Have you ever wondered how bounty hunters and private detectives track down people who do not want to be found? They succeed by way of something known as skip tracing. On the one hand, skip tracing is a science. On the other hand, it is an art. It is an art that matters as much to bill collectors as it does private detectives and bounty hunters.
Bill collectors often find themselves in a position of having to locate people who are trying to avoid being contacted. These people sometimes go to great links to stay out of sight. Even more so are debtors who have judgments against them. A judgment could mean the loss of a piece of valuable property if bill collectors ever catch up to the person in question.
Skip Tracing Basics
It is hard to find a lot of details about skip tracing online. There is good reason for that. Organizations that rely on skip tracing don’t want their targets to know how they do things. Nonetheless, I can offer the basics here. Skip tracing is fairly easy to understand in principle.
Skip tracing is the practice of utilizing a collection of resources to find people who don’t want to be found. A bounty hunter relies on skip tracing to find out where someone who jumped bail is hiding out. A private detective might turn to it to locate a spouse who has gone missing under circumstances that make it look intentional.
Bill collectors rely on skip tracing when debtors attempt to avoid payment by moving and not providing forwarding information. It happens a lot in the judgment collection game.
Moving to Protect Assets
Judgment Collectors is a Utah collection agency that specializes in judgments. Their team says that judgment debtors are known to move to protect valuable assets. An example would be a contractor with a bad habit of collecting money from clients and giving them shoddy work in return.
Such a scenario would subject the contractor’s business assets to seizure. A disgruntled client could easily win a judgment and then go after his equipment. He could be put out of business pretty easily. So to avoid it, he packs up and moves to another county or state. Then he sets up a new business and starts all over again.
What that contractor doesn’t know is that a skilled collection agency should be able to find him in short order. Not only that, but the original judgment can also be domesticated in the county in which he now resides. His business assets will be in play once that judgment is domesticated.
It’s Almost a Game
Skip tracing has been described as a game of wits. It pits two parties against each other, one trying to stay hidden and the other trying to find him. Call it a game of cat-and-mouse if you will. The cat wants its prey while the mouse is pulling out all the stops to prevent it from happening.
One last thing to consider is that skip tracing is not always black-and-white. Those who employ the practice need to be flexible. They need to be agile. They need to be willing to search for information through any source they can find. They also need to understand that some people will be harder to find than others.
There is little doubt that skip tracing works. Skilled private detectives and bounty hunters have turned it into an art form. It works so well that collection agencies also employ the practice when necessary. Skip tracing helps them find deadbeats so they can extract payment.
