INVESTIGATIVE TELEPHONICS AND TRAPLINES
Legally using telephonic information to find your skips and determine useful information.
Over
20 years ago, when I started my investigative agency, I asked as many
investigators as I could what the most valuable tool in their arsenal
was. The dominant answer (other than our skills) was the
telephone. About 10 years ago I asked the same question and was
surprised that it was the computer, and all the accessible
information. At that time I still thought the telephone was the
most useful tool. When I ask that question today it is usually
the computer followed by the telephone. With many of the changes
that have taken place regarding the access, or lack thereof, to
information, many investigators have turned back to the
‘old’ methods of the telephone. In my opinion the
answer is both. We can now take the benefits of the telephone and
computer and develop some unique tools. The key is to first
understand that virtually every person and business has a telephone,
especially cell phones.
Technology has seen some significant
changes since I presented my original article on traplines.
Some are to our favor and others work against us. I hope to
impart some new wisdom that I have experienced in the most recent
several months. The toll-free trapline is a very useful and
powerful tool. You no longer need a telephone number to call and
pretext; you can now take advantage of cell phones, text messaging,
email, website contact forms, social networking sites, and other forms
of communications. The goal is to get your trapline number to the
subject and entice them to call it. I freely endorse the
vendors I mention in this article, but I am not compensated in any
manner or responsible for the services they provide.
The idea
is that your subject will call your trapline number, at least
identifying the number they have called from, and possibly the
subscriber name and address. This will work even if they call and
hang-up without completing the call. Of course a message is nice
– often telling you when they are home (or at work) and verifying
certain information (i.e. non-published numbers, spouses, etc).
If they call from the number that you initially called, you have
located them (subject to verification); if they call from a different
number, it is likely either a work or home number. Those that are
suspicious will call from a friend, relative, payphone, or hopefully
from work or home. Oftentimes they will leave a different number
to call – sometimes a pager, cell phone, friend’s, or
relative’s.
The premise is that calls to
toll-free numbers are similar to collect calls. When you have a
toll-free number, you are essentially agreeing to accept the charges
for the long distance call and are therefore entitled to the number
calling you. The billing company must provide the subscriber data
for calls on your bill. That is a headache, time consuming and,
in our line of work, just not practical to wait for the phone
bill. Unlike your common toll-free number and phone bill, which
gives you information monthly, your trapline account can notify you by
fax, email, website, pager or even connect your caller to you.
The use of this is perfectly legal – the pretext you use to get
the return call may or may not be, and caution should be used.
Illegally obtained information is both a crime and inadmissible as
evidence, together with any consequentially developed
information. Keep in mind - the fruit of the poisonous tree.
An
old trick smarter subjects used was to call a suspect toll-free number
via payphone, calling card (not many allow this, some do), or an
Internet long distance service (i.e. Net2Phone). Sometimes,
especially with calling cards or PC based telephone services, only a
one or two digit number or a non-working number is
‘trapped’. The current trend is to use prepaid cell
phones and VoIP telephone services (i.e. Vonage, MagicJack,
etc.). When ‘trapped’ these may leave a number that
is not reversible to the subscriber or the main ‘trunk
line’ number (common on PBX phones). If a complete number
is provided it will usually not have a subscriber name and will not
lead to an address via common search methods. It is new
information that should further assist you in your investigation and
there are methods to obtain additional
information.
Related concerns
are services offered by phone companies: Caller-ID, Anonymous Call
Rejection, Caller Screening, etc. These services are designed to
require you to disclose who you are to the party you are calling or
attempting to locate – not exactly in our best interests.
How do you get around this? Most use calling cards (try them first), or
a ‘Blindline’ offered by any of the toll-free and trapline
companies. On the Caller-ID, the calling card usually appears as
‘Anonymous’ or ‘Out of Area’ and the
‘Blindline’ usually returns a generic office number.
You can also use this feature with Kall8, as detailed below.
A
word of caution about forwarding numbers. Many years ago, more
than I care to remember, you could forward a number and be
anonymous. This is no longer the case. For example, if you
forward your office number to a cell phone or toll-free number and then
call your office number from a third phone, that originating number
will show up on the Caller-ID. This bit of information is handy
to know because that also means our subjects cannot use call forwarding
to hide from our traplines.
Deciding which service is right
for you depends on your needs and the size of your office. I used
commercial trapline companies for many years and still recommend their
use. If you have a large business, account volume, and multiple
employees, I recommend using a commercial service. The
other consideration is if you have the need to send pre-paid calling
cards, which are only available through a commercial service [see
Calling Cards]. These turnkey solutions come with monthly and per
call costs that do have associated benefits. If you have low
volume and few employees, you can gain many customizable features and
cost savings creating your own trapline system, such as with
www.kall8.com.
MY PERSONAL PICKS: MAJICJACK.COM, SLYDIAL.COM, AND KALL8.COM
•
MajicJack.com is a very inexpensive device that your phone plugs into
and then into the Ethernet port of your computer. It works
incredibly well, has your choice of phone numbers throughout the USA,
voicemail, customizable greetings and call forwarding features (except
to a toll-free number, which would be an added bonus for our
profession). The Caller-ID shows ‘Unknown’ and your
assigned number. Many people do not answer ‘unknown
number’ or ‘blocked’ calls. Although this will
not forward to a toll-free number, I have had some luck with the
voicemail greeting that says ‘We are experiencing technical
issues. Please hang-up and try your call again. You may
also call our customer service department at [trapline
number]’. This usually entices them to call your trapline.
• SlyDial.com is a free service that connects your call (from any phone) directly to a
cell
phone voicemail service. This bypasses the possibility of the
subject answering if you do not want them to. Be forewarned that
although most calls will not even ring to the mobile phone, but some
will ring once and show your Caller-ID. To be safe, use MagicJack
or a calling card feature to complete this call. The idea here
is: 1. listen to the voicemail greeting and see who owns the cell
phone; and 2. entice a call back from your subject but from a different
phone by blocking the ability to call from the cell phone [see
Kall8]. It is also handy if you want to simply leave someone a
message, but not talk to them – such as a meeting reminder.
• Kall8.com is my personal choice for a customizable trapline for a small office. The
basic
service is a few dollars per month. This includes do-it-yourself
programming of your account online – voicemail, fax receiving,
ring-to destination number, call blocking, etc. For about $10 per
month you can add automatic call recording; check your state statutes
for use and legalities. This feature starts as soon as they
complete dialing the call and before it is answered. You will be
amazed at what people will say before you answer the call (let it ring
2-3 times).
After activating the service you should
first decide if you want to block calls from payphones. There is
a one-time charge for this. In my opinion calls from payphones
are useless (have you found one lately?) and you are charged a fee for
each call from a payphone. Next decide the ring-to, or
destination, number for the call. You can also choose voicemail
and record a custom greeting. The last necessary steps are to
provide your email for call reports and recordings, as well as activate
the automatic name and address record. This service provides the
published Caller-ID or subscriber data for each call to the
trapline. From here you are ready to begin.
Each time
your toll-free number is called you will receive an email(s) that will
include the call date and time, length, call from number and (if opted)
the name and address of the subscriber. If you have opted for
call recording you will receive a separate email of that
recording. This information is also stored real-time with your
Kall8 account.
After receiving and identifying your calls,
what do you do to prevent more calls? Simply login to your
account and block that number. You can also block by state, area
code, or area code and prefix. This is particularly handy to
force your subject to call from a number that is different from the one
you already know (see ‘Cell Phones’ below). You may
add as many numbers and uses to your account as you need. You may
also disconnect any number. One of the most useful tools of
Kall8, and the commercial trapline companies, are
‘blindlines’. With the commercial companies you can
choose from a variety of options that include spoofed names and
numbers, such as ‘Government’ or ‘Customer
Service’. With Kall8 you do not have that benefit.
Kall8 is simply a calling card that you use to make a call, which I use
to disguise where I am calling from. Make the call using your
toll-free account and the receiving Caller-ID shows your choice of
either your ring-to number or your toll-free number. I use my
tollfree number to call a subject (including via Slydial). This
works to receive a call back even when I cannot leave a message (some
people still do not have answering machines or voicemail); hopefully
they have Caller-ID or use *69 and are curious who called them.
We are all curious by human nature.
DELIVERY NOTICES AND DELIVERY POSTCARDS
I
developed this idea several years ago to increase my success rate with
process serving. It was an incredible concept that never failed
me, not one time. With the concept of the traplines and calling
cards, I developed the use of delivery notices. I used them to
determine non-published numbers, times when the subject would be home,
verifying they were home when I was attempting service, or that they
possibly moved.
The tools are: pre-printed door hangers
or peel-and-stick notices (that easily peel off), and your toll-free
number. The message is simply that you attempted to deliver a
package, requiring a signature, and to please call the delivery
dispatch center. I use a custom number that has the business
acronym (i.e. US Rapid Delivery – 877-123USRD). This is not
the number I use, but you can find one by searching Kall8 for a usable
acronym and number.
The premise is simple – if there is
uncertainty that a subject is at the address or I need verification, a
notice is left and the caller will either confirm it, indicate the
subject is not a resident, or sometimes offer a new address and/or
telephone number. For other situations, such as PO Boxes, I use a
delivery notice postcard and the same premise. The key to
effective trapline use is the message left to entice a return telephone
call – greed and messages that get immediate attention work best,
and I have had a success rate of better than 80% using the
postcards. I also reserve these for cases that have me stuck or
my investigation leads me to believe this is the best method to
determine or verify an address. This is because once used, it may
not work again and I have had numerous occasions requiring me to find a
subject two or even three times.
CELL PHONES
Cell
phones are much like non-published numbers – we know the
information exists, but how do we get it. As cell phones are
gradually replacing traditional landline service for our voice
communication needs, these names and numbers are becoming more and more
frequent in common databases. Start with entering the number into
various search engines and then databases. Two of the best
resources for this are www.reachdirect.com and www.telequery.net; the
latter allows you to use wild card searching. Telequery.net also
has a ‘Caller-ID’ function that will tell you the
information as it appears on the Caller-ID but is often not in other
data records. This is the same information that is presented when
a number is trapped on a toll-free service. Credit headers and
other resources tend to be the next steps to acquiring both cell phone
and non-published data.
Using a trapline to determine related
information about a cell phone user is next. First you will need
to setup a few things. Your trapline and use the
‘blocking’ feature to block payphones and the cell phone
number of the subscriber. I broaden this with the cell phone
prefix (i.e. if my target phone is 123-555-1234, I block 123-555)
– this prevents the target from using their cell phone (or any
cell phone with that prefix) from calling you back on the trapline
number. You will want blocked numbers to go directly to voicemail
and unblocked numbers to go to a different destination phone number (I
recommend MagicJack – you can answer that or let it go to a
different voicemail). Next change your trapline voicemail
greeting to something like ‘We are experiencing technical
difficulties – please hang up and try your call again. If
you continue to experience this problem please try from a different
phone to assist us in isolating the problem’; using a female
voice is best). This will force the caller to use a different
phone, hopefully a traditional landline that is their residence phone,
employer phone or possibly a neighbor.
Once you
have this information all it takes is a little bit more work to develop
your target’s location. But first you need to persuade the
target into calling your trapline. Sometimes no message is best
– just a name and number, depending on your specific
situation. The above delivery notices and postcards work
wonderfully. New generation communication has given other unique
opportunities, as detailed below.
VOICEMAIL, TEXT MESSAGES, EMAIL, PAGERS, AND WEBPAGES
All
of these are simply methods of communication. If you know the
cell phone number, use SlyDial to bypass calling the person and be sent
directly to their voicemail. You will want to use the calling
card feature of Kall8 in case they have a feature that tells them the
number that left the message. This serves two purposes – it
protects your identity and encourages them to call the trapline number
back out of curiosity. Remember, all you want is a call back to
trap the new number – nothing more is necessary (but more is
helpful). You can also use the paging feature of cell phone
voicemail (‘to page this person press ‘#’). Use
the SlyDial method above and enter your trapline number setup to reject
calls from the cell phone.
Text messaging is nothing more than
using the voicemail and pager methods, except you want to remain
anonymous. Yahoo mail has a unique feature to send a text message
to any cell phone; it is as anonymous as your Yahoo email
address. This is because they send two messages – the
intended message and a special message that tells the recipient that
Yahoo user ‘your Yahoo username’ is trying to send you a
text message. Another somewhat anonymous web based text messaging
is www.textyourbuddy.com. You will need to enter an email address
and the message. Your delivered message will show the email
address you entered and ‘sent from
textyourbuddy.com’. It is not so bad to have an email
address appear, as long as it is a generic and anonymous email
address. They may be enticed to send an email to you (less than
infrequent in my experience) – giving you their IP address (at
least their general location) and their email address. You can
then use various email tracing methods to develop additional
information. Likewise, if you have an email address but nothing
else, use the same message delivery theories already outlined to craft
an anonymous and enticing email message for them to call your
trapline. These theories can also be used for persons that have
webpages and contact forms. Finally, you can setup your own
webpage and contact form enticing them to contact you or call your
trapline.
CALLING CARDS
Identical to calling
cards you purchase; however, these are pre-paid by you and mailed to
the subject. These are only available from the commercial
providers.
The specialized calling cards are essentially the same
as the trapline. This is especially useful when all you have is
the target’s mail drop address or the address of a
relative. The commercial company will send a free calling card in
a marketing package, hoping your subject will call someone or be called
by the relative. The uses of these are as vast as your
imagination. With the extensive use of cell phones and no
associated long distance charges, calling card use is rapidly
declining.
As with all calling cards, you will be able to see
the date, time and telephone numbers called from and to; and just as
with the trapline, not just once a month – but virtually any time
it is used and in the same notification manners. Due to the cost,
in the past I have used these only on the subjects that are sure to
bite and have avoided any other trick I could think of. The costs
can be $25- $75.
COMBINING THESE RESOURCES
Each
of the above services have unique stand alone uses – but when
combined create powerful investigative tools. The uses of these
services are really up to the legal and creative imagination.
Calling a cell phone with Slydial and leaving an enticing message with
a toll-free number is just the same as sending an email, text message
or other communication – get your number to the subject and get
them to call you back. Be creative and think like your
subject. What would prevent them from calling you? What
messages, letters, emails or other communications have you received
that enticed you to call a number? The answers to these questions
are the beginning to the answers of where your skip is hiding, living
and working. All of these methods have proven beneficial to me
– some more so then others. This article is generally
written from the most successful methods to the least. It is
important to practice safe, legal, and common sense investigative
strategies. DO NOT use any pretext or form of communication that
may jeopardize your case, your client, or your profession. If you
are not permitted to contact a subject (i.e. an opposing party
represented by an attorney) you cannot use these methods.
Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas with me and your fellow investigators.
____________________
Dean A. Beers is the owner and Senior Legal Investigator of Forensic Investigators of Colorado, LLC,
based in LaPorte, Colorado. He has been a legal investigator
since 1987 with extensive experience in skip tracing. He left the
private sector from 2005 to 2008 to work as Deputy Coroner / Certified
Medicolegal Death Investigator for the Larimer County Medical
Examiner’s Office. He returned to the private sector in
late 2008 and now focuses primarily on the legal investigations of
Personal Injury, Negligence and Death, as well as Criminal
Defense. His wife, Karen, handles agency administrative matters
and is also an Associate Legal Investigator. Please visit the
agency website for detailed information at
www.Forensic-Investigators.com. After ‘retiring’ from
the private sector, he completed his book ‘Professional Locate
Investigations’.
Dean has extensive training,
experience, skill sets and knowledge in Personal Injury, Negligence and
Death, and all contributing causations. Related areas include
motor vehicle collisions, workplace incidents, elder abuse, child
abuse, slip and fall, premises liability, as well as related evidence
collection and analysis. In addition, he continues to provide
detailed Criminal Defense investigations, now with the benefit of POST
certification and extensive familiarity with the local law enforcement
community and judiciary.