James and Regina Rapp

[jameson245]

In January, 1997, a man identifying himself as John Ramsey called McGucken Hardware in Boulder and asked for information on charges that were put on Patsy’s charge card. He later sent a letter requesting that information and signed it John Ramsey.

That information reached the police and media and went viral - was John checking on Patsy's purchases to prove she had bought the cord and tape?

Well, the answer is no.  The requests were made by James and Regina Rapp, later described as "information brokers".

Rapp had been convicted for car theft, violated parole and served time for that.  Colorado has no licensing laws for private investigators so Rapp figured he could use his past experiences and lessons to be a private investigator, to research and sell people's personal information.

 The Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct has rules that govern lawyers in Colorado and those rules prohibit a lawyer and his employees or agents, from using theft, fraud, deception or misrepresentation.

But Rapp wasn't a lawyer and he wasn't working for one.

He had a couple different business names -  TouchTone Investigations, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and Phantom Investigations.

[jameson245]

1999: The Federal Trade Commission and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation pull the plug on Touch Tone Information, a million-dollar-a-year agency operated out of an Aurora strip mall by master pretexters James and Regana Rapp. Known for being able to get just about any private data for the right price, from Calista Flockhart's medical records to unlisted phone numbers of Columbine families to John Ramsey's credit-card bills, the Rapps are undone by their attempts to obtain receipts from a Boulder hardware store related to the Ramsey investigation. Regana gets a deferred judgment; her husband pleads guilty to a racketeering charge, spends a few days in jail and is banned from the private-eye business as a condition of his probation.

Found in Westword