Friday, February 27, 2009

Federal Inmates Search - Don't Make Mistake I did

Don't make the mistake I did when I was doing a federal inmates search. It's a mistake that could have been life changing. I had not been in touch with my Uncle Paulie for many years. We visited him a lot as kids, but lost touch with him as I grew up. Life just got too busy as it usually does. Anyway, I found out that my uncle was in prison. So I decided to write him. I turned to the internet to find him. When I entered his name in the federal bureau of prisons website, I found him, or at least I thought I did. The website returned three names along with register number, age, race, sex, release date and facility. Even though the names were the same, I picked the one I thought was my uncle based on the information provided.

I was very excited to write him and I told my brother I had found him. When I told him what facility he was located in, my brother said he did not think he was in that state. Now I had enough doubt, that I went back to the website and looked at the other two names. One was much younger than my uncle so it was easy to rule him out. But the other name was right around the same age. I thought about trying to dig around and find my uncle's date of birth, but decided it would take too much time. I did not know for sure where he was born, nor did I have any relatives that knew for sure. That's when I turned to a paid service for help. I did a federal inmates search with my uncle's name and came up with the same three people, but this time they included pictures. The inmate I thought was my uncle was not and neither were the other two inmates. Now I was really confused. I went back to my brother and after he called me a moron, he told me Paulie was not my uncle's real name. So, I went back to the website, and entered my uncle's proper name. This time, even though more than one inmate came back, I was able to identify my uncle with the picture provided.

It was worth paying a small fee for this federal inmates search, to save myself a ton of embarrassment. At least I didn't write or visit the inmate before I had realized my mistake. Get the proper name for the inmate and other identifying information like date of birth.