SEARCHING FOR CAMELOT.

How hard is it to find a fraudulent company? LATIN TRADE decided to find out. We gave our Costa Rica correspondent Julie Dulude a news story, a couple of names and two weeks to locate Camelot Insurance Company, S.A. in San Jose, Here's what she found:

IT WAS TIME TO TEST MY SKILLS AS A SAN JOSE SLEUTH: LATIN TRADE WAS PREPARing a section on insurance fraud and wanted the scoop on an offshore company in Costa Rica allegedly being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). With only two weeks until deadline there was no time to lose.

All I had to go on was an article published last March in the magazine Business Insurance. According to reporter Douglas McLeod's story, Woodrow Wilson Bowling, a California businessman and founder of Camelot Insurance Co., S.A., posted on the firm's website a US$10,000 reward for information about the source of what it says are "lies" about its status in Costa Rica. Soon after making the offer, however, the commercial insurance company blocked access to its website.

The web was a no go, so I called information. No listing for Woodrow Wilson Bowling and the only listings under "Camelot" were a private residence, a bar and an apartment building. My first two gutter balls.

At the press office of the Judicial Investigation Police, I was told that all investigations begin with a complaint and that none had been filed. The State Prosecutor's Office didn't know anything either, but press coordinator Gabriela Castro suggested I talk to someone at the National Insurance Institute, a 75-year-old state monopoly.

"The law is very clear. Not just selling, any [insurance] transaction in the country is prohibited," said National Insurance sales and marketing manager Luis Mastroeni, guessing, from what I told him, that Camelot's presence in Costa Rica would have been illegal.

As is their policy, the FBI would neither confirm nor deny an investigation.

Beginning to suspect how difficult uncovering any scamster can be, I e-mailed McLeod for help, but never heard back from him. Then I went to the National Registry, where, theoretically, all sociedades anonimas--incorporated companies-are on me.

I found four that had "Camelot" in their title, hut none was named Camelot Insurance Company.

Since the standard contract for any corporation vaguely reports its purpose as everything from real estate to agriculture, available information was sketchy. And with only addresses listed--Tico style, I might add, no street names, only local landmarks followed by compass directions--I had no choice but to investigate each in person. With camera in tow, I began my search.

The first company, Camelot Rimo S.A., was an apartment in a plush, high- security condominium building. The owner was away for two months, but the condominium manager explained that all owners have sociedades to avoid registering the condos in their name. Scratch that one off the list.

Finding the next two addresses turned out to be a wild goose chase. The tenants at an apartment complex that seemed to me "exactly 75 meters west of the Colegio Metodista" knew nothing. "Ay corazon, since the school occupies the whole block, it could be on either this street or the parallel one," offered the gardener.

Next door was a vacant lot and across the street a cemetery, so I headed for the parallel street. A yellow house next door to a construction site appeared to fill the bill. "Let me find my glasses," said a middle-aged woman who came out to help. And then: "The problem is that it doesn't say whether they mean the elementary or the high school. You see, the Colegio Metodista has a high school in Sabanilla, which is considered part of San Pedro."

In Sabanilla, I found another private residence. Through the intercom, a woman said she had never heard of Camelot. Deciding to move on, I told my taxi driver to take me to a spot 200 meters north and 75 meters west of the Subaru in Barrio Dent, an upper-class residential neighborhood. But once there, even going door to door, I came up empty.

The last address belonged to a bank whose receptionist said it has no connection with Camelot. "I see why they call them sociedades anonimas," I thought. In just over a week I had failed to turn up even a last known address or phone number.

"Setting up a sociedad anonima in Costa Rica is ridiculously easy. These companies can disappear without a trace," says Congressman Jose Manuel Nunez, explaining why his party has proposed a law to make these companies harder to establish. "Under the lie that we should deregulate to encourage foreign investment, we are serving fraudulent businesses on a platter to unscrupulous people."

Now approaching my wit's end, I called the Costa Rican affiliate of KPMG, which, according to the news story, did some accounting work for Camelot. Reluctant to be part of another story linking KPMG's name to Camelot's, official Aly Alvarez did little more than confirm that KPMG broke relations with Camelot when the company posted a financial statement on its webpage without authorization.

"I understand they've left the country. They're not paying their bills," said Alvarez. No doubt out of sympathy he gave me what he thought was Camelot's phone number. When several days of calling didn't even reward me with an answering machine I decided to get help from an "expert."

Flipping through the yellow pages I came to "private investigator," Although she was busy Ligia Romero, a criminologist of 18 years, agreed to meet me the next morning. She said that, while most of her work consisted of spying on spouses for suspicious partners, she investigates a lot of frauds.

"An investigation like this could go on indefinitely," Romero said, adding that going to the National Registry is useless and that a lot of her information comes through unofficial sources, "Without an address, a phone number or a cedula [identification number], you have very few leads."

That's for sure. After two weeks of pounding the pavement, all I had to show for my efforts was a few photos of wrong addresses and a notebook full of frustration. With scandal hard on his heels, Woodrow Wilson Bowling and his Camelot Insurance Co., S.A. had apparently blown town as quickly as they had come. He left no forwarding address.

As for the poor suckers attempting to collect the reward for information about the source of the "lies" about the company's status in Costa Rica, well, they'll have as little luck as I did in finding Camelot or its founder.