Skip Tracing

Skip tracing is the process of locating a debtor who has "skipped": the phone is disconnected, mail bounces, the storefront is dark, and the principals are not answering. In commercial collections it has two objectives that consumer skip tracing does not always share: finding the responsible parties, and mapping whether anything is recoverable, successor businesses, affiliated entities, real property, equipment, or a principal who has reopened under a new LLC across town.

The commercial toolkit is largely public-record work: Secretary of State filings (dissolutions, new entities registered by the same principals or at the same address), UCC filings revealing lenders and asset relationships, county real property and judgment records, court dockets, business license databases, and commercial credit bureau data showing recent inquiries and trade activity. Layered on top: web and social presence, domain registrations, online reviews mentioning a relocation, and the low-tech channels that still work, calling neighbors at the old address, the landlord, or the debtor's known suppliers.

The output should be a recoverability decision, not just an address. Finding the debtor matters little if the entity is an empty shell; finding that its assets migrated to a successor company can matter enormously, since successor liability and fraudulent transfer theories may reach them, a call for counsel, informed by the trace. Legality bounds the methods: pretexting to obtain bank information is unlawful, and data sources carry permissible-use restrictions. Most credit departments do a first-pass trace in-house with public records and hand true skips to agencies or investigators who do this daily.