A concerned mom called me and dove right in - “My son recently started dating a young man and something just isn’t sitting right with me about him. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m obviously concerned enough to contact a private investigator and ask you to look into his background for any potential red flags.”
She provided me with this man’s name and nickname. When I searched social media using his nickname, I located old, inactive, and very sparse Twitter and Facebook profiles for him. Other than these two profiles, I was coming up empty-handed.
When I ran him through my usual databases, not only did I fail to find even one person with his first and last name, I found zero people with his last name in the entire United States. At this point, I surmised that he was using a false identity. So I switched gears.
I guessed that although his name was false, the date of birth listed on his Facebook profile was likely true. So I ran that birth date with a location of Joplin, Missouri in my databases. (PS, this wouldn’t have worked for bigger cities that would have yielded hundreds of results, but Joplin is a town of only about 50,000 people). My search yielded 20 possible results.
As I skimmed through those 20 names, one of them caught my eye. The first name, a very common one, matched the first name of my subject. But the last name was Jones*. I remembered that my subject’s Twitter handle was “jonesyboy”*.
I looked closer into Mr. Jones’* information and began finding multiple commonalities between his identity and the identity of my subject who I suspected was operating under a false name. The first name was the same for both subjects. The Twitter handle linked the false identity up with the last name of Jones*. The date of birth matched. Both identities listed the same large chain store employer. An historical address in Mr. Jones’* database report is owned by the close relatives of a Facebook and Twitter connection to “jonesyboy”*. When my client later sent me the subject’s vehicle description and tag number, they also matched the current vehicle and tag number for Mr. Jones*.
At this point, there was no doubt that the subject of the investigation was operating under a false name and was, in fact, Mr. Jones*. So I then repeated my earlier efforts and ran Mr. Jones* through all of the same searches I had conducted previously and unknowingly under the false name. This time, I was able to piece together all the places he’s lived, former relationships he’s had, as well as a criminal history.
All of my client’s questions were answered. Case closed.
* The subject’s name and Twitter handle have been changed to protect his real identity.