Skip Tracing

Skip tracing can in simple words be defined as an art of locating a person who is hard to find. This process is generally carried out to trace people including criminals, old pals, long lost love and debtors. The categories of people to be traced are many, and so is the number of reasons. Thus, most of the skip traces require a customized investigation. This makes skip tracing quite thorny and intricate. Infact, it is the most difficult task that ever falls upon an investigator…at least for a newbie. The reason being, in most cases an investigator just gets the name of the person to be traced and a general geographical location.

So now without much ado, we will talk about the generalized steps that an investigator follows while skip tracing. Did I say ‘generalized', and not ‘specialized'? Yes. I did…'cause skip tracing in itself is such a vast field that we can write down a complete thesis of thousand words over it, for each skip trace will be the one of it's own kind and so will be the technique.

The very first step is to search online at some free phone listing website. Though the skip, which has gone to its hide-out place, would most probably have an unlisted number; but still, it's good to take a chance at the obvious stuff first. If luck helps, you might find its skip directly over such website. Also the information that you have got from the client can be of great help. As for example, even if the client does not know the present address of skip, but is aware of its past address, we can focus our search on those areas only and can save much time and energy. Or may be in some case, if the client just knows the contact number of the client (be it past or present), you can perform reverse phone searches over the search engines. This kind of service is free and it helps you to get the information about the person in whose name that number is being used, along with its address. Thus if we use a combination of phone listing websites and reverse phone search technique, we can probably trace the skip.

By now, you would have got a brief idea of the geographical locations targeted skip has lived in the past. So, the next level of skip tracing takes you into the world of court record, where you might have to struggle your way through the swamp of online criminal and civil records. What you are supposed to do is - just narrow down you search to these locations and look for the online listings of court records for these particular regions. Do check, if the targeted skip is having any records in any of these regions, as here you will get to know about its associates, aliases, and assets…and all of this information will help you trace the skip.

And now…final stage of skip tracing – INTERVIEW the people. This task requires more of communication and socializing skills rather than the technical ones. You'll have to make phone calls or might even need to wander the streets just to talk to skip's relatives, friends, or associates. This task requires great communication skills. I hope, the repetition would have made you understand the vitality of this trait. Actually, a successful investigator is the one, who has the ability to bully information out of people. Of course, no one is born expert but the urge…the curiosity…to know more is very important. If you have it, you'll learn and excel pretty fast.