A call came in to Private Detective Agency in Sheffield from a man hoping we could help him by tracing a relative. He had grown up in a children’s home as his mother was in no fit state to look after him. He has never known any of his relatives and is now grown up and married with his own family. Always wanting to know about his family he had a keen interest in missing persons websites. Whilst on one such website he had found a post from somebody claiming to be a cousin looking for him. Unfortunately she had not put any personal information on the website only her name and the area she lived in. Having drawn a blank he asked for our help.

We told the gentleman that we could carry out research for him in the hope of finding such a cousin if she existed. He had no memory of her himself. From carrying out a full in-depth investigation and exploring all avenues and resources available such as newspaper trawls and various database checks including local searches and pretext calls and socially engineered calls we established a number of possible candidates with the same name and living in that area. Enquiry letters to all possible ladies were sent together with a screen shot of the original missing persons add asking if they knew anything about it. We have also replied to the missing persons add but have not received a reply.

A favourable response was finally received after two months of waiting and a meeting was arranged between her and our client. It turned out to be genuine and that he was indeed a member of a very large family who had given up hope of ever being reunited with him. One very happy client.