How to Disappear: The world's number one guide to vanishing without a

Extract

Chapter 1

How to Disappear

Most Saturday afternoons I head to the local bookstore. I love to watch people reading books about how to disappear. They're usually typical middle-aged guys, dreaming about a new life. I watch as they begin to imagine it all; their eyes light up while they read all those great stories about beachfront living, escaping the daily grind and leaving all their troubles behind.

Not one of those books tells those guys about the flipside of disappearing. They don't tell you about the skip tracer who sits in his or her office and is paid to find people like you. If your name comes across their desk, you become their quarry. They will spend their day finding the clues you left behind, be it through a utility company, a pay TV company or all those reverse calls you made from Cabo San Lucas to your sister Edith. I have found many people across the world, from Boston to Bali. Usually I find them because of the little mistakes they made before they departed or after they reached their final destination and lay basking in the sun.

Don't be like the woman from Beverly Hills who called her doctor asking for her medical records to be shipped to Anguilla. And don't be like the man from New Jersey who stole money from his company, hid in the Dominican Republic, and then had Barnes & Noble change his shipping address to his beachfront condominium.

When you pick up and leave, for whatever reason, there are people out there like Eileen and me who love the challenge of finding you. We are skip tracers – people who are paid to track down other people, no matter who they are or where they live. For us, finding someone like you is a game we are paid to play. We can make as many mistakes as we want; the one you make is the one that will most likely lead us to you.

Most people read a book, think they know how to disappear, and then just pick up and go. They simply disconnect their home services, leave no forwarding address and shoot through. Big mistake: take your time. You should develop your exit strategy at least six months before you hit the road. In the meantime, have all of your service bills – pay TV, electricity, phone – forwarded to any post office in the country. Call the service companies every month, find out what you owe, and pay your bills. (Better still, get all your bills electronically.) Have a little fun: one month send your bills to Wangaratta, the next to Albany. Let Medicare know they have the wrong number on file and ask them to change it. Next month give them your brother Henry's phone number in Toronto in case they need to reach you. The key here is to load your account with so much information that you are creating misinformation.

Go online and get yourself a jConnect account. When someone calls your jConnect number, which will have your personalised message bank attached to it, their voicemail will be forwarded to your email address and you will be able to listen to it from any computer in the world. This way you'll be able to obtain the information you need without giving away your location or identity. A skip tracer trying to identify your number will only be able to get an email address from jConnect.

Use internet cafes for all searches you do relating to your disappearance. Set up a web-based email address to use instead of your home or work one. Go buy yourself a prepaid mobile phone with international dialling capacity, and never give anybody the number. When you buy your new mobile phone, pay cash, and if you have to give a name, use a different one to your own.

Use your new mobile phone to make any calls when researching the place to which you are hoping to disappear. This way you won't have to use your home or work phone. Dump the phone every month – yes, the actual phone – and get yourself a new one with a different number. Remember, if you make one call from your home, work or your cousin's house, that is all a skip tracer needs to locate you. Get yourself a mail drop and leave any research material you accumulate in the box – never bring it home or to work. If you toss it in the bin, then someone who is searching your rubbish will find it. When you are ready to disappear, you can empty your mail drop and destroy any information that could leave a trail straight to you.

Don't use your frequent flier account. Cancel your Blockbuster or Video Ezy membership. Do not transfer any of your magazine subscriptions to your new location. Don't get a library card in your new location, and don't get any kind of utility service or pay TV subscription under your name.

Now comes the tricky part – getting your money out of the country. Go online and get a new mail drop in a different state. Set up a company online in that state and have all mail go to your new mail drop. Make that address your registered agent. Then, take a trip to that state and open a bank account for your company there. Give the bank your mail drop address and a phone number that is not your mobile phone or your jConnect number.

Next, set up a corporation in a nearby country and link this international corporation to your domestic company. Once you've organised this, open a bank account in this other country. With any luck you'll be able to do this online, but if not, a quick visit to that country might be in order. Any time you need to give an address, use your second mail drop address.

When all this is done, have all of your mail from your mail drops shipped to you, and when all papers are in hand, forward them to New York, then from New York to Chicago, then on to Atlanta, or any cities you like, creating a big loop until they make their way back to you.

Now you should be safe to transfer money from your domestic bank account to your international account via your companies. Do all your banking online. Most banks will be delighted they don't have to mail you your bank statements. Remember to always access your accounts from an internet cafe. Make sure you check the legal requirements of your country and the foreign country you're transferring to so that you aren't breaking any laws.

The final step is to transfer money from your international account to your chosen secret location, making sure that you've filed the proper tax papers at each step of the process. Tax evasion is a nice way to get you and your companies noticed quickly. Never use a debit or credit card attached to your domestic or international bank accounts – these two accounts should act as buffers for your secret location.

Once you've successfully disappeared, do everything through the name of your international corporation. Make sure this corporation's name has no similarities to your name or anything from your past. Although it's tempting to keep in contact with family and friends, telephoning can be fraught with risk. With technology today, you just do not know when you call someone from, say, Costa Rica, whether or not your number will show up on caller ID. If it does and that person happens to call you back, a skip tracer will be able to track your location. All your effort and hard work will be thrown out the window. So if you need to get in touch, get yourself a prepaid mobile phone from a different city or place and call using only this phone. Dump it every so often. Enjoy your new home and make sure you keep a low profile.

Sound a little more difficult than just dropping everything and walking out the door? Sure – but if you want to maintain your privacy and stay disappeared, it's worth the effort. Over the next 23 chapters we'll provide you with the detailed information that you'll need to make your disappearance a success.