Missing Persons: What To Do When Time Means Everything

Missing persons cases are incredibly painful. These cases have all the trauma of loss without the sense of closure that comes with a documented crime. Instead, they leave friends and family with sleepless nights and an impossible stream of "what ifs."

I wish I could say these cases are happening less frequently - but they aren't. Here are the facts.
About 2,300 Americans are reported missing every day.Men and women are evenly split.About one-sixth of missing adults have psychiatric problemsA little over half of missing children are runaways, and another 25 percent are family abductions.

Missing persons cases have increased by 600% since 1980. This problem is showing absolutely no signs of going away. But the statistics aren't as important as the personal pain the family and friends of a missing person have to deal with.

Thoughts On Online Missing Persons Services

Trying to find a missing person online can be like finding a needle in a haystack - and they've never invented a haystack as big as the world wide web. People searching for the missing are usually desperate - and where there's desperation, there are scams of every flavor. I know a handful of people who run legitimate online missing person searches, but there's a deluge of sites that charge a low introductory price, pile on "innocuous" fees, and latch on to your credit card like a hungry anaconda.

Putting issues of credibility to the side, missing person searches have technical hurdles too. One of the main problems is that there's usually more than one result for the name you're searching for. Even if you narrow it down to a local area, you can often be left staring at a list of names, trying to recall middle initials, trying to determine which of the returns are the missing people from your life.

The Internet is great for sifting through a vast directory of information in a few seconds. But remember that even the most advanced online search is just that - an online search, returning lines from a database, and the movements of real people can be a lot messier than the poetry of some PHP script.

How You Can Help Locate a Missing Person

There's plenty you can do to speed the recovery process along.
Get records. Every bit of information you can find is helpful. Phone numbers, addresses, social security numbers, employee IDs, personal belongings, Rolodexes, voting records - leads can be found in the most unlikely places. Any documents that track interactions with institutions like banks or hospitals are helpful too.
Find contacts. In the military, intelligence isn't just limited to scraps of paper and invoices - sometimes the fastest way to learn sensitive information is by talking to a person. A Private Investigation firm has the advantage of being able to cut through personal drama and drill down to the helpful information. Names of contacts and associates are invaluable.
Always report a missing person to the local authorities. Do exactly what they ask you to do without holding anything back, ask for copies of reports, and let the detectives know you're involved in the case - it can be annoying to get a call twice a week from someone wanting to know how an investigation is going, but you certainly don't forget about the case!
If you don't get any traction after following those steps, then call in a PI.

Finding missing people sometimes involve arduous research. This can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Private investigators do this sort of thing all the time. Property tax records, death records and court records all provide a wealth of information when searching for a missing person.

Now that you've had a crash course in how missing persons cases spring up, some of the most common types of missing persons cases, and how to help an investigation on your own, you might want to learn specific information that applies to your own situation.

Remember that private investigators specialize in solving missing persons cases, and Huntting PI specializes in finding the missing, regardless of age, health, or mental condition. After all, if you're in enough need to look for a private investigator online, it means that you're in enough need to act urgently - going bargain shopping when your house is on fire is a fool's exercise, and delaying when a person's health or life may be at stake is even worse. Please visit us at http://www.privateinvestigatorservices.org/ for more information.

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eBriefs - You Don't Know What You Are Missing Until You Know What You Are Missing

I heard this statement over the holidays - "You don't know what you're missing until you know what you're missing." It was actually part of a really great sermon, but it also got me thinking about... eBriefs.

I remember when I first got a BlackBerry. It was amazing! I could receive and respond to e-mails all the time and not be tied to my computer. Sure I had a brick strapped to my waist, but I didn't leave home without it, and I don't remember what I did before I had it. Fast forward a few years, and I am now an iPhone addict. Not only can I check and send e-mails, but I can surf the web, watch a movie, listen to music, take pictures, shoot movies, and of course play Angry Birds. I didn't know what I was missing until I knew what I was missing.

After more than 10 years of creating eBriefs and seeing the overwhelmingly positive reactions from lawyers and triers-of-fact, I firmly believe these hyperlinked gems also fall into this category. Shockingly however, there are still many myths surrounding the eBrief: it is too much work, I can't consider doing one while I'm writing my brief, it is too expensive, or my client doesn't see the value are just a few of the more common statements.

Believe me, I have heard all of the reasons not to do one. In 2012, I encourage you to step a little out of your comfort zone and submit an eBrief. Either hire a vendor to create one (prices vary, but typically range from $2,000-$6,000+ for a 50-page brief) or learn how to make one yourself. In almost every instance, the eBrief is submitted as a supplement to your hard copy or e-filed brief, so you don't even need to start preparing it until after you have filed.

With every key cite being hyperlinked to the relevant material, it is hard to believe that the end user will not find this technology invaluable. The clerk and/or trier-of-fact can review your brief quickly with the click of a mouse, rather than searching through boxes of paper or a list of PDF files to find the cited document. You may actually be helping to speed up the deluged court system!

eBrief creation is not a new technology, but it is a technology that is grossly underutilized. If you're on the fence about giving it a try, talk to someone who has submitted or received one. I venture they will tell you they didn't know what they were missing until they know what they were missing.

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Missing Heirs: Tactics The Professionals Use

When the average person thinks about missing heirs, they usually think of dollar bills inside old pairs of pants or quarters they left by the coffee maker for some reason. But missing inheritances aren't just limited to the Paris Hiltons of the world. Government agencies are holding millions of dollars in hidden, unclaimed money for people across the country, across every income bracket. It's no surprise that articles on unclaimed funds are regularly printed in Forbes, the New York Times, and seemingly every local news station around the country.

Some people are out to find this missing money for themselves. Other enterprising people look to find money that belongs to others and point them to it in exchange for a finder's fee. Still others are legal professionals looking to contact an heir for their state's probate system. Either way, locating missing heirs requires many of the same skills needed to find a missing person, with one crucial difference - all the heirs want to be found.

But locating a missing heir before their inheritance is seized by the government is a difficult task. Most governments have set time frames for locating an heir before an inheritance becomes government property. The state of California, for example, has a shocking 7.2 billion dollars in unclaimed money in its coffers, and only 20% of it ever gets claimed by the legal owners!

Tracking Unknown Heirs

Another difference between missing heirs investigations and missing persons investigations is that in many cases, private investigators don't really have a name or a location to begin with. Things get even stickier when the trail starts with a person who has already passed away - getting a deceased person to give you information about his or her family is exactly as difficult as you'd think. Still, there are plenty of effective ways to locate heirs -

Heir Finder Services

Online databases aren't usually as effective when it comes to tracking people - they're usually limited in scope and can't get into the same nooks and crannies that a real person can. But the state of California controller's office has a great database that allows prospective heirs to check on missing money with the ease of a ten second search. It's an amazing resource that everyone should use as a starting point if you're lucky enough to be a resident. If you or your friends don't live in California or a state with a similar resource, things get a little dicier.

Genealogy

This is the quickest way to find a missing heir if they're one or two generations back and you know all the players involved. But things can get thorny if the family isn't tightly knit. One of the problems faced by those searching for missing heirs is that family units are far more dispersed then they were even twenty years ago. One side of the family might live in the same state, and the other side might be spread across the country. And often when families become separated by great distances, people lose track of when their extended family members live.

If you're in a situation like this, you need to be smart and ask questions. Human intelligence is always the best tool that a private investigator has at his disposal. Ask about siblings, ex-spouses, and children, as these are the most reliable ways to trace a person. Nobody leaves their kids without good reason, and nobody forgets about a spouse completely.

Public Records

Birth records, marriages, debts, a credit report - all of these are inexorably tied to a person no matter where they go in life. Even negative stuff like bankruptcies, foreclosures, and liens can be useful!

Finding a missing store of money or missing heirs can be a time consuming and intense search, but we can make it simple. In a field this broad, the most important thing you can do is get a consultation with a professional who can give answers that are unique to your particular situation. Don't delay, visit http://www.privateinvestigatorservices.org/ today!

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