Lesson 2
Locating A Debtor & His Assets

Finding the rascal is sometimes the most difficult part of collecting and often requires considerable time if you do it yourself, particularly if you are completely inexperienced.

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Get as much information about the debtor as you can from your tenant's file and the Court case folder.  Their social security number, address, phone number, DOB, employment, and lots more information is usually contained in the folders.  Assemble whatever you can find.

If you run into any roadblocks from Courts or companies when you are trying to acquire information be sure to tell them that you are a judgment creditor.  In fact, it is usually best to tell them right up front.  Provide them with a copy of the document if requested, or, in some cases, even before they ask.  Always be polite and businesslike with these people.  Remember that you usually catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  In view of the subject matter, they may be suspicious of you until they know what you're up to.  Once they understand, they may even become very helpful.

The following section will provide you with the knowledge needed to let the court clerks know what you are trying to do and enable them to give you the proper specific forms and tell you how to proceed.  Even if busy, they will usually help if you know something about what you want to do.  They will be much more helpful if you already have a good basic understanding of the process than if they have to educate you from scratch.

You might yourself already have important information if you did business with them.

If they were your tenants, you should have a rental application, an old credit report, and/or a copy of a rent check.  This is another reason to use a detailed application form and to keep detailed records in the first place.  We have a page called Recovering Rental Income that has additional discussion about the importance of applications.  A good application should include employment, bank, driver license, vehicle registration information.  Some of the information may be out of date, but even old information can provide leads to current information.  For example, an old employer may know the person's current employer.  An old credit report should also contain useful information, maybe even something that doesn't show up in a new one, perhaps because the reporting agency changed its format or a different company was used. Information from a report might be useful if the debtors are still in the area and haven't thought to change bank accounts.

If the debtor is a contractor who did faulty construction work, you should have the canceled check that you wrote and you will know the bank where it was deposited. This might still be handy for doing a bank levy later.

If your judgment is against more than one debtor you only have to find one of them to collect your judgment.  Suppose that it is against two room-mate ex-tenants or against partners in a handyman business.  If you find one of them you can make them pay the whole judgment. Then, its up to that debtor to collect from the other debtors.

Credit Reports

Before pursuing any other sources of information, start with a current credit report.  Credit reports are without a doubt the best source for finding your debtors and a lot of information about them.  And, usually information about some assets they have, particularly if those assets are new or were previously financed. Since you are a judgment creditor you can legally obtain a credit report on your debtor.  Credit reports are well worth every penny and may be all you need.

You will get information such as current address, former addresses, current and former employers, bankruptcies, current and previous creditors and dates of birth. The report is made up of the header, body and footer.  Some companies credit reports are better than others so try to get a sample if you can before you do business with that company and a break down of how to read it.  They're not hard to read, but some companies use a lot of codes and abbreviations, requiring a legend to tell you what each symbol or abbreviation stands for.  Since credit reports are so inexpensive, you can order from more than one company if necessary.

And from that information you should be able to use your wits and the information on this page to find out much more information about them and their assets.

LandlordAmerica provides a variety of credit report services for our Members through a third-party vendor.  The vendor provides instant credit reports over the Internet 24 hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week from any or all of the three major credit reporting agencies.

You can use information gleaned from credit report in many ways to locate your debtor.  You can use your own imagination here because the possibilities are endless.  Calling a past employer is one example.  Looking up a former address and then using the Crisscross or Haines directory to call neighbors and talk to them would be another.  But be careful because old neighbors could still be friends.  You don't want to alert the debtor that you are looking for them.

Some states (particularly community property states) allow you to pull a credit report on a spouse and go after their assets and even garnish their wages if they were married before the judgment.  Check your state laws first before doing this, since not all states allow it and, even if they do, there may be restrictions and/or regulations specific to the issue.

You can also use an on-line service for a reasonable fee, like US Search. They examine a myriad of public databases to help locate people.

If you utilize a service to locate your debtor, or for other matters, try to get one that charges only a small fee.  You should expect to pay something, since the service will spend time looking even if not successful and they do have overhead, including the special database services that they use.

Always begin with the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to locate someone.  Check the phone book to see if their address is the same as the credit report and call to verify if they are still employed at the place listed on the credit report.  You will have to use a little creativity here so as not to alert the debtor.  Also, many employers will not provide any employee information over the phone and confirming that a person is even an employee might require written permission of the employee.  Finding out information by pretending to be someone else is called pretext.  It can sometimes be illegal so check the laws before you do it.

If they aren't in the phone book, but you know where they are employed locally, you may be able follow them home from work to get their new address.  Be prepared for some old fashioned detective work if necessary.  The same holds true for locating their bank.  Wait outside their work on payday, whether Fridays, the 15th, or the last business day of the month, and follow them to see if they stop by the bank and at what time.  The time will be important later when we discuss bank levies because this is most likely when they deposit their paycheck and their account has the largest balance.  All this cloak and dagger work may not be necessary because their banking information may very well be on the credit report.

Before the new federal laws against pretext you could use electronic banking, if you had their account number and social security number, and access their account electronically and find out exactly how much is in their account and at what time of the week their account is the biggest so you would know when to hit it with a bank levy.  Sometimes the last four numbers of a persons account is their pin number, but not always.  Sometimes they use the numbers in their address or date of birth.  But that's illegal now.  If you can find out when the account is at its biggest that's when you would want to have the levy officer serve on it.  They will usually follow requests like that if you let them know a week or so in advance.  We'll cover this in later discussions about levying a bank account and seizing property.

Directories

There are a number of special directories that can be helpful.  Two are the Crisscross Directories and the Haines Directory.  These are good if you have either an address or a phone number.  You can cross reference each.  Your local library will have both of these directories.  The Haines Directory is especially useful because it lists by street number.  Thus, after you get your debtors' new address or a previous address, you can call neighbors and try to find out where they moved to or any other information you need.  Sometimes neighbors are also relatives, so look for the same last names.  Be careful though if you don't want your debtor to know that you are about to come after their assets or even that you are looking for them.  You can use a little creativity here.  For example, they were your old high school friend or Army buddy?

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