BLOG

Some of the most common investigations we come across are those that involve finding a person of interest who seems to have vanished into thin air.

We were recently hired by an attorney firm to find an individual that “their” primary investigator couldn’t find in four months of searching. In fact, in the email sent by the investigator to the firm, their investigator said that in the last 40 years he had only not been able to locate two individuals, and this subject was one of them.

Here’s What Happened

This was an extremely high dollar commercial traffic accident case. This law firm represented a family member killed by the defendant that couldn’t be found. The firm came to Pilum for help.

The first step we took was to run several data reports. Most investigators subscribe to only one database like TLO, IRB, CLEAR, etc. Subscribing to many databases can be extremely expensive and smaller investigation firms do not want to spend nor have the money to do so.

After pulling reports from multiple databases, we were able to cross reference all the data sets in our proprietary investigation software to weed out false positive information. Our software identified that one of the addresses was not reporting on any of the other datasets.

Even though this address was in a separate state that was not previously provided to us, we honed in on it. It stuck out like a “sore thumb” and our investigative intuition kicked in.

We researched the address and found that it was an apartment complex located in Las Vegas, NV. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any contact information to verify if the subject lived there. We reverse searched the owner of the complex with no hits. We reverse searched tenants of the property without any success. We google searched the complex and couldn’t find any contact information. We hit a dead end.

How We Cracked the Case

With no luck so far, we decided to try something unorthodox: we turned to Google Earth.

We placed the address in and noticed there appeared to be a sign on the gate of the property. We zoomed in on the property until the sign was readable. Luckily, the information was current and we were able to verify that the subject lived at that residence.

The previous investigator had this case for four months; we solved it in six hours.

What Can Pilum Do for You

Our clients return on their investment is our primary consideration. From social media searches to database deep-dives and everything in between, we’ll help you locate a person of interest and bring an investigation to completion quickly and cost-effectively — no matter the circumstance.