Founder/Owner/President

On September 20, 1990, the Indiana State Police issued a private detective license to Trace Investigations in Bloomington, Indiana. Two years later when the license was up for its first renewal, the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency had oversight of private detectives and security guards. The rest, as they say, is history. Under Indiana law we are now known as private investigators, not detectives, and our license renewals are on four year cycles. We've seen a lot of changes in the business world over the intervening years.

In those early days, I was a sole practitioner, a private detective with a car, a camera, a pager and a portable typewriter at a home office for writing reports. Now, our staff has grown, as has our office space downtown, and the technological changes we've seen since 1990 are astonishing. The days of copying VHS video tapes and developing case photos from 35mm roll film for our clients are a part of history. These days we can... Read More

An attorney brought a case to us recently that had been worked by another private investigator. The assignment had been to locate an individual for service of process. The PI had forwarded to the attorney a comprehensive "trace" report he had obtained from a data broker, with a note that he "believed" the most recent address listed for the subject in the report was accurate. You will never see one of these reports sent to you as a result of an investigation by Trace Investigations.

Garbage In, Garbage Out ...

You are no doubt familiar with these comprehensive data reports. All the major data brokers have their version: Lexis Nexis, Accurint, IRB search (Accurint for PIs), TLO, IDI Data, Thomson Reuters (CLEAR) and a number of other brokers aggregate their data from many of the same sources. The thing to remember -- no matter which broker you subscribe to - is that you are accessing raw data compiled from multiple data banks and much of it is garbage. "Garbage in, garbage out," as we like to say. Some of these reports can run from 30-50 pages with a lot of extraneous information of little or no value to the instant investigation. There are, of course, valuable gems of information hiding in plain sight in these reports, and therein lies their value and often times the key to a successful investigation.

We use comprehensive reports not only to locate people but to conduct a background investigation in anticipation of litigation. They will provide address histories on a subject, but he may or may not have actually resided at a particular address. A report could show an address from a different individual with the same exact name ...Read More