He was watched while he shopped. The tracking started before he ever left the parking lot.
A man was observed making expensive retail purchases at a local establishment. Another man in the parking lot made a decision about what that suggested. He attached a device to the underside of the shopper's vehicle while it was parked. The device was a standard commercial phone configured to share its location. Once attached, it transmitted wherever the vehicle went.
The shopper drove home, unaware. The tracker followed him all the way to his residential address. Investigators documented that the location data from the phone mapped the route from the store directly to the private home where he lived. That home address had not been known to the attacker before he placed the device.
Once the address was resolved, the attacker waited for an opportunity and carried out a home invasion to steal the items he had seen purchased at the establishment. The confrontation inside the home turned violent. The victim was shot and killed during the robbery. A bag containing magnets and the tracking phone was recovered and analyzed, showing the continuous location trail from the retail location to the home.
For a small business owner who makes business related purchases, vehicles inventory between a shop and a home, or receives high value deliveries at a residential address, the exposure mirrors this pattern exactly. Your purchasing behavior is visible in public. Your vehicle is accessible in a parking lot long enough for a small commercial device to be attached in seconds. Once a location sharing device is in place, separation between a public commercial activity and a private home address disappears.
He did not search for the victim's address. He built a method to have the address drive itself to him.
Look back at what happened in this post. One decision started the chain. The RuleDraft Small Business Isolation Manual walks Small Business Owners through the same sequence we use to stop that chain before it reaches them.