Repo Business

I spent a great couple of hours the other day with the owner of J2 Recovery Services. He helps banks get cars and other things back from people who aren't making their payments. Its a pretty interesting business. Of the functions he performs for these lending institutions, skip tracing seems to be the most interesting. A skip trace is performed when creditors can't find the person who owes the money or the collateral. Bail bondsmen, and repomen have to get very creative to legally find out where a person has gone. Apparently the more creative the better as far as the banks and finance companies are concerned (At least that's what I've found after asking lenders what they are looking for in a recovery agent). Sometimes it takes sifting through a ton of data to find that one little tidbit of information that will give away someone's location. It reminds me of the movie "Midnight Run" with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin. In the movie Grodin is an accountant who works for the Chicago mob. DeNiro plays the lovable and honest bounty hunter sent to track down Grodin when he skips his bail. In order to find the accountant, DeNiro's character gets the number the accountant used for his one phone call after arrest. DeNiro calls that number to get some other piece of information about the accountant. The woman he talks to then calls Grodin, and DeNiro traces the call and gets Grodin's location. Ingenious! But this is what recovery agents and bounty hunters do and J2 does this better than any. He finds stuff that nobody else can find; even cars that have been on the list for months.

I have always had this mental image of what a repo man is supposed to look like. I guess it comes from that cult classic, "Repoman", with Emilio Esteves. You know, kind of seedy, not someone you would trust to watch your house for the weekend while you went on vacation, lots of tattoos. But J2 is different in this regard. The owner is a regular, clean-cut guy, no tattoos, wife and kids, average joe, who is trying to break out of the stereotype. And doing it quite successfully. He's got some great goals and there is no doubt that he'll reach them.

Once we get his website up, I'll be sure and link to it. You bankers and finance companies out there would be wise to switch. J2 is a real go getter, in the true sense of the term!