Background Research for P2P Loans (Scammer hunting)

Background Research for P2P Loans (Scammer hunting) featured image.

Background Research for P2P Loans (Scammer hunting)

Research before investing in P2P Loans

There are risks lending money to anyone in most any situation. However, when the lending is done online, extra risks are incurred and should be accounted for in your decision making process. The truth of the matter is that there are bad people out there who will not pay back loans. Some intentionally, and others because they are just a bad credit risk. I recommend researching all investments in P2P lending unless you are just investing in the collateral behind the loan.

Established borrowers are lower risk, and you can use their history in your investment decision. But never get comfortable and continue to research. New lenders, on the other hand, come in with nothing and should be vetted before they can even start building a reputation. 

New Lender Research 

It’s important to do a background check for each new investor at Btcpop. Searching for past criminal history and fraudulent behavior can help to forecast whether an individual will return your principal, or try to run with it. Researching a more established borrower yourself before making a sizable investment is also a good practice. 

Step 1: Gather Information

Btcpop provides a couple avenues to gather information about the borrower, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, username chosen, related pictures, and location, which can all be used to hunt for more information.

BTCPop also provides a country location for last login view able on the users profile page. This tool is vary helpful to limit your search to certain popular locations and languages.

Sometimes you can just ask the borrower outright in the loan comments section and if they are comfortable enough or honest enough they may answer you.

Step 2: Searching

While online identity is not perfect or standardized yet, the internet is still a vast very usable tool and you can use it to your advantage in finding out information about a borrower. Below are some website suggestions to use when investigating borrowers.

Public Access or local records: A simple Google Search will help you find your State’s public information resource. For example in here in Minnesota USA http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/default.aspx

familyTreeNow.com – Public access to current and past addresses, phone numbers, relatives and associates.

TruePeopleSearch.com – Public access to current and past addresses, phone numbers, relatives and associates.

Spokeo.com – Public/paid access to birth month, email, current and past addresses, phone numbers, relatives, social networks and court records.

StalkScan.com – Mines data from Facebook to reveal information that can be found publicly. Open to public.

AboutTheData.com – Acxiom is a data broker that uses information to target ads and marketing.

Google general Search

Google Image Search 

Google Username search

radaris.com $1 information search includes marriage records and judgments

TinyEye Image search similar to Google Image Search, TinyEye Image Search is accessed with…

socialcatfish.com/reverse-username-search/ Username Search besides google

Text search the username with a few different search engines, and make adjustments to conform to differences a user might make across different platforms. For example, a 1 or other character can be added in case the user wasn’t the first with that user name. However, exercise caution; the further from the original username you get, the greater the possibility that it will be a different person.

Step 3 : Posting

It is generally against the few provided rules to post personal information about a user including their real name, address, e-mail address, occupation, employer, and family information on Btcpop, unless it is already made public. Once the information is made available to the general public, it can be posted to the chat, user wall, loan, bond comments section, etc. If you do find something, we encourage you to share some of that valuable information on the scammers loan listings. 

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