The debtor owes you $50,000. You call — disconnected number. You email — bounces back. You drive to their office — closed, lease expired. They’ve vanished.
Now what?
This is where skip tracing comes in. Professional debt collectors use investigative techniques to locate missing debtors, identify hidden assets, and recover debts that seem uncollectible.
This guide covers the tools and strategies collection agencies use to find debtors who “disappeared” — and how you can apply some of these techniques yourself, legally.
What is Skip Tracing?
Skip tracing = Locating people who have “skipped town” to avoid debt or other obligations.
Origin: Comes from “skip” (someone who left without paying) + “trace” (track down).
Who uses it:
- Debt collectors
- Private investigators
- Bail bondsmen
- Attorneys
- Process servers
In debt collection: Skip tracing is used to find debtors who:
- Changed phone numbers
- Moved without forwarding address
- Closed their business
- Created new business under different name
- Are hiding assets to avoid payment
Why Debtors “Disappear”
The 4 Types of Missing Debtors
1. Accidental Skip
- Changed phone number, forgot to update creditors
- Moved for legitimate reasons (job, family)
- Not avoiding debt, just poor communication
2. Strategic Skip
- Intentionally avoiding creditors
- Changed contact info to stop collection calls
- Still operating business but under different name
- Playing “hide and seek” to delay payment
3. Dissolved Business Skip
- Business closed/dissolved
- Owner started new LLC to “leave debt behind”
- Assets transferred to new entity
- Legitimate business failure + avoidance
4. True Vanish
- Left state or country
- No forwarding address
- May be insolvent or incarcerated
- Genuinely impossible to locate
The key: Types 1-3 are findable. Type 4 may be uncollectible. In commercial collections the first three are far more common than the fourth — a business leaves a paper trail that an individual does not.
Skip Tracing Tools & Databases
What Professional Agencies Use
Pricing on all of these moves, and the professional tiers require a credentialed business account with a permissible use — treat the tiers below as categories, not quotes.
1. TLO (TransUnion) — professional tier, subscription
- Comprehensive people search database
- Phone numbers, addresses, relatives, associates
- Property records, liens, judgments
- Employment history
- Real-time updates
2. LexisNexis Accurint — professional tier, subscription
- Similar to TLO, more legal-focused
- Court records, bankruptcies, criminal history
- Business affiliations, professional licenses
- Asset searches
3. Clear (Thomson Reuters) — professional tier, subscription
- Public records aggregator
- Property ownership, vehicle registrations
- Business filings, UCC liens
- Social media monitoring
4. Spokeo/BeenVerified — consumer tier, low monthly cost
- Consumer-level skip tracing
- Phone numbers, email addresses, social media
- Less comprehensive than TLO but cheaper
5. PACER (Federal Court Records) — small per-page fee
- Federal bankruptcy filings
- Federal lawsuits
- Judgment searches
- A quarterly fee waiver covers light users
6. County Clerk Records — free (but time-consuming)
- Property records
- Business filings
- Local court judgments
What you can’t access (without license or court process):
- Credit reports (FCRA permissible-purpose restricted)
- Bank account information (requires court process)
- Phone records (illegal without consent)
- GPS location tracking (illegal stalking)
How to Skip Trace (DIY Methods)
Free & Low-Cost Techniques
1. Google Everything
- Debtor’s name + city
- Business name + “new location”
- Owner’s name + “new business”
- Phone number reverse lookup
- Email address search
Pro tip: Use Google operators
"John Smith" Dallas -LinkedIn(exclude LinkedIn)site:facebook.com "John Smith" Dallas"555-1234"(exact match search)
2. Social Media Research
- Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X
- Look for:
- Current employer
- New business ventures
- Location check-ins
- Business partners and associates
- Photos with identifiable locations
Public posts are fair game. Following someone around, contacting family repeatedly, or anything that reads as surveillance is not.
3. Property Records (Free)
- County appraisal district websites
- Search by name or business
- Shows real property ownership
- Mailing addresses on file
Texas example: Harris County Appraisal District
4. Secretary of State Business Search (Free)
- Find LLC/corporation filings
- Registered agent name and address
- Officers and directors
- Related business entities
Texas example: Texas SOS Business Search
5. Court Records (Free or Low-Cost)
- Search local court websites
- Bankruptcy filings (PACER)
- Civil judgments
- Criminal records (some states)
6. Phone Number Lookup
- Reverse phone lookup (Whitepages, TrueCaller)
- Check if new number is registered
- Find carrier (cell vs landline)
7. “Google the Relative”
- Find people connected to the debtor — business partners, spouse, siblings
- Search them on social media
- The debtor is often tagged in their photos or posts
- Contact is possible, but see the third-party rules below
Advanced Skip Tracing Techniques
What Professional Agencies Do
1. Database Scrubbing
- Run name through multiple databases
- Cross-reference addresses and phone numbers
- Look for patterns (same address with new name, etc.)
2. Relative & Associate Tracking
- Identify family members and business partners
- Ask only for location information, and only once
- “Do you know how I can reach John Smith?”
- Associates frequently know where the debtor moved
3. Employment and Operations Verification
- Call the last known employer or business number
- “Is John Smith still there?”
- If yes, you have a current point of contact and a service address
- If no, ask whether they have forwarding information
For a Texas debtor, confirming employment does not hand you a paycheck: current wages for personal services are exempt from garnishment for an ordinary debt (Tex. Prop. Code § 42.001(b)(1)). What employment gives you is a location, a service address, and leverage in a conversation.
4. Utility Company Inquiries
- Electric, water, gas companies
- Ask whether service is active at a known address
- Forwarding information is sometimes on file
5. Post Office Forwarding
- Mail certified letter to last known address
- If undeliverable, request the forwarding address from USPS
- Small fee, often worth it
6. Vehicle Registration Lookup
- If you have license plate or VIN
- DMV records show current registered address
- Requires legal access under the applicable driver-privacy rules, or a licensed investigator
7. What not to do: pretexting
- Calling the debtor’s business while posing as a customer to get the owner’s contact information is misrepresentation
- It is also the single most common way a collection file gets turned into a claim against the creditor
- If a call cannot be made honestly — with your name and who you work for — it does not get made
Asset Discovery: Finding Hidden Money
How to Identify What Debtors Own
Even if you find the debtor, they may claim “I have no money.”
Asset discovery establishes what they actually own, which determines whether the file is worth pursuing.
What you’re looking for:
- Real property (commercial buildings, land, houses)
- Vehicles (cars, trucks, trailers, boats)
- Bank accounts
- Business assets (equipment, inventory, receivables)
- Investments
- Titled personal property
Asset Discovery Techniques
1. Public Property Records
- County appraisal district websites
- Search by name
- Shows all real property owned in that county
- Assessed value, and often the lender of record
Hypothetical illustration: a debtor owes $100K and owns a $500K building carrying a $300K mortgage. Roughly $200K of equity sits behind an existing lender — enough to make a recorded judgment lien worth having, because it gets paid when the property sells or refinances.
2. Vehicle Registration
- DMV records (requires legal access)
- Shows vehicles titled in their name
- Titled equipment and vehicles can be reached by writ of execution after judgment
3. UCC Lien Search
- Secretary of State website
- Shows secured loans on business assets
- Business equipment with no UCC filing against it has no secured lender standing ahead of a judgment creditor
- The filings also name the debtor’s lenders, which is a banking lead in itself
4. Banking Relationships (Post-Judgment)
- Banking is not a public record — it comes from prior payments, wire details, UCC filings, or post-judgment discovery
- Once you know the bank, a business debtor’s account is reached by a garnishment action against the bank, not by a writ of execution (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ch. 63)
5. Accounts Receivable
- If the debtor has a business, it has customers who owe it money
- Receivables and other rights to payment are what a turnover order reaches (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 31.002)
- For a debtor with money coming in but nothing convenient to seize, this is usually the pressure point
6. Public Signals of Activity
- New equipment, new locations, hiring posts, active job listings
- A business claiming it has nothing while visibly operating is a business worth a second look
- Evidence that assets moved after the debt was incurred matters to a court
7. Operational Analysis
- Is the business still serving customers?
- Is the same crew working under a new name?
- Are the same trucks parked at a new address?
If the operating picture doesn’t match the “we have nothing” claim, the assets are somewhere.
The Pattern That Hides Most “Vanished” Debtors
The following is a hypothetical illustration, not a client matter.
A supplier is owed a substantial balance by an LLC. The LLC stops answering, then shows as dissolved. The owner’s position is that the business failed and there is nothing left.
Here is what a records search can surface in that situation:
- A second entity. A Secretary of State search on the owner’s name turns up a new LLC formed shortly after the first went quiet — same registered agent, often the same address, phone, or website.
- Continuity of operations. The new entity serves the old entity’s customers, using the old entity’s equipment, under a similar name.
- Real property. County appraisal records show property held in the owner’s name, sometimes unencumbered.
- No liens on the new company’s assets. A clean UCC search means no secured lender stands ahead of a judgment creditor.
None of that is a conclusion. Whether a transfer between the two entities can be unwound, whether the owner is personally reachable, and what has to be pleaded to get there are legal questions — decided by a court on the facts, and pursued by licensed attorneys, not by a collection agency. What the investigation does is establish whether anything is there before anyone spends money finding out.
The point: most debtors who “disappear” have not disappeared. They have re-formed. Whether they are collectible depends on what the paper trail shows, not on what they say on the phone.
Legal Limits on Skip Tracing
What You Can (and Can’t) Do
✅ Legal:
- Search public records (property, court, business filings)
- Google search, social media search
- Reverse phone lookup
- Contact associates for location information only
- Hire licensed private investigator
- Use skip tracing databases (TLO, LexisNexis, etc.)
❌ Illegal:
- Pretexting (lying about who you are to obtain info)
- Accessing credit reports without permissible purpose (FCRA violation)
- Hacking email/social media accounts
- GPS tracking without consent (stalking)
- Obtaining bank records without court process
- Wiretapping or recording without consent (in two-party states)
- Paying a government employee for records
Third-party contact — the standard to hold to:
The FDCPA’s third-party rules govern consumer debt: the statute defines “debt” as an obligation incurred for personal, family, or household purposes (15 U.S.C. § 1692a(5)). Business-to-business collection sits outside it. That is a jurisdictional fact, not permission — the same discipline is the professional standard on a commercial file, and if a file turns out to be consumer, the statute applies in full.
- You CAN contact associates and relatives to locate a debtor
- You do NOT disclose the debt to them
- You do NOT contact them repeatedly
- You stop contacting the debtor directly once they are represented by counsel
Example of appropriate contact:
“Hi, I’m trying to reach John Smith. Do you have current contact information for him?”
Example of a call that should never be made:
“John Smith owes us $50,000 and we need to find him. Where is he?”
When to Hire a Professional Skip Tracer
DIY vs. Professional
Try DIY skip tracing if:
- The balance is small enough that professional fees wouldn’t pencil
- You have time to search free resources
- The debtor is likely findable (not a true vanish)
Hire a professional if:
- The balance is large enough to justify the investment
- The debtor is intentionally hiding (strategic skip)
- You’ve exhausted free resources
- You need court process to get at asset information (post-judgment discovery)
- Time is critical (statute of limitations)
How it’s priced:
- Skip tracing services: per-search fee
- Private investigators: hourly
- Collection agency with in-house skip tracing: included in the contingency fee, so the search costs you nothing if nothing is recovered
Tools for DIY Skip Tracing
Free Resources
- Google (obviously)
- Facebook (search by name, location, employer)
- LinkedIn (current employer, business connections)
- County property records (appraisal district websites)
- Secretary of State (business filings, registered agents, UCC)
- PACER (federal court and bankruptcy records)
- Whitepages (reverse phone lookup)
- TrueCaller (identify unknown numbers)
Paid Tools (Consumer Tier)
- Spokeo — basic people search
- BeenVerified — more comprehensive
- Intelius — background checks
Professional Tools (Agency-Level, Credentialed Access)
- TLO (TransUnion)
- LexisNexis Accurint
- Clear (Thomson Reuters)
- IRBsearch
Skip Tracing Ethics & Best Practices
Do It Right
DO:
- Use information only for legitimate debt collection
- Respect privacy (don’t share personal info)
- Keep third-party contact to location information only
- Document your search process
- Route the file to counsel once contact is through an attorney
DON’T:
- Stalk or harass the debtor or their family
- Disclose the debt to third parties
- Use illegal methods (hacking, pretexting)
- Keep calling a workplace after being asked to stop
- Threaten or intimidate
Remember: the goal is to locate and collect, not to ruin someone’s life.
Common Skip Tracing Mistakes
What NOT to Do
Mistake #1: Giving Up Too Soon
- The first dead end is usually a stale phone number, not a vanished debtor
- Try multiple databases and methods before you write anything off
Mistake #2: Illegal Methods
- Don’t hack, don’t pretext, don’t stalk
- Legal liability isn’t worth it
Mistake #3: Turning a Search into Harassment
- Repeated calls to a debtor’s family or workplace are not investigation
- They also hand the other side something to complain about
Mistake #4: Disclosing the Debt to Third Parties
- “John Smith owes us money, where is he?” tells a stranger the debtor’s business
- Just ask: “Do you have contact info for John Smith?”
Mistake #5: Not Documenting
- Keep records of every search and every contact attempt
- If the file ever ends up in front of a court, the record is the evidence
The Bottom Line
If you can’t find the debtor, you can’t collect the debt.
Skip tracing is the critical first step in recovering from “disappeared” debtors. Professional agencies have access to databases and techniques that make finding people much faster.
When to DIY:
- Small balances
- You have time
- The debtor is likely findable (accidental skip)
When to hire professionals:
- Larger balances
- Strategic or dissolved-business skip
- You’ve hit a wall with free resources
- Post-judgment asset discovery needed
Alexander, Strauss & Associates: Skip Tracing and Asset Discovery
What we do:
- Professional skip tracing across credentialed investigative databases
- Asset, property, and banking-relationship discovery on business debtors and guarantors
- Successor-entity and related-party identification
- Long-term monitoring, so a file that looks uncollectible today gets looked at again
- Investigative groundwork for judgment collection pursued by collection counsel
We’ve recovered over $250 million across 25+ years, with a 70%+ recovery rate on the accounts we accept.
Court filings — writs, garnishment actions, turnover motions — are legal work performed by licensed attorneys. ASA is a collection agency, not a law firm, and we don’t provide legal advice or representation. What we bring to a file is the investigative and negotiating work that decides whether any of those filings would land on anything.
More on how we work a file: skip tracing. Already hold a judgment? Start with how to collect a judgment in Texas. Still inside the window to act? Check the four-year statute of limitations on Texas commercial debt.
No obligation. No upfront cost. We only get paid when you get paid.
Can’t find your debtor? Let us locate them for you →
This article is general information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Deadlines, remedies, and access rules turn on your specific facts — confirm them with qualified counsel.
General information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Laws and deadlines change and depend on the facts — confirm specifics with qualified counsel.