THE PITFALLS OF ONLINE/OFFLINE DATING

WHO'S YOUR E-DADDY? 

(or E-Mamma??)

IS HE A REAL CATCH? OR, A LYING CATFISH???

• Is he  Prince Charming or Ted Bundy? 
• Is he/she  really who he says he is?
• Is that Porsche in his/her  profile picture HIS/HER's or is he/she posing in a dealership lot? 
• Just HOW OLD is that profile picture?
•  Is he/she really MARRIED?
•  Does he/she have hidden financial or drug problems?  Or WORSE, a criminal Past?         

  GO BEYOND GOOGLE AND FIND OUT! 

 The Internet is only as good as the information that gets put on it

Liar’s Cove, FL. -- Jane had smarts, a good career and financial stability. She had finally risen from the ashes of divorce and never wanted to be taken in love, again.

     She joined an online-dating site and found a man who shared the same interests in art, politics and saving sea turtles. Sparks flew the first date which lead to more dates – theater, museums, sailing, even bowling.

    He was a divorced doctor with a boyish grin and a love of foreign cars.  She was falling. But, something didn’t feel right about him. She searched Google and paid $29.99  for a national criminal database check to see if her Prince Charming was really Ted Bundy or worse. 

     But nothing showed up on the Internet.

     Lucky for Jane, her nagging gut instincts were better than her seemingly exhaustive Internet searches. She hired Austen & Watson Investigations, a private investigation firm in Jupiter, Florida, to search beyond the Internet. 

     In less than a day, Jane had the documented facts she needed: He was five years older than he said he was on his profile, had recently lost his license to practice medicine and did not own the red Ferrari in his online profile picture. Worse, he was still married to the same woman he had married 35 years ago and they both still lived in the house they bought 25 years ago. A check of city permits indicated he built a wheelchair ramp on to their house. Local newspaper records indicated his wife had been badly hurt in a car accident five years before.

     Austen & Watson checked electronic, microfiche and even paper files from county courthouses and government licensing agencies to document this.  

     Jane got her answer for the price of a fancy dinner for two. She didn't even want to know why he lost his medical lciense.  She dumped him and moved on.

The truth is, some of the most telling information about a person is contained in the Criminal and Civil court files in thousands of county courthouses across the country.  These files are not scanned and hooked into the Internet all ready and waiting for your Google search.

     These files hold information about murder, rape, fraud schemes, domestic violence, malpractice, drug and alcohol abuse and even financial infomation. It takes money and staff time to make this information electronically avaiable and most jurisdictions want to get paid for this work. Thousands of courthouses are not connected to the Internet. And most that are, have websites that first require that you know where to find them and then require the use of a credit card for payment. In that case, you need a person, not a search engine. 

    You need to Go Beyond Google and get a person to hunt down these sites and verify the information you want.

    In addition to courthouses, there are federal, state and county agencies from licensing bureaus to tax collectors or property appraisers who maintain their own websites with information you want. Austen & Watson searches every jurisdiction in which a person has lived.

   You need a person who knows where to find these sites and not a search engine to find this information. In some cases, you might even need to file a Freedom of Informatin Act request or, at the very least, come credit card in hand to get access to digital files and some key files might still be on microfiche or even paper.

     You NEED to go BEYOND GOOGLE.