By Don C. Johnson, CLI We first encountered the Irish Travelers several years ago when we tried to locate a man who had resurfaced a client’s driveway with a low-grade, diluted asphalt, which had washed off in heavy rain a week later. It was a typical scam,...

By Rebecca Gieselman For an investigator a surveillance assignment presents numerous challenges. Each case has unique circumstances that could present obstacles to success, or offer unexpected opportunities. Typically the client will provide a name, image, address and...

During any pre-employment background check, an investigator or screening analyst searching through public records for any criminal history on a job applicant must always be cognizant of dreaded data-entry error. It happens a fair amount in the court records uploaded...

Closely associated with the catfish scam is the romance scam found on social media and internet sites. However, the romance scam is much more insidious. The romance scammer has one specific purpose in mind, to take money from a targeted victim, who is usually someone...

By Don C. Johnson CLI Suicide is in the news lately, and it is more likely to make the national news when the decedent is a famous person or noted celebrity. As I write this, in the past week we have seen two such stories; the death of fashion designer Kate Spade and...

Speaking of new technologies, the Battelle DroneDefender™ is an accurate and easy-to-use handheld device for protection against small UAS devices. It has the appearance of a space age rifle and uses radio control frequencies to disrupt drones in the air....

The Covid-19 pandemic introduced the world to a deadly virus, a deadly “bug” sweeping across populations seemingly unchecked for too long. As the fight against the coronavirus wages on, we all have done our best to address this new reality in our personal and...

This famous saying is attributed to soldier, politician and frontiersman Davy Crockett, as quoted in David Crockett: His Life and Adventures(1874) by John Stevens Cabot Abbott. It's advice well worth heeding in the reporting of criminal conviction histories, whether...

Dear Valued Client, As you know, many among us have been working hard the past few weeks to mitigate the harm created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here at Trace Investigations, we send our best to you and your loved ones and hope you are all healthy and safe. We are all...

Each year the U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizes counterfeit merchandise from all over the world, designed for distribution to alternate retail markets around the country, including flea markets, small “mom and pop” retail shops and e-commerce outlets. Major...

The process of conducting a private, professional investigation incorporates multiple disciplines from the field of science and, even to a greater degree, the creative arts. The private investigator without imagination and creative instincts will be hard-pressed...

Trace Investigations was retained to conduct an asset investigation on a construction company for a personal injury case. One of the company's employees, a truck driver, was responsible for a vehicular accident in a company vehicle that led to serious injuries and a...

You know the old saying, if it sounds too good to be true...it probably is! It's that time of year for unbelievably good deals, season’s greetings, and all those extra holiday purchases making this one of the most effective times of the year for hackers to sneak...

Although wide spread around the country, most crimes against the elderly go unreported. Many senior citizens are alone and isolated or suffer from diminished cognition, while others are simply too trusting of the supposed kindness of strangers or even members of their...

A 38-year old former payroll supervisor for the Louisiana Supreme Court was recently sentenced for stealing $116,000 from the state, after her conviction for creating fake payroll vouchers using the identities of four retired judges who fill in on the courts' docket...

Trace Investigations was retained to conduct surveillance on a respondent in a contentious and complicated divorce filing. The subject lived in an at-fault state and was flying into Indianapolis to attend a convention related to the parties' business. Her husband, our...

As the recent trending news stories have shown, more investors are converting liquid assets into digital currency. Tech and financial magazines have been writing about bitcoin, the best known of the cryptocurrencies, for several years. There is now a smartphone...

Is your client losing profit due to unexplained loss of inventory and fraudulent disability claims? U.S. businesses lose approximately five percent of their revenue each year to various forms of occupational fraud. The median loss for all cases reported was $150,000,...

We regularly receive calls to conduct asset investigations on adverse parties in a civil case. The target of our investigation could be a responsible party in a serious automobile accident or a judgment debtor from a small claim action or a complicated tort involving...

Personal injury attorney Jon Singleton's client was a mother and her young daughter, who had been knocked down and injured when a woman exited from a public building in a hurry and quickly left the scene without offering assistance or phoning an ambulance. Jon asked...

The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 was signed into law by President Bill Clinton as part of Public Law 103-322 on September 13, 1994. The bill’s genesis was prompted by the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, a popular young actress who starred in a TV...

Professional investigation firms and background screening companies are witnessing a change in how we conduct background investigations on individuals. We are seeing threats to public record access and an increase in the rules and regulations that govern the reporting...

Trace Investigations’ all-in-one forensic service for extraction and analysis of mobile devices is on-site and on-demand. We eliminate the associated expense and extended wait times of typical digital analysis. We quickly and conveniently connect the phone or tablet...

For almost thirty years, Trace Investigations has worked hard to earn your trust and confidence in the critical services we provide. With that in mind, this issue of our newsletter introduces a new service to combat “cyber spying.” For many years we have offered...

A few years ago, Trace Investigations received a call from a personal injury attorney whose client, a high school senior, was seriously injured in a vehicular collision a week earlier. The wreck had occurred in a thinly populated area of the county and no witnesses...

The Federal Trade Commission recently released its 2017 update on Privacy & Data Security. The FTC has a broad range of law enforcement responsibilities in protecting consumers and competition across the U.S. economy, among those is prohibiting unfair or deceptive...

The investigation of suspicious insurance claims has been well established as a legitimate and necessary practice in the defense of fraudulent claims. Over the years, case law has developed that supports surveillance investigations when conducted in a legal manner.

The Mechanic: An Insurance Defense Investigation Burke Pangburn (all names have been changed) had been drawing temporary disability checks for several months when Trace Investigations received a call from the claims manager of the transportation company where he had...

Several years ago, Trace Investigations assisted an attorney in the defense of a man charged with sexually molesting his 15-year old step-daughter. The defendant – let’s call him Leon – said the charge was a false allegation from a troubled girl under the influence of...

Too many business owners are not screening their employees properly, if at all. Even those who have in place a screening protocol may not realize some of those procedures are not up to date, in light of changes in federal and state laws. At Trace Investigations, we...

Distinctions without a real difference. It can be something as simple as the lottery scam, where “A person offers to sell a winning lottery ticket or a ‘law firm’ says someone has left you a winning lottery ticket, but you must send money so a computer can verify your...

By Don C. Johnson, CLI In the early days of Trace Investigations, in addition to my investigator license issued by Indiana’s Professional Licensing Agency, I carried a bail agent license issued by the Indiana Department of Insurance. At the time I had a partner in...

Fraudulent insurance claims cost the industry $5 billion annually. Unfortunately, the cost of fraud is not limited to any one entity; policy holders, employers, consumers, insurers and shareholders all bear the expense. The money paid out towards false claims could...

Let’s call him Charlie. Charlie was on Worker’s Comp injured leave from his job at a large industrial construction company. He had allegedly injured his back to a degree where he would no longer be able to lift anything, including the lumber and steel framing...

By Christine Koryta Trace Investigations routinely conducts background investigations for corporate clients around the state of Indiana. During one pre-employment screening, an applicant had a relatively unique name. We will call her Pantene Juenese. Pantene supplied...

Allowing open court records is the foundation of judicial rectitude, grounded in the First Amendment, Sixth Amendment and common law. Since the dawn of the digital age, access to public records in the United States has increased rapidly; however the change of...

Indiana’s Advisory Task Force on Remote Access to Privacy of Electronic Court Records was created in February 2016 to study how to better regulate access to the public record and provide recommendations to the Supreme Court. It is comprised of members of the...

Are you owed money? Are you facing a risky business decision? If you answered “yes” to either question, an asset investigation might be helpful in uncovering the money you are entitled to, or for healthy risk management in a business matter. Whether you are...

By Don C. Johnson, CLI He is remembered well by many and missed to this day. I was honored to know him and to work closely with him on a number of cases over the years. Attorney F. Thomas “Tom” Schornhorst passed away last year in Oxford, Mississippi, where he was an...

Several years ago, Trace Investigations was retained to conduct a fact-finding investigation on behalf of a young man charged with attacking a sleeping man and mutilating him. Our client, a well-known criminal defense attorney, was appointed to act as defense counsel....

The names and places are changed, of course, but the case is a real one, an interesting one for sure. Trace Investigations was hired by the executor of an estate to locate the missing son of Timothy Duncan Sr., who had passed leaving a small fortune. The only named...

Last month I posed a question I have asked many times in casual conversations: Why are there virtually no stories or photos these days about flying saucers or alien abductions, since the ubiquitous presence of camcorders and cell phone cameras? Then I went on to...

Have you noticed that there have been virtually no UFO sightings in the U.S. in that last few decades that were associated with alien visitations to earth? What happened? Could it have been the sudden appearance of portable camcorders thirty years ago and then a few...

This paraprosdokian1 came to mind during the investigation of the former companion of a man who died, in testate, of sudden cardiac arrest at 45. But it was no joking matter, and there was no will. We were assisting the attorney retained by the decedent’s father to...

You may have heard an older or retired detective use the phrase "bagging the lie." It means what it sounds like: You have the proof that someone is lying about something. It might be an innocuous white lie or it could be an outright fabrication relative to an ongoing...

There are two primary schools of thought on whether multiple professionals and trade practitioners should be licensed. One school says there is too much licensing representing too much government overreach and the other says we need licensing wherever there is regular...

Professional private investigators do not care for the image of our fictional counterparts, embedded in the public consciousness as a result of the film noir classics and the popular novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and others. Recent...

We should never accept the results of an online search at face value, whether you are reviewing the results of a Google search or an online database offering access to court records. Due diligence requires a degree of care not readily apparent in the results a web...