3. How Does the Skip Tracer Trace? The art of skip tracing involves two basis steps - background research to locate a likely candidate to be the target and pretexting to actually locate the target and gather collection-valuable information. A. Internet Skip Tracing tools: The days of the collector and/or skip tracer parking themselves outside your door to follow the debtor to work are long gone. In the 21st Century and beyond, skip tracing is done from the skip tracerâ??s desk, and the primary tool is the Internet. The primary options on the Internet are search engines that promise to search hundreds of databases to help you find that long lost love, and Data Mines. As an experiment in writing this chapter, the author subscribed to one of the on line search engine sites ( http://www.web-detective.com ). After paying the $20.00 fee I began using their search engine links (the ones included with the service, not the ones that charged additional fees). I tried to skip trace myself. The results were dismal - I could not locate myself using that site. Not a single link or resource would show my current address (which I had been living at for 8 months and I know was on all three Credit Bureaus, as well as the County Recorder and several other sites). In all fairness, I was able to find myself at my previous address, as well as over two dozen people who shared the same name as I do. I do not use a middle initial, so a skip tracer using this tool would not be able to narrow the search down using that information. For an additional fee (for EACH of them) I could get more information on all these people, including myself. To say that this method of skip tracing is useless is an understatement, since the costs and time involved in looking at all the â??hitsâ? would have been prohibitive for a skip tracer trying to find his targets quickly and cheaply. This economic fact of life is, in fact, the Skip Tracerâ??s Achilles heel. More on that later. As a further experiment, I engaged a Private Detective to use whatever tools a Skip Tracer would have available to him (meaning no databases available only to Government or Law Enforcement). While the Private Detective did in fact locate me at my present address and indirectly identified my business and locate the fact that I own an airplane, the results werenâ??t all that much better, considering the skip tracing cost the Private Detective around $200.00 and took over two hours of his time For that type of investment to be worthwhile to a debt Skip tracer the amount of the debt would have to be huge. The Detective used two Data Mines - Locate Plus and Choicepoint. Locate Plus: This Data Mine has some serious problems with time. They update every six months, and even then the data is about a year old. In searching for myself, here are the results of a Private Detective using Locate Plus: Using the search criteria of my name, County and City of residence, Locate Plus found 7 people who share my name. I was one of them. Close reading of the time lines would show that three had moved to other cities (two in 1995, one in 1996). In my listing there are 5 variations of a prior address, three variations of their incorrect present address and an address in a State I have never lived in. Following my instructions to only zero in on the correct â??meâ? , the detail on the correct target revealed an address obsolete by 8 months and a telephone number obsolete by 4 years. The residents at the address consisted of myself, my wife, one of or two sons and someone I never heard of in my life. Another address showed me with a different name and a different spouse, and five other people I never heard of. The address mining went back at least twenty years, including the address of my business in New York - which I had sold fifteen years earlier. Listed at that address was the buyer of my business, his wife, their child and a half a dozen people I never heard of. The residence address in New York (which I left ten years prior) showed eighteen ( ) People I never heard of living there. Skip tracer - enjoy yourself - all these leads lead to dead ends. To its credit, Locate Plus at least told the skip tracer my gender and race, by pulling up a six year old traffic ticket. This wealth of misinformation and no information cost the skip tracer $18.00 as a flat fee. Choicepoint works a bit differently - it charges the skip tracer each time they seek more information. The search results yielded 15 names of which none were at my current address and 9 were at my previous address. The reason for this is the way Choicepoint gives results - it lists each type of hit individually. Information from each of the three Credit Bureaus accounts for three of the 9 hits. This much information cost $5.00 Once the skip tracer zeroes in on a likely target, he is charged additional fees each time he â??drills downâ? to get a better look at the actual information. The Detective spent $100 in these â??drill downâ? fees - far above what any skip tracer would spend except on the largest balances. What did the Detective get for all this money? To be fair Choicepoint did find me. It had my current address - but not my telephone number or Social Security number. Choicepoint truncates the last 4 digits of the Social Security Number, which will create problems for the skip tracer. Letâ??s see what Choicepoint found: Name: According to Choicepoint, my Middle Initial is either A, H, S or O or I donâ??t have one. Choicepoint also blended my professional designation (EA) onto my last name and, adding to the confusion, has my older sonâ??s name listed as mine also. Social Security Number: Take your pick - mine or my sonâ??s. We both share each otherâ??s. Keep in mind I have never done anything that would blend my sonâ??s credit file into mine. We do not share the same first or middle name, and I have not cosigned or have any joint accounts with him. Making the issue even more cloudy, two other peopleâ??s names come in sharing both our Social Security Numbers - people I have never heard of. Year of Birth : Take your pick - 1951 or 1952. Address: Correct for 25 years, along with the same addresses Locate Plus had in states I have never lived in. Telephone Number: They had my correct number, but listed to my business name (which it is not). Real Estate Transactions: They had the full details of the sale of my prior home and purchase of my current one. Pilotâ??s License: Choicepoint found it, but did not find my airplane. Business Affiliations: Four out of nine were mine. Relatives: Choicepoint found my father who died seven years earlier. It also found his wife (who I have not seen or spoken to in over 20 years), my wife, both our sons, someone who I presume is my stepsister who I have never met and my brother (but at an address he has not lived at in over 15 years) . Not particularly useful since my immediate family and I share the same address. Neighbors: At my current address Choicepoint provided the names, addresses and phone numbers of six people who I have never met. At my immediate past address there were six names and phone numbers, only one of whom I know. (Part 2 of 4)
Part 3 of 4 When you fill out a sweepstakes entry to get that free vacation weekend, the frequent buyer club card to get discounts at the pharmacy or supermarket, or just about anything else, you are providing valuable information that will eventually get into a â??data Mineâ? - the computer files of a company that wants to know literally everything about you. In turn, they will sell this information to whomever wants to purchase it. One of the purchasers will be a Skip Tracer. The eagerness of a Data Mine to accumulate information, without regard to its accuracy, is its Achilles Heel. 4. How to Skip The Collection Trades and Conventions are chock-full of seminars and information teaching a skip tracer the latest tips, tools, techniques and scams to help locate skipped debtors. With the advent of the Internet, some people are posting ways for people to skip - giving a potential skip some ideas on how to â??pull it offâ? While the authors of this book do not condone or advocate any of these techniques, studying them gives some interesting insights into the age-old cat and mouse game of Skip and Tracer. Some of this advice comes from the Skip Tracers themselves, who are now being retained to actually help people become skips Some of them even have web sites with useful information on them. [source: Frank M Ahearn, â??Three Steps to Disappearingâ?, http://www.escapeartist.com/efam/70/Advice_From_A_Skip_Tracer.html] This very informative essay is found on the web site of a former Skip Tracer (Frank M. Ahearn) who claims twenty years experience as a Skip Tracer. My conversation with the Private Detective progressed to the following question: â??If you were to try to become a Skip, what would you do, knowing what you know about how Skip Tracers work?â? His answer was most revealing. At the end of the previous section, I stated â?? The eagerness of a Data Mine to accumulate information, without regard to its accuracy, is its Achilles Heel.â? The more erroneous data in your file (about half of what was in mine was simply wrong) the harder it will be for the Skip Tracer to find the correct information. Since almost all of the information in your file gets there because YOU put it there, the answer is simple - live your life so that no correct information gets in and make sure that plenty of incorrect information gets in there. Hereâ??s how: Whenever you apply for credit, you are asked certain questions all the time. Those questions are: Name, Social Security Number and Address. You want your Data Mine file to be filled with as much incorrect information as possible, but certain things must be given correctly so as to ensure that the incorrect information finds the right file (yours). The solution is simple: Always provide your correct name and Social Security Number. You donâ??t have to mess around with this - the data Mine will do it for you (as they did with mine - I have ten different names and two different Social Security Numbers attached to my file as ME, and I did NOTHING to create that). Itâ??s the ADDRESS you will be feeding into the Data Mine with great regularity that will constantly change. Note that the Dada Mine can be undermined with a lot more than credit application inquiries. I mentioned credit applications simply because the credit pull that is done immediately and automatically guarantees the new information gets to the Data Mine quickly. Other things you can do are: Get any "frequent buyer" card you can lay your hands on, apply for an apartment in a distant city, register with job sites like Monster, etc... Anywhere you are asked your name and address today it is likely a Data Miner will get that information before too long. The Detective confided to me that this technique is sometimes used in the Witness Protection Program to throw people who would assassinate witnesses off the track from finding the witness. Obviously, the witness is given a new identity, and the authors do NOT suggest taking on a false identity. Your name and your Social Security number are yours. Your mailing address can change often. This fact of life is the weakness in the Skip Tracerâ??s digital arsenal and your strength. There is no reason to be concerned that the addresses you choose to bombard the data Miners with be accurate or even exist. Once again, the weakness in te system here is that all addresses fed into the data mine acre presumed to be accurate, and the data Miners make no effort to verify them. Choice Pointâ??s programs are geared to identify obvious false addresses like Private mailbox Companies (PMBâ??s) like the UPS Store. Locate Plus is not so programmed. Even so, Choice Point will still accept the address and merely identify it as â??suspectâ?. Nonexistent addresses can be fed into the system ad infinitum. Therefore, the following addresses, while totally fictitious, will be accepted by the data Mine as true: 1352 E 45 Street, New York City (in the middle of the East River) 2284 W 84 Street, New York City (in the Hudson River) 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Lake Wobegone MN (Street Address of the Munsters, fictitious town made up by Garrison Keilor) 135 W 35 Street, Chicago IL (approximately 3rd base at Wrigley Field) You get the idea. What was the address of Barbie's house?
Part 4 of 4 Part 4 of 4 Addresses can be generated by using a site like Zillow (www.zillow.com). The author generated them by logging onto Zillow ands starting at his home address and performing the following steps: 1. On the scale bar on the left, scale the map to â??USAâ? 2. Drag the map by right clicking on it to somewhere far away from where you live. I went from Arizona to New York 3. Zoom in gradually to the area you want an address from 4. Continue zooming in until you see rooftops 5. Left click on a rooftop to find the address. 6. You can get the zip code from the post office at www.uspo.com 7. Apply for credit using this address and your correct name and social security number. The credit will be declined, but if it isnâ??t DO NOT USE THE CARD, DO NOT ACTIVATE IT EITHER. keep in mind that you should only do this if your credit is already trashed, since doing this will certainly trash your credit. Do this 20 times a month, every month, using all different addresses and the skip tracers will find a mountain of useless information on top of whatever is useful in your Data Mine Datafile. As I stated above, some of the best and most valuable information a skip tracer can use is provided by you - the borrower. When you list â??Referencesâ? on a credit application you should keep in mind that the only person at the lender who will contact these â??referencesâ? is a Collector or a Skip Tracer. That is why the lenders almost universally request â??relativesâ? - because while friends come and go out of your life, your relatives stay. While there is little you can do to make these References useless on credit that has already been extended, there is a lot you can do to make any future References useless. Look at the wording of the request - they usually want â??close relatives not living with youâ?. The typical consumer will go through their address book and provide just that - close relatives who are not residing with them - the perfect skip tracerâ??s â??Referenceâ?. But the statement â??close relatives not living with youâ? can be broken up into some components that will completely change the meaning of the phrase and make the References totally useless. I break it up like this: â??close relativesâ? â??not livingâ? â??not with youâ? So.... using THAT interpretation of the request, I feel totally safe knowing that I can list both my parents as references. My father is buried in Florida and my Mother is buried in New Hampshire - and since I live in Arizona they certainly meet the qualifications: â??close relativesâ? - who is closer than your parents? â??not livingâ? - they are both deceased â??not with youâ? - I am in AZ, one is in FL and the other in NH.
