Check It Out! : A Top Investigator Shows You How to Find Out Practicallly Anything About Anybody in Your Life [Paperback]

Edmund J. Pankau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0809229005 | ISBN-13: 978-0809229000 | Edition: 2nd

Fully updated and expanded to include new sources now available to the public, Check It Out! shows readers how to run a thorough, confidential, and completely legal background search on someone, locate a person they haven't seen in years, and much more. The author, a top investigator, lets the reader in on the best investigative "tricks of the trade" and includes comprehensive information on using the Internet as an investigative tool.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Edmund J. Pankau and his firm, Intertect, Inc., have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the London Times, USA Today, and Time magazine and has appeared on "The McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," "Donahue," and "20/20."

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 2nd edition (December 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809229005
• ISBN-13: 978-0809229000
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,146,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Would have made an okay magazine article, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Check It Out! : A Top Investigator Shows You How to Find Out Practicallly Anything About Anybody in Your Life (Paperback)

This book is a slim 160 pages if you add the introductory material, not 178 pages as advertised. The missing 18 pages may have been the index, since there isn't one, and there is no way to find anything without flipping through the book. The content comes off as a rough draft, and really needed someone to structure and edit it. Overall it feels like a vanity press book. Despite the slim size of the book, there is much that is left out. For example, we are told how to determine what state a social security number was issued in, but for the more useful information of how to decode the year it was issued, we are told to "buy another book [Pankau] wrote called the Investigator's Guide." If this is actually the book titled "The Investigative Guidebook" available on Amazon, well it looks like we need to shell out another $35 for another "178-page" book. Another area that bothers me is that many of the techniques he describes seem to be of borderline legality. I'd like a more informed opinion about this than Pankau's; on the Art Bell show, he really seemed to be playing fast and loose with what was legal and not.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Check It Out, August 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Check It Out! : A Top Investigator Shows You How to Find Out Practicallly Anything About Anybody in Your Life (Paperback)

After hearing the Author on a radio program I decided to get this book. I was a little disappointed. The book has some great ideas on how to obtain information on people, but the author does not tell you how to go about getting this information. Alot of this book is about the author's personal experiences, but again he does not tell you how he got the information from his sources to solve the case. I guess if he did he would be out of a job!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful, Interesting and Surpising, October 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Check It Out! : A Top Investigator Shows You How to Find Out Practicallly Anything About Anybody in Your Life (Paperback)

I found this book to be a wealth of information on what information tracks people, is public, or provided to anyone for a minimal fee. I was especially surpised to find information about MYSELF...which is why I bought 'Hide your assets and disappear'. I agree with another review that states that the book is interesting and helps explain how people are traced..but fails to instruct exactly HOW it is you should go about it. I would have liked to have seen a more precise, instructional book...but I still recommend this as a great read. Using the book's advice and the internet I've come across lots of information that has proved useful. It's a small investment with a big pay-off in knowledge. Perhaps he'll write a follow-up where he goes into more detail. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK and enjoyed it.