UCC records are essentially financing statements. Their purpose is to document to the public that a given asset has been put up as collateral. That way, the owner can't use the same asset repeatedly as collateral. 

Banks, finance companies, and retailers, among others, file UCC statements with the county or Secretary of State whenever they loan money to someone who pledges an asset, like a boat or truck, as collateral, as well as when they finance equipment, say a washer/dryer or computer, thereby allowing the buyer to pay for it in installments. 

You will find UCCs filed at both the county and state levels. At the county level, they're in the county clerk & recorder's office; at the state level, in the Secretary of State's office. (Simply ask for any UCC records filed on your subject, by his or her name.) 

The UCC itself may contain only limited background-type information -- but behind every UCC document (financing statement) is a credit application and a loan. 

The credit application usually will contain useful information. 

Thus when you find a UCC on someone, your next step is to obtain a copy of the credit application, or at least to obtain information from the application. This can usually be accomplished by calling the creditor's "Skip Trace Department" or credit department. 

Among other things, the credit application will almost always reveal the subject's bank. 

The UCC document can also help you trace the subject's whereabouts, since it will provide an address, phone number, and other identifying information, in addition to the information obtainable through the underlying credit application. (Even if the information on a UCC turns out to be obsolete by the time you find it, it can nevertheless open up new routes of investigation.) 

No background check is complete without a check of county or state UCCs. Today, this can often be accomplished online. 

TAX LIENS 

Tax liens can be found on consumer credit and business credit reports, and in county records. All levels of government -- federal, state, and local -- can issue tax liens, which are essentially claims for unpaid taxes. If you find a tax lien, the document will include court, lien number, date of lien, debtor name, plaintiff name, and amount of lien. 

Tax liens can be searched online, using the proprietary database services, LEXIS and Dialog. These services are available free at some large urban public libraries. 

In the skip tracing business, UCCs are considered one of the best tools for locating people. Not only can they be used to find someone directly but -- even when this fails -- they're helpful as a pointer to someone who knows something about the subject. 

In his book, Check It Out! (Contemporary Books), well-known Houston private investigator Ed Pankau shows how this can work. 

A client of Pankau's, a large insurance company, needed to locate a witness named Jim Snow in a fraud case. The trial was only a month away. No one had been able to find Snow in almost a year. As a last resort, they hired Pankau to do a skip trace. 

After some initial frustration, Pankau at last hit upon a UCC in county records filed by Beneficial Finance Company, to document a loan it had made to the witness. 

From the local Beneficial Finance Company office manager, Pankau learned that Snow had paid off his loan and moved to Richmond VA, where he'd taken out a second loan. (The office manager derived this information from Snow's credit applications.) 

Pankau then called the Richmond office of Beneficial and obtained Snow's new address. In this way, thanks to UCC records, Pankau was able to do in a couple days what other investigators hadn't been able to accomplish in almost a year.