It was somewhat hyperbolic, but somewhat true that "they'll never find him".  This guy has dropped out of the business, lives as a transient from home to home with his new cash-only dog walking service in high-end neighborhoods.  He's a (recovering?) druggie and has few ties to the world.  One of the four business parthtners moved to Tennessee to become a singer, and the other two consist of his ex-girlfirend who's in college now and her father, so I'm not sure that a client with a $40 product that listed no subordination agreements, and did not cover court records or any of a dozen of other research databases, would have an easy time getting any accountability for bad search results.

This is the type of flake that was common out here in California.  Not sure if the rest of the  nation encountered this, but I'd infer that you've all seen them based on past posts. 

I get these sorts of clients coming to me weekly with a piece of garbage in-hand and wondering why things were missed.  Usually they hold a paper with some fancy font, big letters and nobody's name attached to it.  They paid the $40 and they got what they paid for:  not much.

They get angry when I tell them our price and turn-around time.  They bluster and threaten to go to a title company.  A week later, they return to me and get even angrier when the turn-around time is longer  because I've accepted new projects in the interim (I am clearly supposed to put or business on hold until we hear back from them).

It's not my job to track these former competitors down and I'm not sure that they were ever insured or even have any assets to lay claims against, and this seems to be a common theme.  Good times here attract "fly-by-night" researchers who undercut the experts.  They take the money and run, never to be seen again. ;;;