Locating Defendants and Witnesses
Our firm has located thousands of witnesses from across the economic spectrum throughout the United States and the world. "Chasing Ghosts," an article written by partner Philip Becnel and published in Pursuit Magazine, details some of the techniques and complexities of finding people. Generally, we use several investigative databases to locate people simply by plugging in their known information — names, former addresses, etc. The results can give us dates of birth, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, current addresses, motor-vehicle records, liens and judgments, voter-roll records, real-property records and court records. Using databases and public records sources, we are able to locate a majority of our witnesses within two hours.
It becomes more complicated, however, when known information about a person is limited, when a person has recently relocated or when someone tends to operate “under the radar.” Perhaps he only makes purchases in cash or resides outside of the United States. It can also be difficult to differentiate a witness from other people who have the same or similar names. In these cases, it takes creativity to flesh out a witness’s whereabouts, using nontraditional information sources and hitting the pavement to obtain human intelligence. Every piece of known information becomes potentially important.Case study
We discovered that a witness with a very common name was reported to have routinely worn a purple amethyst ring. Our DC private investigator, knowing that amethyst is the birthstone for February, speculated that the witness was born in that month. With this information we were able to identify and locate the correct person.
Typically, most databases only work in the continental United States, and many countries have privacy laws that are much stricter than ours. For one case, we were trying to find a tour guide in Belize, where most of our investigative databases were useless. Knowing that the witness was also a pilot and that he was originally from Washington, DC, we were able to locate his pilot’s license, which led us to his address in Belize City.