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SKIP-TRACING

You arrive at the debtor’s residence, an address your client provided, but the collateral
described in your assignment is not there. Since you have checked the address several
times, during the day and night, you decide to confront the debtor and attempt to secure
possession of the collateral. The result is that you learn the debtor moved six months ago
to parts unknown.

For a Recovery Agent to be successful at his trade, it is imperative that he learn and
understand at least the basics of skip-tracing.

First, what is a skip? For our purposes, any person who cannot be contacted via
telephone, mail or in person can be classified as a skip.

What is skip-tracing? Again, for our purposes, skip-tracing is the specialized art of
developing information for the purposes of locating debtors who meet the definition
of a skip.

With the advent of the Internet, skip-tracing has changed dramatically. Although the
telephone is still the least-expensive way to conduct skip-tracing, the Internet has brought
a new dimension to not only the art of skip-tracing for debtors, but also for locating other
types of people, such as relatives, missing heirs and criminals.

Skip-tracers have found social media sites to be a very effective new tool for practicing
their profession, and use it extensively. The ability to effectively use the Internet has
eliminated much of the field activity previously demanded of skip-tracers, such as
physical records searches, and searching for a skip’s relatives and friends.

In this Section, we have provided many of the most important and effective websites
available to assist the professional skip-tracer. As with any vocation, it takes time,
practice and patience to become a competent practitioner in this unique profession.

Another new technology in locating skips is License Plate Recognition (LPR), which
involves mounting special, weatherproof cameras on the provider’s vehicle. As these
vehicles travel about, the cameras record pictures of license plates and automobiles
(currently at a rate of more than 1 million daily). The pictures are stored in a database
where lenders have provided license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions of their
skips. When a photo “hits” on one of the cameras, the information is captured and a
technological procedure takes place to alert the lender, the result being that the provider
receives a repossession order.