Address Investigation | Locating a Person (Case Example)

In itself, the following case is almost too trivial for a blog report. However, with the description of this matter, our detective agency for Grevenbroich would like, firstly, to illustrate the service of address investigation using this simple example, and secondly, the “target person” was, ironically, a debt collection company. The background: Over the past months, our clients had been unable to deliver various letters to the collection agency regarding assigned claims to the address listed in the commercial register and on online portals, and phone calls went unanswered. Unfortunately, at that point our client had already paid an invoice from the service provider and had therefore made an advance payment. There are numerous providers on the market who only charge fees upon success.

The fact that a collection agency, whose very business purpose is to pursue delinquent and absconding debtors, now itself appeared to have disappeared without a trace was quite an unusual situation. The Aaden Detectives for Grevenbroich (+49 211 9874 011-0) were initially commissioned to verify the known company address on site and, if necessary, to subsequently conduct further investigations into possible alternative service addresses of the company or its authorized representatives.

Error in the Mailing Address

After the address had been provided, the operations management first noticed that the address did not actually exist in that form. The client had assumed a “Musterstraße,” but in fact it was a “Mustergraben.” The postal codes also did not match. On the website of the collection service, however, the address was correctly stated. It was therefore possible that the postal service had simply been unable to correctly assign the address. Accordingly, our deployed private detective in Grevenbroich visited Mustergraben to verify the situation. Indeed, a properly labeled, recently emptied mailbox and a locked office of the company were found there. Mail sent to this address should therefore arrive. An employee of another company located in the same building confirmed to the deployed detective that the company owner was actually present in the office three to four times per week.

When the client was informed of the investigation results by phone, he was, on the one hand, relieved not to “have another problem on his hands.” On the other hand, he was naturally annoyed that, due to such a careless error—which had apparently gone unnoticed even after multiple internal checks—he had gone to the trouble of commissioning a private detective agency. Although the investigation was ultimately quite trivial, it still required time from our staff, and working time is, of course, billed (for more details on our detective fees, see here). For us, the case initially seemed to be concluded very quickly.

Database Research by the Aaden Detectives

A few days later, the same client unexpectedly contacted our commercial detective agency in Grevenbroich again. He had since spoken by phone with the owner of the collection service—who, according to his own statement, had only recently returned from vacation—whom the client had previously commissioned to recover a claim against a delinquent debtor. The collection agency had so far failed to determine the debtor’s whereabouts and had therefore placed the case on “permanent monitoring.” A prompt settlement of the claim was therefore not to be expected. Since the client had already been in contact with our commercial detectives in Grevenbroich, he considered entrusting us with the address investigation.

During the discussion of the situation, it quickly became clear that there were various indications that would have allowed surveillance to be initiated at different locations, which could have yielded findings with a high degree of probability—a service that collection agencies generally do not provide. In order to spare the client additional expenses after commissioning and paying the collection service, and because the available information made it feasible, we offered him a database search for the debtor in order to determine the desired address within a standard investigation period of two to three weeks. In fact, numerous entries—some of them current—were found in the sources accessible to us regarding the person in question. Ultimately, an address in Duisburg was identified and verified.

Notice

For reasons of discretion and data protection, the locations of operations and certain personal details have been modified without altering the substance of the actual events.