Names have been changed to protect identities.
In 2020, a lawyer, “David” asked us to locate “Eileen”. He represents one of her brothers, “Marty”. There is an inheritance of some $250,000 being held for her; the siblings are estranged and the last address he had for her is in downtown Toronto.
We were provided her DOB, husband’s name (“Frank”) the last known address, and last known cell number, which David had tried several times.
We love these files. Usually when we are trying to find people it’s bad for them, and they are hiding. We were looking forward to giving the subjects good news.
In Canada, there are no searchable databases for addresses or locating people, so we conducted searches we thought were relevant for this situation, being mindful that disbursements can hit $300 in short order.
We started by pulling the last known address provided; turns out it was owned by Eileen and her brothers and sold in 2016. The address for service for her was the lawyer acting in the sale; dead end.
We searched secured loans and liens in Ontario for Eileen and Frank, none found. We searched all 54 of Ontario’s land titles offices; two properties were found, but upon retrieval of deeds, DOB did not match.
Nothing recent or helpful in social media – not a huge surprise as Eileen was 65 years old.
We had maxed out the budget and done all we could do in public records, and reported back to David.
This past winter, David asked us again to try to locate Eileen, as her inheritance remains in their trust account and if not dealt with, the other beneficiary can make a claim to these funds.
We replicated our searches. Her driver’s license came back to a rental property in a rural area. We located and contacted the owner of the house, but they did not return our calls.
This time though, we found a mention in a golf magazine of Eileen’s husband as a pro (but not a really successful one). This led us to a golfer profile which provided his DOB, also noted he plays in Florida. Sure enough, we found profiles of both husband and wife in a U.S. database, in Orlando, Florida, with a Florida landline. We reported to the client and closed the file, confident of a happy ending.
I checked back with the client recently, only to hear David still has not been able to reach Eileen. We offered to reach out (no extra charge), which we don’t normally do but we really wanted to see Eileen get her money. David accepted our offer.
What happened next was completely unexpected. We reached the husband, Frank, who told us David had “stolen” the house they had lived in for 30 years, and can “rot in hell”. Clearly caught off-guard, our analyst told Frank that we had been hired to find Eileen to claim her inheritance, to which he replied: “that’s bullshit”. Frank asked us not to tell David we had spoken to him.
Now, gentle reader, what would you think? David’s firm has been our client for over 20 years, and we have been working with David for 10 years. Would he throw us under the bus? How could two sides of the story be so different?
I decided to ask David for more details, before telling him about our conversation. I wanted the exact situation that led him to retaining us.
He stated that six years ago, Eileen’s mother passed away, leaving a house. The house had to be sold execute her estate. Apparently, Eileen and her husband had been living there, and refused to vacate. David had to get the sheriff to evict them, at which time (sidenote) Marty had brandished a gun at the sheriff. The house was eventually sold and Eileen’s share placed in trust, at which time they lost track of her. David was trying to give Eileen her share before it went to her brother by default.
I don’t see what more we could do, and certainly cannot speculate as to why the couple does not want their inheritance, but it was one of the few time we see the outcome of our investigation.
Would you do anything more?