A social justice bill that implements a system to prospectively and retroactively seal conviction and arrest records.
1. The automated sealing of all arrest records that do not result in conviction; and
2. Phased relief for conviction records by sealing all records following completion of terms of incarceration, post-release supervision, provided there are no new felony convictions or pending chargers.

The bill was signed by Governor Newsom on September 27, 2022 and the provisions of the bill will take effect July 1, 2023.

From California Association of Licensed Investigators:

SB 731 still allows law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to have access to criminal records. In the interests of an equitable system of justice, criminal records must be available to both sides. In both criminal and civil litigation, this information can be important to:
– Addressing credibility of a witness

– Invoking the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses with impeachment information.

Individuals convicted and who subsequently complete their sentences, and any parole or probation obligations, are part of our society. CALI supports a process to enable people to have a second chance, particularly for employment and housing. However, there are numerous situations where the information that an individual has been convicted of a crime can be of vital importance to protect members of our society.

Does not strike a balance between the ability of convicted individuals to build a new life and protection of the public.
– Evaluating stakeholders in mergers, acquisitions, & business partnerships.

– Evaluating an individual either as a roommate, or in a romantic relationship.

– Evaluating parental custody in divorce cases.

– Evaluating violent history in situations involving restraining orders.

– Evaluating violent history regarding disgruntled employees in business threat assessments to avoid active shooter incidents.

– Evaluating political opponents or assessing individuals running for election or considered as a political appointee.

– Locating relatives in probate and missing heir searches.

– Locating witnesses in class action lawsuits.

– Determining risk when an applicant convicted of financial fraud applies for a financial position.

SB731

The post California Closing Criminal Records appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

A number of California Counties have removed the DOB from their public index.

This abrupt change is the result of a legal decision against the Riverside Superior Court where a judge ruled that displaying a DOB on electronic indexes is prohibited.

See the PDF HERE and the following website for details:
https://riversideallofusornone.org
The counties currently affected are Fresno, Kern Riverside, Santa Clara, Tulare, Ventura & Yuba.

We are able to index all searches submitted, but possible cases are “name-match-only” and must be checked for ID match.

While we have partial solutions in all affected counties, this additional barrier is causing increased delays in completing searches with possible cases.

There is no delay for clear results.

The post Some California Counties have removed the DOB appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

But it can supplement your other sources for identifying where people work. You can also gather current and historical information revealing names, addresses, occupations and employers. Search by contributor or employer. You can narrow the search to a zip code. Download the data and open as an Excel file. This is where you’ll see the complete address provided by the contributor. You can retrieve data limited to a particular PAC, too.

The post What? Nationwide Employment Locator appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

But worse, why does La Paz County link to it, and under the heading, “Legal Notices and Required Links?”

There is a more well-regarded, long-standing public record directory, if La Paz County, Arizona wants to inform its citizens of other sources of county searchable databases.

Additionally, the commercial website has a search form that is potentially misleading. It suggests that the court search is of local county records, but it is actually retrieving Federal court records. And those are for the past few years, only.

PACER is the government service that provides Federal court records online, which anyone can use to search and retrieve case dockets and filings. If you just need to do a quick search, PacerMonitor returns more details in their free search. Or, search by party name at Justia to view limited case information. Then select the online links to news and other sources naming that party.

The post Why Does This County Website Link To a Non-Government Site? appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

There are a few tricks that will make the search even more flexible, despite The site’s instructions that “entering a Name value only produces a search result listing of all documents in the index beginning with the specified name.”

Whatever string of letters you put in the owner name field will be expanded. So, the letters “ARMEN” will return “ARMENTA” among the party names. If you’re not sure of a letter or letters within the name, replace it with the percent symbol. “ARM%N” returns ARMAN, ARMEN, ARMERDING, etc.

You can also search by first name when the last name is unknown using a similar approach.”% Casey” in the owner name field returns a list of filings with the first name Casey and various last names, even though the owner field appears to require the order “Lastname Firstname.” Previously you could use this same technique to find a word somewhere in the string in the Fictitious Business Name field, which is still a function.

A dropdown menu shows the first entries found, but it’s not necessary to select any of these. The output is a list of records that match the criteria.

It can also be limited by a range of filed dates

The forms are not available online.

The post Alameda County New FBN Search appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

Here’s how to avoid that.

Search Facebook through the Chrome browser.

View the profile without alerting the Facebook algorithms.

The post Facebook Incognito appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

Search across multiple state and federal jurisdictions by participant name, attorney, case and keyword. Federal courts are extensively represented but there are only a few state-level ones indexed. So, the site is only particularly useful. However, if you’re looking for a case that you thought was filed in San Francisco state court but was filed in San Joaquin, that will pop up.

Have you ever searched for a case at the San Francisco Court Civil Case Information Search and received this frustrating message: “No cases for XXXXXXX, XXXX available for public viewing.” That doesn’t indicate that there’s no case by that name, just that the docket isn’t available through the name search. You’ll find that’s the situation with family law matters. If you have the case number, the court site will return the docket. UniCourt addresses that obstacle.

Retrieve the case information from the official court site to get more details, such as party addresses.

Find cases in which an attorney has represented litigants by conducting the same name search and then filtering the results by attorney. You can further filter by jurisdiction.

To ensure free use of the site, be sure to clear your cookies each time.

The post Free Court Index Search appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

New Procedure in Illinois
There is a new Illinois law affecting recording and searches of state tax liens. Effective Jan 1, 2018, all state lax liens are no longer recorded at the county level by the county recorder; they are now recorded by a new agency – the State Tax Lien Registry. The law, which was passed July 2018, created the State Tax Lien Registry which is managed by the state’s Dept. of Revenue. The Dept. of Revenue was the entity sending the lien documents to the counties for recording, so essentially they are now handling this function themselves electronically via the new Registry.

There are several issues that I see.
1) Limitations on Name Searches
The Registry provides online access at from the home page at www.revenue.state.il.us. Look at the right edge under Quick Links and click on Lien Registry. A search by name or lien number apparently includes pre-2018 liens, but a name search is limited to only a 7 day span.
So moving forward in 2018, a name search without knowing dates will be a very time consuming process. Per our research, so far all of the IL county recorders are continuing to provide search services for pre-2018 liens.

2) Answers to Specific Questions on an Existing Lien.
The Tax Lien Registry offers a voice line for questions on specific liens, but only the person who is a party of the lien may call and ask questions. This means CRAs, PIs, or researchers involved with a high level of due diligence will not be able to use this service.

There is a 5 minute YouTube video about these new procedures posted by the Illinois State Tax Lien Registry found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DITvksZs2JU
Basically the video is saying that the county recorders should no longer be contacted for searches. This fact could present a problem if a researcher is doing a pure name search or has a question on the results of a name search.

The post Illinois State Tax Lien Searches appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

To find users who interact with a particular page, grab the page ID and enter it in the field at the top of the NetBootCamp site.

If the Facebook URL for that page doesn’t display the number, select the link and enter it at Find My Facebook ID. That will return a number that corresponds to the page name. There may be more than one page that corresponds to a particular entity. For example, there is one page for San Mateo High School and another for San Mateo High School District, which encompasses the high school.

Enter the number in the field at the top of the NetBootCamp site and it will populate the school page ID fields.

Find current or former students at a particular school.

There are additional and different names at the alternate school page.

Find people who “Like” that school page and refine the results searching a partial name.

The post Find Students With Facebook Search Tool appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.

The post California Notary Public Database appeared first on Private Investigator Blog.