Straight answers about how this work actually goes.

A skip trace is an investigation to locate a person's current whereabouts and contact information. It produces the best available leads — current address, active telephone numbers, employment where it can be developed, and known relatives and associates — assembled from public records, licensed data sources, and investigative follow-up, then cross-referenced across sources and rated for confidence.

One honest caveat: nothing is verified until someone lays eyes on it in person. Cross-referencing raises confidence substantially, but a record is a record, not a sighting. Where certainty matters, we put a person on it.

An asset search identifies recorded and registered holdings: real property and the deeds of trust against it, registered vehicles, vessels and aircraft, business entity interests, UCC secured filings, tax liens, civil judgments, bankruptcy history, and professional licenses. Each finding carries its jurisdiction, recording reference, and date so it can be pulled or attached as an exhibit.

It does not find bank balances, cash, or unrecorded personal property. Financial accounts are a separate search governed by different law.

No, not by default. A standard asset search is conducted from licensed, aggregated, and electronically available record sources, which are current only to their last update cycle. Live county-level record retrieval and public records requests to state agencies are not part of the base search and must be specified at intake.

We do that work — direct pulls from the recorder, auditor, assessor, or clerk, and formal public records requests drafted, submitted, and tracked through response. It's quoted separately and runs on the agency's statutory timeline rather than our seven-day turnaround, so raise any hearing date when you open the assignment.

We can lawfully identify the financial institutions a person or entity has a relationship with, which is what you need in order to serve a writ of garnishment or a subpoena on the right bank. We identify the institution and the type of relationship, and we document the source of each finding.

We do not search active account balances, and no lawful investigator can. Those come from the institution in response to legal process — a garnishment, a subpoena, or a debtor's examination. Any vendor promising you a balance is either guessing or pretexting.

What we do provide alongside the institutional findings is an assessment of the subject's financial health and posture — how many institutions they deal with, whether relationships look active or dormant, what is encumbered, and whether the overall pattern reads as solvency or as winding down. That is what tells you whether a writ is worth serving.

Lawfully, by working from sources that are open to a licensed investigator with a permissible purpose: UCC-1 financing statements that name the secured lender, deeds of trust that name the beneficiary, court filings and bankruptcy schedules that identify institutions directly, prior discovery productions, litigation exhibits, and permissible-purpose data sources. The relationships are inferred and verified from records, not extracted from the bank.

The unlawful method is pretexting — calling the institution under a false identity. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act prohibits that, and prohibits hiring someone else to do it. We don't do it and won't subcontract it.

Typical turnaround in business days: skip trace investigation 2 days, asset search 7 days, bank search 7 days, brokerage search 5 days, insurance coverage searches 15 days, and witness interviews 14 days. Timing depends on jurisdiction, record availability, and how much identifying data you can provide. Rush handling is available on most searches, and every assignment is confirmed with a delivery date before work begins.

Our full price list is published. A skip trace investigation is $200, or $20 to $50 per comprehensive report for bulk database work at volume. Asset searches are $350, statewide bank searches $325, nationwide bank searches $450, brokerage searches $550, and insurance coverage searches $150 to $1,295 depending on the search and the age of the loss. Everything is flat-rate against a defined scope. See all rates.

On financial searches you pay the full rate only if we find something. If the search comes back empty you pay the no-hit rate instead — typically $40 to $85, and $0 on policy limits searches. You still receive the full report documenting what was searched and where, which is what supports a diligence showing or a decision to close a file.

Rates are set by what the underlying data costs to license and maintain, plus the investigator time to reconcile it. Proprietary material has to be acquired, indexed, corrected, and kept current — an index nobody maintains is worth less every year.

You get what you pay for. A $39 instant bank search is a recycled aggregator record that may be years stale, returned with no verification and no source. On a garnishment, a wrong institution costs far more than the search saved. We would rather charge $325 and be right.

Yes. Recurring and bulk work is priced on a sliding scale — the per-file rate falls as sustained volume rises, because batch submission lowers our per-file data cost. Tell us your expected monthly volume when you introduce your firm and we'll quote the tier rather than the list price. This applies to skip tracing, financial searches, and bulk service of process.

You don't order through the website. We open a client account first: you introduce your firm, we confirm terms and any volume pricing, and from then on assignments run directly with an investigator by email, secure portal, or batch submission. Permissible purpose is documented per assignment. Introduce your firm.

We run three layers, not one. First, licensed commercial databases — what every vendor has. Second, proprietary local source material built across the Pacific Northwest since 1980: indexed county-level records, historical address and property data, and working relationships with local custodians, much of it predating digitization and carried by no national aggregator. Third, privately sourced OSINT — structured open source intelligence tradecraft against the subject's digital footprint, run by people with cyber and military intelligence backgrounds.

That matters on the searches that come back empty everywhere else: a subject whose trail goes cold in 2003, a property transfer recorded under a variant spelling, a long-abandoned username that correlates to a current account. A national database returns what was scanned. We can go back further, go local, and go online properly.

Yes to both. We are an investigative agency that serves process, so when an address fails the file moves straight into a locate rather than coming back as a non-est. Bulk and volume service is available for collections portfolios, eviction calendars, high-volume debt litigation, and subpoena campaigns, with batch submission, consolidated invoicing, and sliding-scale pricing. Service of process detail.

Yes. Witness interviews are conducted face to face, not by phone. A witness who will not return a call will often talk at their door, and demeanor, hesitation, and what a witness avoids saying are only observable in person. You receive the recorded or written statement, a transcript on request, and a memorandum covering how the witness is likely to present if put on the stand.

For a person: full name and any variants, last known address, and at least one identifier such as date of birth, a partial Social Security number, or a known relative. For an entity: the registered name and state of formation. Plus the matter type and, where applicable, the case number and jurisdiction, so we can document permissible purpose.

Send identifiers through the secure channel we provide at intake, not by unencrypted email.

You get a report that says so and documents exactly what was searched, in which jurisdictions, and through which sources. That is a real deliverable: it supports a diligence showing for alternative service, it tells a creditor to stop spending on an uncollectible file, and it tells counsel that a defendant is judgment-proof before the client funds the case.

A permissible purpose is the lawful basis for conducting a search and accessing restricted data — a judgment you are enforcing, pending or contemplated litigation, a fiduciary or receivership appointment, a fraud investigation, or a legitimate business need in a transaction.

We document it on every engagement because federal and state law restricts access to financial, motor vehicle, and personal data based on purpose. A vendor who doesn't ask is exposing you as well as themselves.

No. Our reports are investigative work product, not consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and they may not be used to determine eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, or housing. Those decisions require a consumer reporting agency operating under FCRA procedures. If that is what you need, tell us and we will refer you rather than take the work.

Yes. Northwest Investigative Services operates as a licensed Washington private investigative agency, license number 22031080, under Chapter 18.165 RCW. For field work outside Washington we work within the destination state's licensing requirements.

Yes — but tell us up front. Reports are structured so findings and their sources can be attested to, and a declaration of the investigator is available on request.

If there is any prospect you will need testimony, say so when you open the assignment. We securely destroy matter files 30 days after delivery unless extended retention is arranged, so an investigator asked to testify two years later needs the file to still exist. Extended secure retention and storage is available as a separate paid service.

Matter files are securely destroyed 30 days after delivery. The substance of inquiries that never become engagements is deleted after 30 days as well — we keep only the sender's contact details, to market our own services, and delete those on request.

That is a deliberate choice: data we do not hold cannot be subpoenaed from us, breached, or mishandled, and that exposure would otherwise be yours as much as ours. The trade-off is that you retain your own copies — download and file our reports when they arrive.

If you need us to hold a file longer — for anticipated testimony, an appeal, or your own record-keeping — arrange extended secure retention and storage at the time of the assignment. It is quoted separately. Rates.

Yes. We decline requests without a lawful permissible purpose, anything requiring pretexting, searches that appear intended to facilitate stalking or harassment, locates on a person protected by an order against the requester, unauthorized access to accounts or communications, and any use of our reports for FCRA-regulated eligibility decisions. Our compliance standards set this out in full.

Records-based searches — skip tracing, asset searches, bank and brokerage searches, and due diligence — are conducted nationwide. Field work and our deepest proprietary source coverage are based in Washington State, including Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia, and Spokane, and field work is available elsewhere through licensed local association.