Most professional investigators agree that in order to conduct a proper driving history background investigation on an individual, you must have a complete understanding of where the individual has resided, worked, and vacationed. This is because there is no source for a “nationwide” traffic violation search.
A driving history background investigation can play a pivotal role in litigation, specifically in personal injury cases. Conducting these investigations is more art than science. Simply obtaining your state’s MVD record is not enough.
One source of location information that many investigators overlook is online reviews. These reviews disclose a lot about an individual’s location. When coupled with other location information sources, this data can help the investigator create a more complete picture of where an individual has been and when.
This week I was working on a civil litigation assignment. I was tasked with researching the defendant’s driving history, which is a task that I am often given by my law firm clients. Initial background research indicated that the individual had only lived in one state their whole life. However, upon researching their Google reviews, I learned that the individual had temporarily resided in multiple states and left a trail of reviews that could easily be mapped. Armed with this new information, I checked court records in these new areas and found an important traffic citation that I otherwise would have never found. Said record didn’t appear on the person’s MVD abstract or with any of the major data aggregators.
The takeaway is this. Location history is everything when it comes to background research (either on a person or business). Get creative and consider all of the places that the target may leave a location footprint.