How To Identify The Owner Of a Post Office Box

Law Articles | September 26, 2008

Sometimes you may need to know the physical location or real identity of the person or business behind a post office box.

Sometimes as a PI you'll be asked to locate and or identify the physical address for the owner of a PO BOX or Postal Mail Box (PMB). This is often called a post office Box Break or a reverse PO box.

This can often be accomplished with a database search if you have access to a database that utilizes credit headers. When people have a PO Box they will often use that address for their bills or car payments, utility bills etc and the PO Box will appear on their credit headers as an alternate address.

If it's not there you may be able to obtain the information by contacting the United States Postal Service using a form available on the USPS web site. This form requires you to disclose the reason you need the information. The USPS will only reveal the information if you are attempting to serve legal service in proper person, like a subpoena . They even require a case number in the court the case will be tried.

Sometimes these methods will still fail. It could be that the owner of the box has relocated since they opened the box and no longer live at the address they provided the USPS. It is even possible that the owner of the Post Office Box used false identification when they opened the account for the box.

You can try to pretext the PMB owner by mailing them professional looking material, free offers, maybe even a love letter, anything to trick the owner into revealing their identity. These mailings should always include a trap line phone number with call capture. If the mail box owner calls you'll get their information and can trace them that way.

This may sound like a lot of work for a simple PO BOX Break. Setting up trap lines , obtaining credit headers, printing up pretext post cards. Many investigators like to out source this type of work and purchase the information from an investigator that's already set up to routinely obtain this kind of information.

There is an old saying that there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. This is especially true when it come to private investigators that specialize in obtaining information and selling it to other investigators that are involved in a much larger more complicated investigation.

This would not only apply to a Post Office box break but could be a simple locate or phone break.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For assistance in performing a PO Box break contact Ed Opperman Pres of Opperman Investigations Inc through his web site http://www.emailrevealer.com/