From Cocaine Smuggling to Data Mining for Skip Tracing

Hey, want to hear a story about a popular debt collection technology that involves a former drug smuggler, the ACLU, child pornography, and Dick Cheney? Of course you do.

Unfortunately, we’re not the ones telling that story. It’s over at BusinessWeek, which has an extensive profile on data mining guru/savant Hank Asher. Many of Asher’s data products have become the most popular skip tracing resources for the ARM industry today. And he has now launched a new venture.

His story is nothing if not interesting: a troubled childhood, odd jobs early in his career, striking it rich with a condo painting business, Western hemisphere globe-trotting, and then a later-in-life discovery of a knack for data organization. Oh, and he ran a little blow in the early 80s using one of his planes.

BusinessWeek sometimes struggles with the nuance and complexity of the data mining/skip tracing industry in the piece, all but declaring some of his competitors to be dead in the water due to Asher’s new venture. Those that know the industry know that it’s going to take a lot to unseat some of the major, and even minor, players.

But still, it’s a fascinating look at the man behind so many data products that the ARM relies on today. Check it out.