Trace people back in time and place

Tracing individuals' pasts only occasionally unmasks a person who has assumed an entirely false identity (although we did once discover that a woman who used to work for a client was not, in fact, a woman). Frequently, though, tracing people back in time and place uncovers a false picture they have presented of some aspect of themselves: their wealth, credentials, business success, health, legal history, etc.

Really knowing someone's background means finding out where they were and what they did between college and yesterday. We begin every background investigation by compiling a list of the person's home addresses over the past decade or so. Addresses show us where to look for criminal convictions, lawsuits and other on-the-record trouble.

We worked for counsel to one company that had received an unfriendly takeover proposal from a competitor's CEO. We found a number of issues about the CEO's business background that helped our client respond: the story behind his sudden resignation as a director of another company; evidence that the graduate degree claimed on his resume was false; and accusations in a real-estate dispute that the CEO had committed criminal acts.

Another example: we find that the claimed backgrounds of toxic-tort plaintiffs, who have so much riding on what they say about themselves, bear particular scrutiny. We have been able to show their claims are sometimes based on incomplete, if not perjurious, life histories; we have helped defendants, for example, in asbestos and breast-implant cases put on the plaintiff's whole life story.