Locating Debtors Who Have 'Skipped' Town with Your Money

08/21/2017

Skip tracing is the business of tracking missing people or people who cannot be located. A person who has left their address without notice, usually due to complications related to debts owed, crimes committed or crimes witnessed is called a skip.

The skip tracing is practiced by experts in the trade that include journalists, detectives and debt collectors to Strata debt collection. Usually the main driving force involved in a skip trace is money. The debt collection industry often uses the expertise of a person who can skip trace.

Technique employed to locate and trace persons who without leaving behind a trail have intentionally or non-intentionally vanished can be literally defined as skip tracing. Due to evasion of financial or legal liabilities such an act of absconding can be.

The factors that are critical for skip tracing include the nature of the case pertaining to which the person is to be located, the time elapsed since last recorded location, resources that may be relevant in tracing, and also the most likely whereabouts of the absconding person.

Skip tracing is a technique usually employed by debt collection agencies to track down bad debtors looking to evade payment of debt and also for local government debt collection.

Collection agencies adopt the following techniques for skip tracing:

Past data or information assimilation

Collection agencies try and collect as much relevant information about the person as possible. This includes:

Identity Details

Person's name
Spouse's name and occupation
Medicare number
Date of birth
Address details

Occupational Details

Educational and occupation certifications
Employment details

Documentation Details

Driver's license
Passport
Credit report from credit bureaus

Verification of existing records

Collection agencies, then, employ mining techniques such as tracking public records, insurance inquiries, judicial documents, criminal records, notices from revenue departments, etc.