FAST LINKS: Free Public Record Searches Validate SSNs Validate Phone Numbers Skip Smasher Crime Smasher Skiptrace Seminar Need a P.I.? Home
Skip Smasher Site Areas: BLACK BOOK ONLINE: Free Data Searches! Click Button to Search!
______________ Black Book Online is now on Facebook! ______________ ______________ ____________ NEW: PHONE VALIDATOR -- FREE!!! HollywoodPI.com domain for sale - $1,000,000 asking price! |
INVESTIGATION OF PREPAID CELL PHONES By Robert Scott, P.I. Prepaid cell phones present a vexing challenge to investigators, cops and skiptracers. For around thirty bucks, an anonymous dial tone can be obtained. No name is required. No I.D. check. No billing information. No questions asked. Just walk into Walmart or any other outlet that sells prepaid cell phones and you’ll walk out with a working phone line that’s virtually impossible to trace. If you’re a bad guy in the crime business, this is a good thing. If your job is tracking down bad guys, it’s a bad thing. Did you know that phone company identifier searches at phonevalidator.com and fonefinder.net and similar searches elsewhere don’t identify most prepaid cell phones? These searches are based on telephone company records called NPA/NXX data. NPA/NXX data identifies the owner of blocks of phone numbers. But in the case of most prepaid phone services, their phone numbers are purchased or leased from traditional cell phone companies that are listed in the NPA/NXX records. For example, Tracfone leases service from several different cell carriers. So, you could run a phone number and it could come back as a Verizon phone through NPA/NXX data when in fact it’s a prepaid Tracfone. Likewise, prepaid service Boost Mobile could come back as Sprint or Nextel. The exception to this is MetroPCS and Cricket prepaid phones, which usually come up under their own names. I recently put out posts on investigative listserves asking for phone numbers that were absolutely, positively known to be for prepaid cell phones. The phone numbers were then ran through NPA/NXX data to see how they would come up. Here are the results: Tracfone comes up as Verizon or T-Mobile or Cingular Boost Mobile comes up as Sprint or Nextel Go Phone comes up as AT&T T-Mobile To Go comes up as T-Mobile MetroPCS comes up as MetroPCS or Royal Street Communications Cricket comes up as Cricket or Leap Wireless So, an investigator who gets a hit through NPA/NXX data showing a cell phone is with a major cell service like Verizon should heed warning. He may subpoena the records, only to find it’s been leased to Tracfone. A new subpoena is directed at Tracfone, only to learn that no subscriber information is on file. In the two weeks it took to get subpoena results returned from the phone companies, the bad guy has since tossed the phone out the car window and already has a new one. The investigator might be feeling like he’s been tossed out the window, too. Robert Scott is a Los Angeles-based private investigator and author of "The Investigator's Little Black Book." Reprint permission. MORE ARTICLES: The Most Restricted Phone Number? "General Delivery" Mail Decoded NYPD Secret Cell Phone Database Identification of Vonage Phone Numbers Digital Copiers Security Risk?
RESOURCES: |
Books:
Best-Seller!!!!
Sold Out! E-book coming December 2010! New e-Book!
Learn How to Skiptrace! Click Book Cover for Details!
|
|---|
Receive our free newsletter on information sources and products:
No membership required! Criminal background checks from Crime Smasher:
Skiptracing data for professional investigators from Skip Smasher:
This website copyright Crime Time Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. You may contact us here. You may read our privacy policy here.
