Archive for the 'Sources' Category

Bulk Sales & the PI

Published on December 7, 2011 in Canada, Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Courts, Methods, Private Investigator and Sources. 0 Comments

BULK SALES ACT SEARCHES – Ontario Only

Sales of large quantities of stock or the sale of assets and equipment of the business itself outside the regular course of business are considered a sale “in bulk”. The Bulk Sales Act is designed to protect the creditors of a business owner by requiring the owner to follow the procedures of the Act for sales outside the regular course of business.

If a buyer wishes to purchase the assets and equipment of a business, the seller “in bulk” must provide an affidavit stating that all creditors have been paid, or they will be paid from the proceeds of the sale.  In some cases the buyer pays an assigned trustee and creditors of the business may wish to waive their rights in which case the proceeds are paid.

A ‘Bulk Sales search‘ determines if a bulk sales affidavit has been filed with the relevant Ontario Superior Court of Justice office.

The Private Investigator (PI)

If you are interested in an Ontario business’s assets, debts, cash flow, and general financial condition, then a a Bulk Sale Act search is an important search.  It may tell you if the business is failing or if it has suffered a set-back.  You may learn of an abandoned line or the sale of a production facility.  You may learn of a legal action in another jurisdiction by contacting or researching the other parties to the bulk sale. Any sale that indicates that creditors will be paid from the proceeds of the sale may indicate a judgment that is being satisfied or it may be part of the settlement of a claim.

 

The Bank Act & the PI

Published on December 5, 2011 in Canada, Company Research, Due Diligence, Legislation, Methods, Private Investigator, Risk Management and Sources. 0 Comments

The Bank Act

The Bank Act (1991, c. 46) is an Act of the Government of Canada respecting banks and banking.  The Canadian banking industry includes 20 domestic banks, 24 foreign bank subsidiaries and 22 foreign bank branches operating in Canada.

Canadian Banks & Lending

Canadian Banks have the right to lend money to wholesalers, retailers, shippers and dealers in “products of agriculture, products of aquaculture, products of the forest, products of the quarry and mine, products of the sea, lakes, and rivers, of goods, wares and merchandise, manufactured or otherwise” on the security of such goods or products, and to lend money to manufacturers on their goods and inventories.

The Private Investigator (PI)

When doing a background investigation of a person, the PI will be looking for previously unknown assets, banking and financial arrangements, or corporate affiliations.  When investigating a company, the PI will be looking for previously unknown assets, banking, and financial arrangements.  In both cases, the equity held by the subject in the assets will be of interest.  Searching the Bank Act Security Registry may reveal all of the above.

Bank Act Security Registry

Under S. 427 of the Bank Act, the borrower must sign a document that provides the bank with the first preferential lien on the goods or equipment.  The Bank then registers a ‘Notice of Intention‘ to take the goods as security, to perfect its security interest.

The Bank of Canada offers a Security Registry service which may be searched for registrations.  The search will reveal whether the Bank of Canada has taken security on property that may interest you.  If the Bank does have a claim on the property, then it means that it has loaned the customer money and that it has the right to take possession of and sell the property if the loan is not paid.  This is important for you to know for two reasons.  First, it shows that the person or business is indebted to a Canadian chartered bank and may have equity in the property listed in the security agreement.  Second, it may uncover previously unknown assets, banking and financial arrangements, or corporate affiliations. You will need to provide the name of the person or business being searched.

Years ago, we only did this when we suspected the subject person or company might have an interest in an agricultural business.  Today however, we find more non-agricultural businesses in the Bank of Canada registry. We have online access to the Bank of Canada registry to search for Bank Act Security items. The search results often indicate that a business assigned its inventory to a bank as security under the Bank Act.

A manual search for Notices of Intention filed under Section 427 of the Bank Act are conducted at the agency of the Bank of Canada in the province or territory where the debtor’s place of business is located. For Bank Act searches,  “agency” means, in a province, the office of the Bank of Canada or its authorized representative but does not include its Ottawa office, and in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut means the office of the clerk of the court of each of those territories respectively [see S. 427(5)].

 

Local News on Twitter

Published on October 11, 2011 in Odds & Sods, Social Sites, Sources and Twitter. 0 Comments Tags: .

If you provide a location in your Twitter profile settings, then following @topix_local will get you tweets about the location.  To stop getting alerts, simply stop following @topix_local.  This needs a city name in your profile settings to be effective so that it picks-up the hashtag (#city).

UPDATE: You won’t get very many Tweets using @topix_local compared to using TweetDeck and creating a column for #City.  But of course, in TweetDeck, you will get everything with the city hashtag, whether it’s news or not.

Toronto Prostitution Sites

Published on September 30, 2011 in Canada, Craigslist, Methods, Private Investigator and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

As an Investigator, I often have to search for references to a certain telephone number.  A few years ago, these searches started to involve looking for a possible prostitution involvement.  This is a search for which I frequently get requests.

Doing this isn’t rocket science, so here is my current list of sites.  Of course, I have devised a way of automating the search process and I’m not going to tell you how I do that.  Just remember, you must document your search method and the results properly if this is could end-up as evidence.

Censorship: You be the Judge

Google Ad-sense sent an automated notice that their machines were going to stop serving ads because I listed the sites that we often search for telephone numbers as explained above.  Of course machines can’t read, but they can find links. Now Google is censoring content because they don’t like to place ads on anything that has links to sites that they don’t like, in this case so-called ‘adult content’.  I can understand not wanting to be involved in promoting pornography or the sex trade, but this is only a machine telling me what to write and there is nobody to talk to and no living person at Google ever read this article.

123people Social Media Search Engine

Published on September 28, 2011 in Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Sites and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I have been using 123people to uncover an individual’s social media presence. It  isn’t the only search engine I use for this, but and have found it to be a sound performer.

iSeek Search Engine

Published on September 26, 2011 in Methods, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

iSeek is a good search engine to use when you are searching by a person’s name. It clusters search results by topic, people, places, and organisations.

Where has Google Gone?

Published on August 29, 2011 in News, News Media, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Sites, Sources and Twitter. 1 Comment

Google Realtime Search Goes Missing;

The Google Wonder Wheel Is Gone;

Google Squared and News Timeline disappear;

and the removal of the Google News Archive search page are a mystery.


CarFax, CarProof, & AutoCheck

Published on August 15, 2011 in Canada and Sources. 1 Comment

I have written about using CarFax and CarProof before.

CarFax is owned by CarMax, while AutoCheck is owned by the large U.S.credit reporting agency, Experian.  AutoCheck is not to confused with Auto Check™ which is an online database containing information about accident damaged, insurance “total loss” branded and stolen vehicles that was developed in 1995 by the Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario, for the exclusive use of its members.

AutoCheck purchases the data from the auto auctions and CarFax does not. As a result of this, CarFax often fails to report previous accidents and things like frame damage.  Autocheck is the de facto standard at the auto auctions.

In Canada Carproof is by far the better system, as they have more access to insurance data, repair shop estimates, lien history, police and ministry of Transportation data, and more.

An Investigator armed with a vehicle’s VIN, and who is willing to pay the fees, just might find out about an undisclosed vehicle accident using one of these services.

BC Environmental Law Violators

Published on August 10, 2011 in Canada, Company Research, Courts and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: .

Environmental law violators in British Columbia are now in a searchable online database. “The free database includes a wide variety of compliance and enforcement actions taken by ministry staff and enforcement officers. It includes orders, administrative sanctions, tickets and court convictions covering hunting and fishing, open burning, mud bogging, dam safety, and pesticide and pollution violations.”

The U.S. National Academies

Published on June 6, 2011 in Sources. 0 Comments

The U.S. National Academies (e.g., National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering) made their publications available for free on-line.

This is a very reputable source of reference material of a very wide range of subjects. The publications cover a broad range of topics from Agriculture, to Engineering and Technology, to Conflict and Security Issues, and much more.  The documents may be read on screen, downloaded as a PDF if you register.

The New Neighbourhood

Published on June 2, 2011 in Company Research, Due Diligence, Ethics, How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Sites, Sources and Training & Education. 0 Comments

In the past, most investigations included ‘neighbourhood inquires’ where neighbours were questioned regarding the subject’s activities and lifestyle.

We still do neighbourhood inquiries, but over the last three decades this has produced less and less information of value, to the point that we now consider this an extraordinarily expensive investigative process.

Neighbours rarely share derogatory information or observations about the subject, and fewer still, even know the subject as most urban neighbourhoods are too transient and social contact is minimal.

Today’s neighbourhood isn’t tied to geography, but rather by Internet connectivity. The advent of virtual media has created virtual neighbourhoods that the Investigator must be adept at navigating and interrogating.

This new neighbourhood may reveal inappropriate pictures, drug and alcohol abuse, bad-mouthing of employers, co-workers, clients, and organisations. It may reveal poor communication skills and much worse – much of which is found exclusively online.

Unfortunately, inexpert interrogation and navigation of this neighbourhood has caused issues.

The ubiquity of Internet search engines and a lack of training and guidelines may put the Investigator in contravention of some laws if the resulting information creates a record of personally identifying information that is subsequently mishandled. Possession of Internet search results may impose either declared or implied responsibilities regarding the handling of the data in some jurisdictions.

A casual and undisciplined approach to Internet and social media searching raises questions regarding the competence, handling, fairness, storage, and analysis of the data. The role of the Investigator doing the searching should be clear from the outset. The sources and methods employed should also be clear throughout the search process and its reporting.

Virtual Identities

The subjects of an investigation do not line-up to tell the Investigator all his or her screen names and their related email addresses.

The Investigator must find the screen names and related email addresses from what he already knows at the beginning of the Investigation to build an online profile of the subject.

The Investigator must also recognise that screen names are often used by more than one person or a screen name may be used maliciously.

As the old New Yorker cartoon said, “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog”.

Navigation & Interrogation

The unstructured nature of data available on the Internet, and its density, creates problems for the searcher.

Google may say it found three million hits, but it will only show one thousand. The results will change depending on which version of Google searched and whence it is searched.

When searching for information about a person or company, the Investigator shouldn’t get bogged-down by search engine hits, but rather go straight to databases that have the right category of data for his purposes. This may mean searching sources not indexed by the search engines.

Google isn’t a substitute for knowledge and experience.

Getting a Phone Number from an Email Address

Published on April 22, 2011 in Craigslist, Methods, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: .

You have an email address, and need the subject’s phone number.  No repository exists that correlates an email address with a phone number.  This requires some investigative work.  First, use the free reverse email look-ups to help in your search.  To find these, use the search term email reverse lookup in your favorite search engine.  Normally, these are of little use, especially with anyone who lives outside the U.S.A..

The following represents my usual process before resorting to confidential resources.

  • Check the email address in Google. Use it as a reverse email search. You may find an associated cell phone number that is still in service.
  • Do reverse email search using Pipl.com this finds content that other web crawlers miss. Go to Pipl, click the “Email” link, enter the email address. The results may display online sites and documents where that email address appears and you may find an associated telephone number at one of those sites.
  • Kgbpeople.com and SocialMention Search in social networks using Kgbpeople. Enter the email address in the “Name:” field at the top of the page, select the country in the pull-down menu and press the “Search” button. Select one of the four tabs at the top of the screen — Social networks, Search engines, Photo and video, or Personal — then review the results for a cell phone number associated with that email address.  Do a similar search using SocialMention.
  • AllofCraigs and Search All Craig’s Search Craigslist ads. It’s a handy place to conduct a reverse email search. Enter the email address in the field and press the Hopefully, you will find some ads that reveal a phone number connected to that email address.

Social Media Meta-Search Engines

Published on March 23, 2011 in Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Sites and Sources. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Meta-search for Social Media Sites

The following social media meta-search engines let you search social networking sites by a person’s name, nickname, phone number, email address and more. Here are some of these search sites and my notes on their utility.

Kgbpeople.com

This searches social networks, search engines, photo/video/audio sites, and personal/professional reference sites. Canada isn’t in the country selection drop-down list this may be a problem for common names in a search for a Canadian. Nothing special, but consistently useful results.

Kurrently.com

This real-time search engine instantly combines results from Twitter and Facebook in an easy-to-read format organized by date stamp. It doesn’t help much if the person doesn’t have one of the above, or if his name isn’t associated with the Twitter account. The best search is for the Twitter @name such as mine @LocusCommunis, Otherwise, you often get nothing.

SocialMention

I have written about this one before.  It’s a real-time search engine searching over a hundred sites from blogs and comments to images and video. When searching names you really must put the name in quotation marks or you get useless results.  Of the three, this is the Investigator’s best choice in my opinion.

Changes to Canadian Pardons

Published on March 21, 2011 in Canada, Courts, Legislation, Sources and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Clarification on Bill C-23A

There is some confusion going around about Bill C-23. It was split into two parts, and because the second part, C-23B, has been the most debated, people associate C-23A, which received Royal Assent on 29 Jun 2010, with the changes proposed by C-23B, which has not yet been made law.

Bill C-23A only covers certain aspects of the full bill, while C-23B covers the bulk of the changes. Part A, which has been made law, covers the following:

1.    Lengthens pardon waiting periods from 3 years to 5 years and from 5 years to 10 years for certain crimes.

2.    Puts the onus on the applicant for proving that a pardon would bring them measurable benefit.

3.    Gives the Parole Board of Canada more discretion for granting pardon applications.

Bill C-23B will bring a few more changes, but for now, these are the basic changes that have already taken place. C-23B is scheduled for its third reading on March 24th and will undergo clause by clause consideration in April. For more information on these changes, please visit: http://www.canadianpardons.ca/. The Pardon & Waiver Wiki and Blog pages should be very  useful if you need to understand the Pardon and Waiver process in Canada.

National Security Silences the News

Published on February 16, 2011 in News, News Media, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the shortwave service, reports that several countries were trying to prevent their people from hearing the news about the protests in Egypt. The service’s Media Network Blog illustrates the heavy-handed actions taken to restrict access to outside news services.

These events reveal how vulnerable news reporting is to government censorship.

We regularly design news monitoring programmes for clients and we have found that monitoring the shortwave services using BBC Monitoring has proved to be a successful strategy. However, cuts at BBC Monitoring may make this strategy less effective.

Most HF broadcasters predicted an end to their services during the next decade. I hope the situation in Egypt, and the response of other dictatorships, will make them reconsider.