Off The Hook
We are a group of private investigators, bounty hunters / fugitive recovery agents, and bail bondsmen that have been in this line of work for over twenty five years and have many stories to tell. We have traveled all over the country catching fugitives and bringing them back to have their day in court. With our years of experience we are trying to educate the public about bail and why it is a needed part of our judicial system.
Off The Hook
40 Years of Human Hunting with Alex Price
Meet the man who's spent 40 years tracking people who don't want to be found. Alex Price, known in the industry as the "Skip Guru," takes us deep into the shadowy world of skip tracing, fugitive recovery, and asset location with stories that feel ripped from a Hollywood thriller.
Unlike most professionals who perform skip tracing as just one function of their job, Alex has made it his life's work. From locating vehicles for repossession to bringing fugitives back to jail, he's mastered the art of finding people across industries. His journey began unexpectedly while working as a bouncer when a bail bondsman showed him a photo of a fugitive who happened to be his ex-girlfriend. The substantial reward for her location sparked his interest in a field where his natural talents could shine.
The Skip Guru doesn't hold back as he shares heart-pounding stories from his four decades in the field. One tale involves tracking a scammer from Florida to Greece who taunted him with photos, while another recounts having a MAC-10 pistol pressed against his forehead during an attempted car repossession. These near-misses reveal why he's grateful to now work "in the shadows" as a data specialist rather than in the increasingly dangerous field operations where multiple recovery agents have lost their lives.
What makes Alex unique isn't just his experience but his philosophy. He emphasizes the crucial importance of empathy and non-judgment, noting that "there's not one of us that isn't one or two bad decisions away from being in the same boat as some of the people we hunt." This perspective has allowed him to approach his work with humanity rather than cynicism.
Now working with Locate Smarter after two failed retirement attempts, Alex focuses on teaching and developing new skip tracing products. Want to learn from the Skip Guru himself? Reach out to him for information about his free webinars where he shares four decades of hard-earned knowledge that might otherwise "die with him."
When people are released from jail, they have the responsibility to appear in court, but some of these people choose to go on the run.
Speaker 2:They go back home to mommy.
Speaker 1:And that is when these guys come into the picture. So sit back and listen to the Off the Hook podcast with Chad and Rob Very fine people on both sides. These are real stories, but the names have been changed.
Speaker 2:Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Rob.
Speaker 3:I'm Chad and we're having a special guest today and a little bit of trouble with audio, but we got it worked out I think so.
Speaker 2:I hope so, anyway, oh man, uh. So the the reason why you see chad sitting so close to me? Because we're trying to, we're trying to share this, the, the video here, to where mr mr price is joining us today. Yep, and, hang on, let me, let me do something for mr price. Hang on, let me do something for Mr Price. Hang on, let's see where it's. At there we go, mr Price. Yes, all right, so let me tell you a little bit about Mr Price. Mr Price has been in the business for a while, you hear me? I think almost longer than I've been alive. I was like a little boy when he started, and he's down in Mobile, alabama, yay, yay. And he's going to join us today and he's going to tell us a little bit about his background, what he's done, what he does, and maybe a wild story or something.
Speaker 3:Yep, that'd be cool. I'm sure he's got them, so I present to you.
Speaker 2:I'm going to put it on the screen for you to see it, mr.
Speaker 3:Alex Price, aka Skip Guru.
Speaker 2:What's going on, Alex? How you guys doing today, you know same old, same old Doing good. We're doing good, All right. So how's Mobile Alabama treating you?
Speaker 4:Mobile is great. This is that sweet spot of the year where you wake up and it's 51 and it gets into the mid to high 70s during the day. So it's that reason why you live on the Gulf Coast.
Speaker 3:So you get that short-lived spring before summer.
Speaker 2:We're getting probably the same thing, but maybe a couple degrees lower, but it's about the same right.
Speaker 4:The same here, right yeah, you give it another month and a half and it's going to be hotter than satan's doorknob.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'll be down there in gulf shores next month for a few days and I'm sure it's going to get start getting toasty yeah, you're about an hour away from me there in Gulf Shores.
Speaker 4:We go over there all the time to go to Lula's and a few other spots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're going to a music festival out there. Okay, it's going to be fun A little time off. So, mr Price, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just going to say so. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, what your history is?
Speaker 4:Here one thing I would like to say you didn't have to put so much emphasis on long time Sorry.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a compliment, it's a compliment.
Speaker 4:I do take it as such. This is my 40th year as a professional skip tracer, and most people that do skip tracing they just do it as a function within their day. It's not what they do for 8, 10, whatever hours. I'm different. I'm one of the few out there that this is it. This is all I've ever done. I haven't done accounting or or payroll or any of that stuff. Even when I owned my skip company, I had folks that did all that.
Speaker 4:Right, you know, I've done nothing but hunt humans for a variety of different sources or reasons for 40 years, everything from the fintech world to locate collateral to the bail world, everything in between. And that's one thing. When I teach, I very rarely ask the room what they do, because skip tracing doesn't change as you go industry to industry. The only thing that changes is what that industry considers a success, because skip tracing doesn't change as you go industry to industry. The only thing that changes is what that industry considers a success. The auto recovery world the success to them is bringing metal back to the yard. Bondman is bringing flesh back to the jail, etc.
Speaker 4:In the collections world. It's collected debt. So everybody has to start. Even if you think of if you're on a high school reunion committee, everything has to start with finding the human that has some sort of contractual obligation. And that's where I come in.
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, that's it. Well, I've noticed, I've noticed, like in in our world, I've noticed other companies like, uh, towing companies. Towing companies use like you guys and to to locate vehicles and um, but yeah, I've noticed that. So, yeah, I'm glad you explained that. So, all right. So you've been teaching for how long?
Speaker 4:Gosh, in one way or the other I've been teaching for probably the past 20 years, but over a little more than a decade it really really took off and I spent well over a decade traveling 250 days a year coast to coast, to every entity. You could think of major lenders out there, trade shows, et cetera. You know I probably traveled as much as a country music band or what have you. Over the years, as of late I've scaled the travel back quite a bit because of the Zoom world. I had a Zoom class last month and had, you know, close to a webinar, close to 2,800 attendees. So with technology I don't have to do all the time in and out of 63. If I'm gone for four days, it takes me three days just to knock that road rash off to where I feel normal again.
Speaker 2:We understand that. Yeah, we understand that it's tough.
Speaker 4:I'd much rather be here in my office shorts, flip-flops, a dress shirt, with Penelope Garcia and my basset hound laying beside me, than in airplanes and hotels.
Speaker 2:I agree 100%. So all right, alex, were you ever into the bounty hunting and fugitive recovery portion?
Speaker 4:of it, did a lot of it in in my in my youth. Just like you know, I I repoed cars back in the day. Now I'm more of a or. I transitioned from the field because I like sleep. I was never a big fan of the field. I kind of transitioned to the guy in the shadows that just told the people in the field where to go. But my first ever experience in the bond world was I was a bouncer at a country and western bar down in South Florida and it was a rough little.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it made Roadhouse look like Bambi you didn't have your own knife and gun, we'd give you one just to make it fair, I was working the front door one night, you know, checking IDs and getting the cover charge.
Speaker 4:And this guy came in and he said he was a bail bondsman and I didn't even know what that meant. And he showed me a picture of a young lady he was looking for and wanted to know if he could come in the bar and just show the picture around. And I said, hey, you might not want to do that because you know this is a local club, and you show that picture to the wrong person and that's a cousin or a girlfriend or whatever. You might get beat up. Well, what I didn't tell him was the second he showed me the picture. It was an ex-girlfriend of mine, yeah, and not only did I know where she was, she was in the club that night. So he said, hey, there's a. You know any info leading to me picking her up? There's, I think it was a 1500, uh, bounty error, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 4:Back then and I said I'll pass the picture around, he gave me a business card and I waited like two days and called him and told him where she was and he gave me $1,500. Now, back then I was working $100 a night under the table. So $1,500. 80's a ton of money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's something to this.
Speaker 4:And I'm like this is the coolest thing in the world. At the same time I'd gotten out of the army and my dad told me I had to get civilized because what I did in the army there was really wasn't any good transition to a civilian job. So he got me a job at the bank and I had a knack for out in the field finding people that the people in the office couldn't. So they kind of came in at the same time and I called that bondsman and I went down to his office and started looking at all the files he was looking for and growing up in Palm Beach County being a beach bum myself, you probably knew half of them.
Speaker 4:I did. They were like, oh well, you know this guy right here every Friday night he's, he's gonna be down at bob's billiards, you know, and this and that. And it was like two months in I made 10 grand from this cat and I'm like, okay, I think I have found my calling right and that kind of you know led the path to me leaving the corporate world. Start my own skip company. All right, so it's just been an interesting life, yeah sounds like it.
Speaker 2:Getting into the nitty gritty now. What is the one story that comes to your head that you'll never forget of a capture?
Speaker 4:Yeah, Okay, before I answer that, let me go back to you. Introduced me as Skip Gurus. Everybody doesn't think I'm like an evil Marvel villain. The best nicknames are ones that people give to you, that you don't make it up yourself. Right, teaching in uh fort worth, texas, at a um, a fintech organization, and the guy that introduced me was uh british, but he was uh of indian descent, but he was from england, and when he introduced me he said I have the Skip Guru, because guru just means teacher in his world and by the end of that conference everybody was just calling me Skip.
Speaker 4:And fast forward years later I was building my own website and trying to think of a name for it and my wife said why don't you use what that guy called you at that convention? And I said, skip, go. And she said, yeah, everybody remember that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And you know that was 15, 18 years ago, so that's how I got that name. But I actually think two and neither one of them. When I've told these on podcasts before everybody's, like it's a swerve because everybody wants the happy ending and like I went down this huge maze and, you know, caught the guy. Both of the stories that will never leave my head till the day I die and they're not long did not end with me getting the capture on either one of them oh really, and one of them changed the name.
Speaker 4:The guy's name was, let's say, richard Richard. He had two first names.
Speaker 3:Ricky Bobby.
Speaker 4:Yeah, which is very common in the gypsy culture and some other cultures, for the, the names to kind of go together. So in this case this guy had gotten a Mitsubishi 3000.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I remember those.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the sports car back in the day it was probably one of the larger balance cars out there. It was like it was like a000, $50,000 car and he was in Clearwater, florida, and this guy was running a scam and he was a genius. He was running a modeling school for young girls scam and he had pictures of him this is before computers Pictures of him with stars, models, so forth. He had used just a regular printer and cutting and so forth. He made this stuff look real and he was bilking moms out of money that their daughter was going to be the next you know big thing, etc. And he had convinced the mayor to invest 50 grand into some leather because he was going to start a leather shop, went and had a custom crate for $800 built and put all of it in that crate and shipped it from Mexico to Greece. Now Greece does not have the same laws that we do, so the title meant nothing.
Speaker 4:The way they worked it back then is you know, once I found him you talked to the local policeman and you paid him a fee to get the car and if the other party could give him a fee bigger than you gave him, they kept the car. So it was about as close to a bribe as you can get In the interim. This is months of me tracking this cat from Clearwater Beach, florida, to California, to the crate being built, to everything, going to Greece. And in the meantime this guy would send me pictures of him in Greece laying on the hood, giving me the year number one sign with a note. You know, ha, ha. You know, then I'd get a christmas card for him. This because this went.
Speaker 4:This went on for you know, months tracking this guy down and just as I I found him, I got had some people that were going to come in from germany. They were going to get the car, they were going to get the car onto a barge and get it seven miles out before anybody was aware and we had the thing all set up and the guy wrecked it and told them. So, you know, just days before we were going to do that. And then the other one, the guy's name we'll just say his name was Ricky Bobby, he had the most common name you could think of, and this was down in Miami, florida. And I'm looking all over for this guy. And I found out because back then this is where you used human intel. There weren't any computers, no fax machines. I think this was right about the time. I had a pager and that was it. You talk to people in the local barbershops this and that, and I found out he had a big monkey on his back for horse racing, but not Kentucky Derby style.
Speaker 4:Uh, the harness tracks where you sit in the buggy yep a little whip and there's flagler racetrack was the only one that would have that down there. I would go by flagler racetrack two or three times a day looking for him and I finally got him one day. And Ricky Bobby should not have been his name, because there was about five or six guys leaning up against the car. All the dreadlocks down to their waist Looked like a Cheech and Chong movie. And this was another repossession deal. And I walked up to the car and had the key and they were like what are you doing? And I said I'm here to get the car. And they said no, that's pinky's car. And I said no, it's the bank's car. And I'm here to get it. And they're going back and forth with me about that time. Big old land yacht, you know, big empower back when they were solid steel 20 people in the trunk, yeah pull up and this little bitty guy gets out and he's like what are you doing, mom?
Speaker 4:and I'm like I'm here to get the car. He said that's pinky's car. You can't have it. I said no, it's's the bank's part. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, it's up to you. I had just gotten out of the Army. I was into bodybuilding. I was on special medication that helped me be a lot bigger and stronger than I would have been otherwise. Let's say Like the tea.
Speaker 4:Put it this way when I got the job at Toyota, they didn't know if they were hiring a human or a horse when the blood work came back to the drug test. But it was all legal back then.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:So I put my hand on the guy's shoulder to move him away from the car. I got a little machine gun, a Mac-10 pistol, put on my forehead and he said I told you you can't have the car, pinkie's car. And about then this other side of the door opened up and this girl got out of the car. She got out of the car. She got out of the car. She got out of the car one of the biggest human beings I ever seen in my life. How this lady fit into a toyota tercel, and that really tells you how far I go back yeah I'll never know.
Speaker 4:And I looked at him and I just said you know what, sir? You're right, that is pinky's car. Just in case she maybe loses her keys, here's you an extra one you can have. And I slowly backed my big butt out of that scenario and I don't think anybody ever talked to him ever again. It was about two weeks later, um the front page of the newspaper. That guy was the head of the jamaican posse there in that area and he was killed in a shootout wow and I've had that being down in south florida.
Speaker 4:you know I used to go collect money from two guys that ended up being, uh, in a shootout with the fbi downtown miami that they made movies and documentaries about the cocaine cowboys. Right, several of those guys they they would go back and forth to Columbia Like we go to the grocery store, and every three months I'd find out they were in town. I'd go by their house, they'd give me four or five grand worth of payments and they'd disappear for six months.
Speaker 2:This must be the 80s you're talking about.
Speaker 4:Late 80s, early 90s.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Especially when the posse's moved in. They even scared the Colombians or anybody else, because they were different. Everything they did, everything they did was like what MS-13 kind of now. They did it publicly, broad daylight, because it was to instill fear.
Speaker 2:What's your biggest asset recovery?
Speaker 4:biggest as in monetary value. Yes, a small dealership that had a floor plan that was over a half a million dollars and the dealership closed overnight and disappeared of all the cars wow I had to find those cars one by one and in that particular case the deal was I got 30 or whatever the car sold for at the auction.
Speaker 4:so I made real good money on some of the cars and other cars not so much because they've been trashed or what have you. I've worked a couple of bounties that pay real good money back and the industry has changed much like the financial world back when a bounty owner got a true 10% or whatever the bounty was.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm here to tell you we don't charge no less than that. It's just. It ain't worth it in a lot of cases.
Speaker 4:I agree, I talk to a lot of these young guys that are like yeah, I just charged $250 or $300, and I get a lot of volume that way and I'm like like no, you'll run yourself ragged well not only that, but we just, we just had a fugitive recovery agent in georgia, you know, ambushed with an ak-47 I heard about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I saw that on facebook yeah, in the past 48 hours yeah you know, when I was young, you might bring a bat to the door. That was about it and when the fight broke out, you usually dropped the bat. It's a different world and you have such a big section of the population that has no respect whatsoever for human life. That's why I'm really happy to be in the shadows again because of, like, what just happened. There was like 14 repossession agents last year killed over a car.
Speaker 2:So I much rather go get people than cars.
Speaker 4:I've done a few cars.
Speaker 2:I don't like it.
Speaker 4:It's much easier with people and the worst thing to work is motorcycles.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because that can pull them into the bedroom.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Or part them out and all you've got is a frame, and then whoever the lien holder is doesn't want to pay you because all there is is a frame with a vent on it. But motorcycles was what I hated, hated the worst. When I'd get them, I, I liked I. I liked the bounty hunting. That was probably the most enjoyable, because finding a, a person is the easiest part of the job. If you're getting paid, if you're not getting paid until the car's repossessed or the person served or someone collects money. There's too many variables.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well let me find the money. You write me a check, I'm done.
Speaker 3:What about? What about in the, the bounty world? What was there any stories in particular that you can tell us that you know might be the most memorable or popular stories of people? Maybe that you can tell us? Yeah, there's been so many that are, you know, Like when Dog found Andrew Luster.
Speaker 4:would you you were any part of anything like that, or no, but I have been, uh, without naming uh, uh names I have been involved in in many, many cases, uh, celebrities, uh, the athletes, etc. Mercury Loris, back when he got caught with all the cocaine, you know I can say him now because he's deceased, deceased, but yeah, I've worked a lot of celebrities and athletes and so forth over the years. Because one thing that you have to remember and I don't think you can be successful in this career without two things, and that's one is empathy, and the other is being non-judgmental, because there there's a, an old quote people think is part of scripture, but it's not. It was a quote by a guy by the name of John Bradford, somewhere in the 1500s to 1550s. There, for the grace of God, go I, and there's not one of us. That isn't one or two bad decisions away from being in the same boat as some of the people we hunt.
Speaker 4:Not all, yeah, right, bad decisions away from being in the same boat as some of the people we hunt not all, yeah, yeah right and we're seeing and it's real easy in this world to get jaded, where you think everybody is on the prowl or scamming or lying, and really it's someone's made a bad choice. And then they compounded the bad choice with another bad choice because fight or flight kicked in and they thank God, choose flight. There wouldn't be a need for guys like us.
Speaker 3:That's a good way to look at it.
Speaker 2:I know you would locate smarter.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we only got about six more minutes left here, so I just want to have you kind of tell our audience a little bit, to have you kind of tell our audience a little bit about that, and we'll kind of go from there well, when I transitioned, I had my own skip company and I tried to retire twice and both times I made it as far as to go on LinkedIn and take my skip company off and put TBA.
Speaker 4:And within two hours a buddy of mine who owned a big data company called me and I was retired for about eight hours and then he sold his company to Motorola and I parachuted out and was going to retire again and these guys at Locate Smarter reached out to me and I've known their president for probably 25 years or so and I really dug the name and you put Skip Guru with Locate Smarter and my head just started churning with the fun I could have with it when blogs or what have you, and then I looked at their data because I wouldn't put my attach my name to anything that didn't work right and I think they have some of the best data in the industry period.
Speaker 4:they definitely got some of the best, best matching logic that I've seen in a long time, and matching logic is, you know, attaching the right info for Robert Allen to back Robert Allen, not 50 others.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 4:So and they've also allowed me to be me and help their dev team create new products, because when you talk about all the other data companies, none of those cats have ever found a fugitive repo in a car, so I have a different take on it. So they've allowed me to help with their dev team to create new products, which has been just a blast. Dev team to create new products, which has been just a blast. So, at 63, I kind of reinvented myself in the data world and teaching and I'm just having a blast Short split flops and a polo shirt.
Speaker 4:I like that.
Speaker 2:That's something to look forward to, for myself.
Speaker 3:Good for you.
Speaker 2:Alex, thank you for coming on. Man, this is, this has been awesome. Thank you for coming up and talking to us. Appreciate your time our audience appreciates you, um you know.
Speaker 4:Thank you for what you do thank you if anybody would like to be included in my email list for future classes, because I never charge for my classes, but my webinars and I won't. Both my kids were smart enough to not follow in my footsteps. So 30 years, 40 years worth of stuff I collected, learned, etc. If I don't pass it down, it dies to dies with me, so that's why I don't charge for the webinars very cool.
Speaker 4:If you're anybody in your audience would like to be included in my email list of future classes, they can shoot me an email at alexprice, at locate smartercom and the next group of classes I do next month. They'll get an invite to them.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 3:All right Very cool.
Speaker 4:I'm humbled that you guys asked me to be on your podcast. I've been watching it for a while and you can tell when somebody digs and is just having fun. Yeah, and that kind of passion is what attracts me to people and you can tell y'all are just having a blast doing that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's been to even be considered really appreciate it it's been fun. I appreciate you being a fan and joining us today. It's been awesome, and you know, chad, we've been looking forward to this day, so we've been talking about it for a while.
Speaker 4:Yep glad we got up with you y'all ever want me on you, just let me know. You know what would be cool is to do a live one at Pevis. Oh yeah, just grab people like Topo or yeah, topo. Just catch them off guard.
Speaker 2:We ain't seen him in a couple of years. I mean that's a good idea. We ain't seen them in a couple years.
Speaker 3:I mean we need to yeah we did Michelle's function down in Florida. We're going to go to Montana. I believe we're going to go to that next.
Speaker 4:I would like to go to a Peavis event though. Yeah, dude, even if it was Edna, because, Michelle, you know her thing is growing. It's really catching on, especially now that she is doing some on-site meetings Before, especially now that she is doing some on-site meetings Before it was just a big Facebook group. She's really getting some tremendous traction and doing a lot of good for the industry, Even at her event just doing it live and snatching somebody walking by.
Speaker 3:We did. You can go back in our videos. You can go back in our videos. You'll see, we did one at Florida.
Speaker 2:And we snatched everybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we actually had Mark Wahlbergberg's brother. Um jim, jim walberg, he was a speaker and uh, he sat down for a minute with us and uh, he has an interesting story to tell.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, alex, I appreciate it, buddy again. Thank you again from us at off the hook. Thank you very much. Everybody at home. He gave you the information. Get up with him. Get up with him if you want to take his webinar class. It's pretty cool. I'd suggest it. Until then, alex, appreciate it, buddy, we'll see you next time.
Speaker 4:Thank you sir, everybody be blessed, be safe and happy hunting.
Speaker 2:Thank you, sir, you have a good one. All right, let's see. Let me exit out of this and bam, okay, cool.
Speaker 3:That's a wrap.
Speaker 2:That was awesome, man. We're good now, all right. Yeah, we're good now, all right. So, guys, man, it's been. Oh man, I have got my phone blowing up. I think that might be Alex right there, anyway. So, man, that was pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's a cool guy. He's got a lot of. I'm sure we could do another podcast with him. Oh man, we got Because he's got a lot of stories.
Speaker 2:We got tons of stories. Let me stories. Um, let me get out of this. Gotta get my stuff back right here, right, so? So, chad, we gotta do that again. Man, yep, do it again. Well, guys, that's it for today's show um, hope you liked it, hope that.
Speaker 3:uh, you know, give us some ideas, you know some, some input, and um, we'll reach out to these people and have some more interesting guests like that and more stories to come, all right, guys.
Speaker 2:Well, that's it for today. Like I said, I'm Rob, I'm Chad, and we'll see you next time. Peace.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Off the Hook with Chad and Rob. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review. That was good. Stay out of trouble or it'll be you that needs to get off the hook. See you soon.
