anuseems Posted December 25, 2013 Share Posted December 25, 2013 (edited) At 4'11" and just over 100 pounds, Michelle Gomez doesnt look like the sort of person youd hire to retrieve earthmoving equipment stolen by a Peruvian crime family. But in the summer of 2013, thats exactly what she was doing.Gomez, the proprietor of a one-woman operation in Lockhart, Texas, called Unlimited Recoveries, is one of the best skip tracers in the world. A combination bill collector, bounty hunter, and private investigator, a skip tracer finds people and things that have disappeared on purpose. Gomez specializes in hard-to-locate recoveriesshe prefers cases others cant solve. To track down the fleet of Caterpillar wheel loaders taken by the Peruvians, Gomez reached out to the estranged wife of the familys patriarch, telling the woman that she was pregnant with her husbands child. The ruse worked: Eventually the wife told Gomez that the heavy equipment was on its way to a construction site in South America.For Gomez, 43, skip tracing is as much about stalking and capturing elusive prey as it is about getting paid. Today much of that hunting is done digitally, and Gomez has made an art of combing through cyberspace and finding the status updates, financial records, and location blips that virtually everyone leaves behind in the modern age. Gomezs digital background stretches back to childhood, when her parents, both IBM engineers, insisted that the 10-year-old Michelle build a computer from scratch. I even had to do my own soldering, she remembers. The experience laid a foundation for the skills that have made her so good at finding people. Profiling a subject is a lot like constructing a motherboard, Gomez says. You have to see connections that are invisible to other people by filling the spaces between with information.On May 22, 2013, she was tracking down the missing wheel loaders when she got a call from an executive at Alternative Collection Solutions, one of the countrys premier collection and debt recovery agencies. ACS needed help recovering a 53-foot Hatteras yacht called Morning Star, which had been taken nearly a year earlier by a man named Ryan Eugene Mullen.Mullen, the ACS executive said, would not be an easy man to find. The executive told Gomez that Mullen was wanted by the FBI for stealing more than $2 million from federal government agencies. So far the authorities had failed to locate him, as had the three private investigators whod already taken a crack at finding Mullen and the boat. If she could get Morning Star back, the man told Gomez, theyd pay her $10,000, plus she could keep any criminal reward money being offered for the fugitive.As she heard the details, Gomez felt what she calls that booting-up buzz. Staying on the run from the FBI is no easy feat. Neither is evading three professional investigators dispatched by some of the countrys biggest debt recovery agencies. Mullen had clearly figured out somethingsome technique for covering his tracks or otherwise keeping ahead of his pursuersthat put him well above the average con. Gomez wanted the case.She began with a Google search and became even more fascinated by Mullen when she read a bulletin posted on a sketchy-looking civic discussion website called City-Data.com: Ryan Eugene Mullen was said to have been born in New York City on November 11, 1977, stood 6'3", weighed 200 pounds, and had light brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a deep voice. He wore a size 15 shoe and was an avid runner and tanner who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and tested at a near-genius IQ level as a teenager, Gomez read. He also possessed violent tendencies, having been incarcerated at a young age for beating his girlfriend and menacing a friend with a knife. And apparently he had stolen the $2 million from the government in multiple cybercrimes that put him on the FBIs Most Wanted list in 1999. If accurate, Mullen had been a fugitive for 14 years.How had such a man stayed in the shadows for so long? She had never seen a case quite like it. My circuits were firing, Gomez recalls.Name: Michelle GomezLocation: Lockhart, TexasOccupation: Skip tracerSpecialty: Hard-to-locate recoveriesMore @ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/skip-tracing-ryan-mullen/ Edited December 25, 2013 by anuseems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kn_andre Posted December 25, 2013 Share Posted December 25, 2013 More Grease to her Elbows .. Its not Easy to be working in a Male Dominated Profession and yet be Successful at it .. Kudos for sharing this Story of Courage and Determination .. Cheers.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaloo1995 Posted December 25, 2013 Share Posted December 25, 2013 she has to be real smart.............. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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