Marsha called us one morning stating she needed to hire a private investigator. Ralph, her ex-husband and irresponsible father of her four children, owed over $30,000 in back child support. The court awarded her $75.00 per week support for each of her four children but that was 11 years ago. Just about the same time Ralph disappeared. Marsha worked two jobs but she did have the help of her family for emotional support.
Every year Marsha contacted her County Prosecutor’s office to see if they had located Ralph. She was always told they “were still looking”. They supposedly were coordinating with the Internal Revenue Service in case he had a tax return that could be garnished, but to no avail. They had posted on several States’ Bureau of Motor vehicles to refuse licensing. Nothing!!! They were using some type of on-line database to track him down. Nothing!!! Marsha knew a lot about the man she married – his date of birth, his social security number, and his early life (San Francisco Bay Area). She also knew he was a union electrician, he was an only child, both of his parents were deceased, and he served in the military but had a dishonorable discharge (sounds likely).
The hardest part of finding him: he had a common name and no middle name or initial. Initially, we couldn’t give her much encouragement on our success in finding him. Finding people who continually dodge the system is difficult. To find missing people who created a completely different life is even more difficult. After about a month or so of research, we determined that he had been using his new wife’s SSN, altered his name by adding a middle name and all legal documents he had signed only had the middle name referenced. He now had three more children with his new wife and was living within three miles of where he had grown up in a prominent neighborhood. Best of all, he was a co-owner of a successful heating and air conditioning company which he purchased from his father-in-law. We referred Marsha to an experienced attorney who used our asset investigation to find hidden money that included finding bank accounts, and identifying his investment accounts, both personal and business. The attorney subpoenaed the respective financial institutions and found more than enough to repay the back child support, plus our fees and the attorney fees. This certainly helped out since two of her kids had college expenses. Happy ending!!!
– Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations,
– Brenda McGinley, Director of Operations,
