When there is not much of a paper trail left by your subject, usually the best way to try and locate him is by locating his parents or other relatives. You can be sure that they will almost always know where your subject is located and if you are looking for a lost friend, simply contacting a relative may provide you with the information that you require.

However, if your target is in hiding and you have not been able to find a paper trail to follow, locating your target’s parents, a relative or even his last place of employment may prove to be fruitful. With this contact information and a little luck you may be able to draw your subject out from hiding (or get other useful facts) by establishing a good pretext. In most states it is not unlawful to represent yourself as working for a company that in actuality does not exist. You can even have fake id and/or business cards made that support your claim. Before we go further though, it should be noted that it is against the law to pretend to work for any company that does exist so do your homework.

Pretexts that you could devise and use are almost unlimited and could include such stories as you are trying to locate your target to give him unclaimed property, lost property, contest winnings, or just about any guise that requires he contact you. You could even provide a pre-made business card that supports your story and ask that the relative give the card to your subject so that he may contact you at the number listed. If your target falls for your pretext, you may be lucky enough to capture his phone number with call tracing. Even if he uses a phone other than his own, you may still gather important information such as the state that he called from or a friend’s phone number. Remember, locating someone sometimes requires that you collect small pieces of information which when all put together, allow you to accomplish your goal.

One trick used by many investigators who only know the parent’s address of a subject, is to watch the parent’s house during holidays such as Christmas or Mother’s Day. Sometimes their target will show up and depending on the reason for trying to locate the target, they may confront him immediately or simply take down the license plate number of the vehicle that he arrived in. Such a plan also would provide you with the possibility of following the subject to his home address when he leaves.

Another trick that you might want to use if you're uncomfortable with verbal pretexts is to send some type of pretext via the mail to your target’s parent’s address but in his name. There probably is a good chance that the parents of your subject will forward the mail to him and depending on the pretext, he may decide to call a phone number that you provide within the mailing.

As well, do not discount previous places of employment and/or past neighbors when trying to come up with pretext ideas as they may know where your target is located. For example, finding out information at your target’s last known place of employment may be as easy as pretending to be an old work mate. Whatever ideas that you come up with for flushing a target out of hiding, always be careful to make sure that you do not break any federal (including postal) or state laws. Breaking the law to flush out a criminal makes you no better than he is. Therefore remember that depending on what idea you come up with, it may or may not be legal. Always check carefully before you act.