While serving the world community since 1960, has built an impressive global network with other investigators. We have also built amazing contacts in law enforcement and government. It goes without saying that we’ve had many experiences in our truth-finding missions.
With the latest technology at our fingertips, can search countless data bases for information. We can produce surveillance video from a distance. We continue daily, to utilize the many individual skills our investigators bring to this profession. But recently, when the neighbor of a dead man came into our office, we were initially stymied by her request.
The woman’s neighbor, a man in his mid-fifties, had died suddenly of a heart attack. He was a Hungarian gymnastics coach, in the states less than a year with a work visa. He spoke very limited English. The man had no family in the United States and his acquaintances at the gymnastics studio knew very little about him. Even though the employer had completed a criminal background check and made other inquiries through background check services, most of the information had been about his time in the United States. The language barrier prevented his employer and coworkers from knowing exactly where he was from, in his home country.
In an effort to inform the man’s family of his death, the neighbor took it upon herself to dial a few numbers on his cell phone. But was unable to understand or identify who the numbers belonged to.
Initially, the woman’s request might seem like a rather simple one. She asked for help finding people in the man’s family, but to be prepared for the fact that the language issue might prove to be a huge problem. To find this man’s next of kin, strategies are used just like those employed in how to find a missing person. A person wasn’t exactly missing, but still needed to be found.
Working only with the deceased’s first and last name as it was written on his driver’s license, initially started the search online with some social media engineering. In trying to piece together an identity for him on the Internet, photographs of him at the gym helped a great deal.
We were also able to gather some information about his origins, but not about the family he left behind.
We put the word out in the investigations network that we needed the help of a person who fluently spoke Hungarian. But no one came forward. That’s when we realized that Hungarian was not exactly a common second language. We then sought the help of a bi-lingual investigator in Budapest. Using the usual strategies to find missing persons, we were able to locate the family of the deceased in Szeged, Hungary.
Without a concerned neighbor and help from professionals for a people search, this family may have never known of the death of their loved one.
-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations, All in Investigations
