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Ontario|Private InvestigationsPersonal / Family / Missing Person 987 Finding missing persons Searches for people may be necessary for many reasons, such as to notify a beneficiary of a will, serve legal documents on a litigant or a witness, or locate a child, parent, relative or friend who disappeared for unknown reasons. In Canada, a person must be licensed as a private investigator if he or she undertakes searching for missing persons on a "for hire" or reward basis.
- Skip Tracers and Information Brokers
Skip tracers are investigators who, by various means, locate persons who have made themselves scarce because they are being sued or are a witness in a trial. Information brokers are investigators who provide time and cost efficient searches through public and private record vaults.
- Use of pretexts
Skip tracers and information brokers use the timeless art of pretext calling. Pretexts are ingenious plans and stories to convince people to give up information that they would normally withhold. There are generally four steps to successful pretext inquiries. First, identifying the information sought. Second, identifying who is the keeper of the information. Third, figuring out who the custodian or institution would release the information to and under what circumstances. Then, try to be that person.
There are a number of potential legal problems with pretext calls. For example, the Criminal Code makes it an offence to personate a peace officer, or any person, living or dead, for personal gain or to cause disadvantage to another person. It is important to note that the word "person" means a real person, not a fictitious person. Generally, private investigators avoid using the guise of being a lawyer, a doctor, a fire-fighter, a police officer, a government employee or any type of utility worker.
- Government Records
Information brokers can tap into many public sources for information about individuals. For example, Ontario driver's licence abstracts are available to private investigators and other select persons from the Ministry of Transport through the Internet for a modest fee. Land titles, property assessments, liens or personal property records are also publicly available for a fee. Federal information that is available includes civil aircraft databases offering the names of licensed pilots, patent and trade-mark databases, and divorce registries.
- Corporate Records
In addition to government records, corporate records generally list the board members of publicly held companies. Strategis Canada is a Web site to promote federally incorporated businesses, import/export, and more. Dow Jones Interactive, Canada StockWatch, and Lexis-Nexis are also excellent resources for commercial records. SEDAR has Canadian publicly held corporate filings and is searchable online. Some major public library systems have fee-based research entities available. Common business records, such as boards of directors and business credit reports, are publicly available and searchable online. Accessibility varies across the country. In contrast to publicly held companies, there is very little information available on-line about privately held companies.
- Who To Use
There are many other investigative techniques that can be utilized to locate a missing person. Generally, anyone seeking information about persons or businesses is encouraged to contact an established and reputable private investigation agency in their province. If such a private investigative agency does not have an expert on staff, they will probably be able to put you in contact with someone who is.
For more information regarding finding missing persons, refer to the Legal Line Guide or website. For legal advice and assistance, contact a lawyer.
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