A dare is a dare. We challenged ourselves to write ten blog posts in ten days. With a lot of stuff going on, we relying on one of our favorite homilies, why we believe in the power of public records. We have five very good reasons.
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When Brian Willingham cites your blog, you better get a-bloggin’. And I’ve been meaning to blog this particular blog every since I wrapped up that project. It is a case of the value of litigation records, an illustration of the process of fomenting a theory and going with it, and an example that findings are not always what you think that may be.
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It was an honor to be recently named as a notable research blog by long time investigative-blogger Brian Willingham. Brian has long mastered the article that speaks on two levels, to those who do research and those who need research; kind of the way Bugs Bunny tells jokes that only the parent’s get. I’ve always looked at it as a challenge to write that way. And now that Brian has called me out, I also feel challenged to blog more.
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I recently wrote a post about a missing person case I handled. It was not about tracking down some missing heiress. Instead, it was something more typical in my line of research, having a company name and needing to learn more about its management. In that post, I talked about how I identified key executives, but I ended up stumped in looking into one of the executives. For this person, there was no definitive benchmark, nothing I could find, an address, date of birth, etc. to use to cross-reference data to the identified executives, so I could not fully determine which public records related to her.
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I just wrapped up an assignment which emphasised to me, the importance of doing research in the right order. It’s been ingrained in my head, that the beginning is a very good place to start. Once I start, though, there’s an order to follow. This order can make the difference in what is found in your research.
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Without anything for us to grab on to, a toehold, we cannot know we are searching the right person. It meant that if there were other public records, we could not determine if they mattered. There are times when all our efforts end with a missing person. It’s up to you Ms. Dealmaker to come back to us with something, anything that we can use to see who the person really is. It’s not always what we need to start, but what we need to finish.
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When people ask me about what I do. I explain I collect information, and then I analyze it. It sounds good, but I bet a lot of people have no idea what analyze means. Some recent news gave me a good prelude to talk about what I do when I do analysis
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In our last blog post, we talked the basics of identifying whether a company was real. We said then, however, that we would defer addressing the does a business do business question. A recent article about banks sending millions in loans to fake dealers, prompted us to get to this question.
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Generally, finding a business; checking off if it exists, is not a tough task. All states have easily accessible Secretary of State websites. Even Delaware, which otherwise does not make much information available online, will verify your company name when you go to their website. Still, you cannot find every company at a Secretary of State website because not every company is a corporation or limited liability company. It helps to understand the differences in business type. It may matter in lots of ways as you research to know what kind of business it is. It will especially matter when you go to find a company.
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A few weeks ago, I was waiting for a class at my gym, and I noticed several banners listing their values. I realized their values were mine. I just had never put them to paper (or hang them from the ceiling). Here’s what guides us.
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I spend more time deleting the Google Alerts that I get than ever using what comes across the many emails each day. Of course, I want to be up on my industry and stay alert to trends and developments. Still, I confess that a lot of what I’m looking for is fodder to keep my social media feeds interesting. Occasionally, like today, I find a lesson to lend.
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The Oscar nominations came out this week. With Black Panther making the list, I am confident that my draft screenplay will also be Oscar worthy. Superhero movies are in. And I lived one last year.
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From Sam Spade to me, we’ve been relying on what’s been reported to help our cases. There can be articles based on detailed and well-funded inquiries. Whistle-blowers wanting to get their stories out via the press. The very fact that a company has been profiled, a variant of the any news is good news, means something. Yet, what it means is not always what is explicitly written. How did a story get built. Whose story is being told and why. And what happened after this story was told. Does the story hold. Some good examples on social media and such in recent days to help answer these questions.
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Like every profession, the business of research changes each year. I work hard to keep up on the latest sources and the best techniques. I'm looking forward to using what I've learned as well as what I know from doing this a long time to make your businesses run best in 2019.
I believe in the power of public records for several reasons. Two of my favorite reasons are the fact they are there, that there are many ways to find information on people and companies if you look in the right places, and second, that when something comes from public sources you can rely on it to make decisions. It’s legitimacy is certain. So, I’m always keeping up on what’s happening, where can I search more, where have I been cut off
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I’ve been online so long, I remember when blog was both a verb and a noun. And we lived in the blogosphere. That is (or was) a community of bloggers and commenters. We did not just put things on Twitter to be clever. We engaged with yesterday’s blog post and looked forward to seeing what they said back to us tomorrow. Do any blogs engage anymore?
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If you do not enter a name correctly, if you mean Susan when they said Susanne, you will not find the references in your searches. Yet, there are times when you also need to enter less of a name to get to the right stuff. Knowing what’s in a name is a key tactic in good research.
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There’s a truism ingrained in my head from almost 30 years of doing this, that is, you’re only as good as your subjects are bad. All it took was typing the company name to find that finding, but to the client I was a genius. I want you to notice when I don’t find the smoking gun. It’s not just in most cases, there’s no sensitive, material findings (as I would say), but the bigger challenge in most of my cases is what I don’t find.
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Resume fraud is often discovered only when there are other issues. Even if you look for it, it may be hard to find resume fraud. There may be more resume frauds out there. Are you looking.
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Most research matters have an overarching objective, a greater purpose. Do we do business with this guy, or in the cases where I started, should we take them on as a client. Except what does that mean. Put another way, what do we need to know to know. What are the various pieces to put together, that at the end of the day will allow the big question to be answered. Due diligence means reasonable steps taken. What are the steps taken. You have to break it down to a series of objectives.
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Most Important Lesson
With one blog post under my belt, I'm gonna give away, on post number two, the most important lesson I've learned in nearly 30 years of research. The most important thing for a researcher to know is to know what they do not know. You do this by focusing on the questions you need to address not the sources you have at your disposal.
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