Proprietary Sources

Sometimes the information supplied by the databases is supplemented with additional information developed from proprietary sources such as contacts at the financial institutions or telephone companies. By the time the information from the databases has been merged and assembled, the report contains a complete picture of your personal and financial life with all of the details available for inspection and use—without your knowledge and outside of your control. Look-ups are a powerful source of information for investigators—often providing a comprehensive package of information to combine with the details available through the use of sources and pretext strategies.

The services offered by the look-ups are capable of such powerful and wide reaching searches that law enforcement agencies at each level rely heavily on these companies for assistance in their efforts. The look-ups are used to locate people suspected of criminal activity and to track down witnesses, friends, and associates of criminal suspects.

Computerized databases are among the most important weapons in the prosecution of financial crimes. According to the Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an arm of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, relies heavily on computerized databases to prevent and detect money laundering. FinCEN combines financial information reported by banks with a multiple database search from the look-ups and offers these intelligence reports to other federal and state agencies. The Secret Service and the National White Collar Crime Center of the Justice Department subscribe to more than a dozen look-up services and conduct searches for themselves and related agencies investigating economic crimes.