Find Anyone, Nationwide — and Know Which Search You Need
People Locator Skip Tracing has been finding people, and what they own, since 2004. Most callers know the outcome they need and not the name of the service that gets there: a skip trace, a people search and an asset search are three different jobs. Tell us who you are trying to reach and the lawful reason you need them, and we will pick the right one and hand back a single confirmed answer — usually within 24 hours, in any of the fifty states.
The Short Version
We are a skip-tracing and public-records research firm, and we do three distinct things. Skip tracing runs down someone who has moved, gone quiet, or is deliberately hard to reach. People search turns one thin detail — a name, an old email, a photograph — into a confirmed identity at a current address. Asset search establishes what is actually collectible behind a judgment. You describe the outcome you need and the lawful reason behind it; we choose the search and give you one verified answer instead of a list of candidates.
Watch: How We Find People
A locate worked and confirmed by a researcher on our team — not a database you sort yourself.
Watch Overview
Which Search Does Your Situation Call For?
Four situations that reach us most weeks, and the door each one belongs to.
A judgment, a defendant, and a dead address
Location comes first. An unenforceable judgment and undeliverable papers are both address problems before they are anything else, so the locate is the job and everything else waits behind it. This is a skip trace.
Located already, but nothing worth levying
Service is done and the debtor sits at a known address. The bottleneck is now discovery rather than location: bank relationships, wages, real property, business interests. That is an asset search, a different research path entirely.
One fragment, and eleven people who match it
A maiden name, a decade-old email, a photo from a profile that no longer exists. Finding candidates is trivial; proving which one is your person is the actual work. That is a people search.
You honestly cannot tell which one it is
Then skip the service names and describe the deadline. “I have to serve a defendant in Nevada by the thirtieth and the address on the complaint is four years stale” tells us more than any menu selection.
The commonest mix-up is between the first two. Judgment holders often ask for an asset search while the debtor’s whereabouts are still unknown, which puts the expensive research first and risks spending it on the wrong person; others with a good address order a second locate when what they lack is anything to collect against. Sorting that out costs nothing. If the vocabulary itself is the obstacle, our explainer on what a skip trace actually involves is the place to start.
What Is Skip Tracing?
The craft behind finding someone who cannot easily be found.
Skip tracing is the process of locating a person whose current whereabouts are unknown — someone who moved without a forwarding address, changed their phone or name, or is avoiding a debt, a lawsuit, or service of process. The method itself is not a homepage subject, and we do not summarise it here: how skip tracers actually find people walks through it source by source, and our skip tracing services hub covers sourcing, scope and turnaround in full.
The only part worth stating on a homepage is why anyone pays for it: a wrong address is not a neutral outcome. It buys a failed service attempt, a wasted filing fee, a demand letter that never lands, and sometimes a blown deadline. If the immediate task is putting papers in someone’s hand, our guide to finding someone to serve papers on is the shortest route from here.
Our Three Services
Three ways we find people and what they own — pick the one that fits your need.
Skip Tracing: The Hard Locate
Done-for-you locating, verified and documented
People Search: From One Detail
A confirmed current answer from a name, email, or photo
Asset Search: What Is Collectible
Bank, property, and assets to enforce a judgment against
Still weighing two against each other? Describe the matter and the deadline when you tell us what you are trying to do, and we will name the search that fits.
Locating a Person From a Single Detail
What our people search does that a self-serve database cannot.
Where a self-serve database returns a screen of plausible matches, our people search — the second of the three above — identifies the one that is right and current and tells you how we know. It routinely starts from very little — a name and nothing else, an email address, a disconnected phone number, a single photograph — though not all starting points cost the same, and that page sets out which ones are keys and which are only corroboration.
The reasons are ordinary: an estranged or long-lost relative, a witness a case turns on, an heir in a probate matter, a borrower who stopped answering. The starting point changes; the deliverable does not.
Who We Find People For
Anyone with a legitimate legal, business, or personal reason to locate someone.
Attorneys and Litigators
Defendants, witnesses, heirs
Process Servers and Agencies
A current address to serve
Creditors and Collection Teams
Debtors who moved or hid
Businesses and Employers
A contractor or customer gone
Families Seeking Relatives
Reaching someone you lost touch with
Victims of Fraud
A real person to pursue
Two of those groups have their own pages: firms running litigation and enforcement can start at skip tracing for attorneys, and recovery teams working charged-off accounts should read skip tracing for debt collection.
Why People Locator Skip Tracing
The difference between a database lookup and a verified answer.
Since 2004 finding people has been the whole job, not a feature bolted onto something else: defendants located for service of process, debtors and their assets for judgment recovery, scammers for victims seeking a lawful remedy, and relatives for families, across all fifty states.
A researcher, not a subscription
Consumer people-finder sites sell access and leave the interpretation to you, which is fine until the interpretation is the hard part. Here a named person on our team takes the file, works it, and signs off on one conclusion. If the file resists, you hear that too.
Confirmed before you rely on it
Producing a plausible match is easy. Establishing that a specific match is the correct person at an address that is good today is what decides whether a service attempt succeeds. We do not report an address we have not corroborated, and we say so when corroboration is thin rather than dressing up a guess.
Lawful, and documented
We locate only for legitimate purposes and within the law, and we document the effort when your matter needs proof of due diligence.
Consumer Database vs. People Locator Skip Tracing
Why a verified locate beats a self-serve subscription.
| What you get | Consumer database sites | People Locator Skip Tracing |
|---|---|---|
| The data | Raw database records | Human research |
| The match | Many possible matches | One verified identity |
| The address | Often outdated | Current and verified |
| The purpose | Nobody asks | Stated before we start |
| Billing | Subscription required | One search at a time |
| Bottom line | You sort the pile | You get the answer |
Where curiosity is the only thing at stake, a subscription lookup is adequate. Where a filing deadline, a levy or a first meeting after thirty years is at stake, being nearly sure is the same as being wrong, and confirmation is the entire product.
What We Help You Do
A few of the most common reasons people come to us.
Reconnect with people. Adoption reunions, siblings separated by a custody order decades ago, a parent who dropped out of contact. One confirmed address ends a search that has been open for years.
Serve and collect. We locate a defendant so you can serve a lawsuit, identify a judgment debtor’s bank account or their employer for a wage garnishment, and convert a paper judgment into something a sheriff or a court clerk can act on.
Pursue fraud lawfully. When a seller or contractor took your money and vanished, the first obstacle is often that you do not know their real name. We work that problem — identifying the person behind a scam so a small-claims filing or a police report has a defendant on it. What we produce is evidence for a lawful remedy, not a home address for you to turn up at.
Lawful by Design
Why we ask why before we ask who.
Every intake starts with two questions, and the second matters more than people expect: who are you trying to reach, and what is the lawful reason you need them? Reconnecting with family, recovering a debt, serving legal papers and pursuing a claim are all good answers. We do not help anyone stalk, harass, or make contact with a person against a protective order, and that refusal is absolute: there is no matter and no purpose that unlocks it. A request carrying the signature of a domestic violence or safety situation gets more scrutiny at intake, not less — more questions about the matter, a slower yes, and a decline wherever the honest answer is that the subject is hiding from the person asking. Where a request falls outside what we can responsibly do, we say so.
The framework is keyed to purpose, not to a badge
That posture mirrors how the federal privacy statutes are built. The clearest illustration is the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, whose list of permitted uses at 18 U.S.C. 2721(b) is a set of alternatives rather than a ladder. Subsection (b)(8) is keyed to a credential: it covers use “by any licensed private investigative agency or licensed security service.” Subsection (b)(4) is keyed to a purpose instead, covering use in connection with any civil, criminal, administrative or arbitral proceeding and naming as examples “the service of process, investigation in anticipation of litigation, and the execution or enforcement of judgments and orders” — three phrases that describe a large share of the matters reaching this office.
That structure is not abstract for us. Where a matter carries one of those purposes, motor-vehicle data may lawfully be reached — from state records, or from commercial providers permitted to redisclose them — and the permission we work under is always the one attached to your proceeding, never the one written for licensed investigative agencies. Nobody on this team holds a private investigator’s license, and we claim none of the authority that comes with one. Many locates never require motor-vehicle data at all. The structural point is the durable one: Congress repeatedly settles access questions by asking what a record will be used for, which is why the reason behind your search is the first thing we ask for.
We are not a consumer reporting agency
The distinction that costs people the most money is the one between a locate and a background check. 15 U.S.C. 1681b sets out the circumstances in which a consumer reporting agency may furnish a consumer report and then closes the list with the words “and no other.” We are not a consumer reporting agency, and a locate report from us is not a consumer report. It may not be used to decide whether to hire someone, whether to rent to them, or whether to grant or price credit or insurance. Screening of that kind sits under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the rules the Federal Trade Commission oversees, and needs a compliant report from a firm set up to issue one. Where that is what a matter genuinely requires, we decline the locate and say why.
How the information is obtained
Everything we return comes from records we are permitted to search and from platforms that log who asked and why. We do not obtain information by pretexting, and nobody here will pose as a relative, a creditor or an official to talk a record loose. We do not contact the person you are looking for, and we do not tell them anyone was asking. Each file carries the permissible purpose it was run under, which is what makes the work defensible later.
How It Works
A confidential process — typically within 24 hours.
You State the Goal and the Reason
Who you need reached, every identifier you already hold, and the lawful purpose behind the request.
A Researcher Builds the Picture
Restricted-access record sets and current public filings, pulled and cross-read by a person rather than a script.
Wrong Matches Get Eliminated
Near-identical candidates are excluded one by one until a single identity survives every source.
One Answer, Documented
A confirmed current location, with what you need to act on it, generally back inside a day.
The intake form, the deliverable format and timelines by case type are set out in how our process works.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a skip tracer and a private investigator?
A licensed private investigator is a credentialed profession regulated state by state, and the licence carries powers a skip tracer does not have: surveillance, investigative interviews, and in many states testifying to that work. Skip tracing is narrower – records research aimed at one question, where a person is now or what they own. Nobody on this team holds a private investigator’s license and we make no licensure claim.
Which of your three services do I actually need?
Work backwards from the obstacle. If you do not know where the person is, you need a locate, whatever you intended to do afterwards. If you know where they are and a judgment sits uncollected, you need an asset search. If you hold one thin identifier and cannot be sure the person you found is yours, that is a people search.
Is skip tracing legal, and what makes a particular search lawful?
Yes, when it is run for a permissible purpose from sources you are entitled to query. Lawfulness turns on the reason for the request rather than on the requester holding a badge, which is why we ask for the reason first and record it. We do not assist stalking, harassment, or contact in violation of a protective order, and that refusal is absolute. A request carrying the signature of a domestic violence or safety situation gets more scrutiny at intake, not less, and is declined wherever the subject appears to be hiding from the person asking. A locate is also never a substitute for a compliant background check for hiring or tenant screening.
Can I use a locate report to screen a job applicant or a rental applicant?
No, and it is the misunderstanding we correct most often. We are not a consumer reporting agency and what we deliver is not a consumer report, so it may not be used to decide whether to hire someone, whether to rent to them, or whether to extend or price credit or insurance. Those decisions sit under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What information do you need from me to start?
A name, whatever else you already hold, and the reason for the search. Useful extras: a last known city, an approximate age, relatives or associates, a former employer, an old email or phone. One solid identifier is usually enough to begin. If what you have is thin or contradictory, say so at intake, because it changes which path we take first.
How fast do results come back?
Most locates come back within 24 hours. Work that depends on county-level records, or an asset search accounting for recent transfers between entities, takes longer, and the honest range depends on the jurisdiction. We scope the matter first and give you a realistic timeline, and we say so if a deadline you have named is not achievable.
How much does a search cost?
It depends on which of the three searches your matter needs and how hard the subject is to resolve. We quote per matter rather than selling a subscription, and we scope the work against the outcome you need. If a verified result cannot be produced from what you provide, you are not charged for it.
Can you still find someone who changed their name or left the country?
A name change is a routine obstacle rather than a wall. Marriage, divorce, adoption and formal petitions all leave a documentary trail, and the identifiers underneath a name tend to persist across it. Someone who has genuinely relocated abroad is harder, and sometimes not solvable from United States records alone; we say so rather than billing for a plausible dead end.
Our Commitment
One confirmed answer instead of a spreadsheet of possibilities, run only for a purpose the law recognises. Where what you give us will not support a verified result, we tell you, and there is no charge for an outcome we could not deliver. Finding people has been the whole of our work since 2004.
Need to Find Someone? Let’s Get Started.
Send us the person, the details you already hold, and the lawful reason behind the request. We will tell you which of the three searches your matter calls for, run it, and come back with one confirmed answer — usually inside a day, for legitimate legal, business, or personal purposes.
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