Private Detectives
A private detective also termed “private investigator” (PI) is a person who is a fact finder or evidence gatherer and is hired directly by businesses (e.g., law firms, corporations, insurance companies) or individuals to gather intelligence and confirm or disprove information.
PIs are, at the most basic level, informationgatherers. Their job is to find information about persons, places, and things on behalf of clients. Finding the information can involve a wide range of activities, from interviewing people in broad daylight, to conducting undercover surveillance late at night. Most of the time, however, the primary business of a PI involves knowing where to look or whom to contact for information. And while today, quite a lot can be found online, the stock and trade of a private investigator is the ability to reach out – personally – to someone who will have the information they need.
Because the job of a PI so often involves obtaining information from others, the essential quality of a successful PI is the ability to relate to other people. They also should possess a broad knowledge of human behavior and have an inquisitive mind. Given that these traits can be picked up in a variety of settings, private investigators come from all walks of life. At one time, it was uncommon for anyone but a former police officer to be a private investigator. Now, however, attorneys will sometimes move into investigative work, or a PI may come from an entirely different field such as psychology. In fact, private investigators can have almost any sort of educational background, with the most common degrees being in security management, criminal justice, psychology, or even history. Nevertheless, the best investigators have some education specifically in investigations. Some colleges offer credit courses and training in criminal and private investigations, and it is best for a PI to have exposure to both. However, a lack of formal training can be supplemented with – and enhanced by – field experience working with a detective agency or law enforcement or as a paralegal or news reporter. In most states, to solicit business and practice, a private investigator/detective must have a state license. The most current state requirements can be accessed through the website of IASIR (The International Association of Security and Investigative Regulators) www.iasir.org. Because licensing is conducted on a state-by-state basis,licensing requirements vary. However, most states require PIs to be at least 25 years old, have a high school diploma (or the equivalent), have US citizenship or residency, and pass a test. States might also mandate up to 3 years’ experience working in law enforcement, investigations, or another fulltime job. Most states also require a private investigator to get a bond, which protects the state from being liable for improperly issuing a license.
Finally, it is essential for a PI to have a clean record. Some states will refuse to issue a PI license to candidates who have a felony or misdemeanor conviction. Clients will also often look for other indicators of responsibility and reliability. A potential client conduct a Google Search, but they may also wish to verify that the investigator does indeed possess a PI license, to see evidence of any professional memberships. Work history also points to whether the PI is responsible and reliable. Many of the best PIs do not advertise at all.
Clientele and Ethics
Private investigators work for attorneys, corporations, courts, and individuals. They are hired by companies to research personnel, such as preemployment investigations; they may also be asked to help conduct due diligence for business acquisitions or mergers. However, PIs are most often hired by attorneys because they possess complementary expertise that the attorney needs to bring a successful conclusion to a case. Attorneys often need information to determine whether an accused person has a reliable alibi, finding a witness or they need hard-to-obtain details to reconstruct an accident. The PI is then hired to obtain this information.
Private investigators accept cases based on a variety of factors. The most well-regarded PIs turn down more cases than they take, sometimes because the scope of the work is not within their expertise, but more often because prospective clients are not willing to pay what the PI deems their time and services are worth. Personal values and legal ethics also influence what work a PI is willing to take. Some individuals may approach a PI to help them break the law – to conduct inappropriate surveillance in order to circumvent a restraining order, for example. Even attorneys are not always ethical; for instance, an attorney might ask a PI to pose as a law enforcement officer to obtain information or to sign an affidavit that the attorney, not the PI, has prepared. In effect, investigators should be as discerning as their clients when choosing who to work for, and just because they can find information does not necessarily mean that they should.
Cooperation with Law Enforcement
Private detectives can cooperate with law enforcement officials. In some instances, these partnerships are official and long-lasting. The PI will initially investigate a case and then turn it over to law enforcement. In one example of such a situation involving trust funds, one trustee claimed to have lost some money in a bad business deal, but other stakeholders suspected that the money had been stolen. These stakeholders approached a law firm, who then hired a PI (who specialized in fraud) to work through stories of how the business deal went bad. Ultimately, the PI uncovered multiple phony corporations and determined that the trustee had lied and had stolen the money. The attorneys then took the case to law enforcement.
Specializing Becoming a truly top-notch detective – and in turn being able to command the highest hourly rate – requires expertise, or specializing, in a particular area. According to a survey by PInow.com, some of the most common specialties are background checks, civil investigations (gathering evidence for a civil trial), surveillance, and fraud (Faber 2013). By specializing, a PI can solicit a specific type of client, or they can transition into related fields (e.g., polygraph examiners or cybercrime investigators).
Training to become an expert can be done in a variety of ways. For instance, before striking out on their own, a PI may take training courses while working in law enforcement, serving in the military or working for a private investigations firm with a particular specialty. Organizations (e.g., American Society for Industrial Security [ASIS], Association of Certified Fraud Examiners [ACFE]) offer certifications in investigations and fraud examination. Other organizations offer qualifications in arson investigations and accident reconstruction. These associations train individuals in a given specialty and then typically require testing, years of field experience, and at least a bachelor’s degree to become certified.
Expert Witness
To become known as an “expert” in a given area, a PI needs extensive experience, a reputation as a knowledgeable specialist, training, and credibility earned through the accolades of other professionals working in that area. To be deemed an “expert,” a judge accepts the PIs’ credentials and allows the PIs’ testimony in a trial. When this happens, it means that the court has considered the PI to have the knowledge and expertise necessary to satisfy a judge in a particular case. Sometimes, the judge requires an investigation to be done to determine if a theft has occurred and if so, who is responsible. For example, a guardianship case might require an investigation to determine if a guardian is stealing from an elderly client. The court “hires” the investigator and pays them for their services. An expert PI may also work directly for an attorney, either prosecution or defense, as a “testifying expert.” In this case, the PI is paid to take the stand in court and answer very pointed questions – some of which may attack the investigator’s credibility. Not every PI finds this type of work desirable, but it is one way to charge a higher rate for having acquired a certain level of expertise.
PIs can take on the role of a consultant, charging an hourly rate to read over all of the documents in a case. If they disagree with the basic premise of the argument, they will be paid for identifying holes in the case by an agreement, but they need not continue to testify for that attorney and their client. This might happen where an individual has been accused of committing a crime. As an expert witness, the PI may be called upon by the attorney to say that the evidence indicated that the defendant is not guilty. However, after reading all of the materials, the PI believes that the individual is guilty, in which case it would not be appropriate for the expert to testify for the defense.
Why Hire a Private Detective?
The role of the private detective has become more complicated in the last two decades. The legal needs of private citizens and the corporate world have expanded, public law enforcement’s numbers have not kept up, and as a result, the responsibilities of each civil servant working within the police force have broadened. Law enforcement has increasingly turned its attention – and has allocated its resources – to violent crime and counterterrorism (The Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs 2011). This shift in attention has left lesser criminal, civil, and administrative investigatory responsibilities neglected, and as such, private citizens and corporations who are unwilling to wait for law enforcement to “get around” to investigating their issue have turned to private detectives.
Besides impatience with public law enforcement, another reason private citizens may be inclined to hire a private detective is that of his or her ability to handle the overlap in “type” of an investigation. For instance, a PI could be working on a case of corporate insurance fraud and discover that there is a criminal conspiracy that goes well beyond the insurance claim that the company initially hired the detective to investigate. Similarly, a missing person’s case might turn into something very different if the private investigator discovers that the individual has been murdered.
Missing person’s cases are the perfect example of work that is ideal for a PI rather than a civil servant detective. Law enforcement will not look for a missing adult unless there is some evidence of foul play or diminished capacity; however, Private Detectives 3 PIs – if they accept the case – will look for a missing person under virtually any circumstances. Therefore, a family or attorney might hire a private investigator to locate a person because they wish to settle an estate, or an adopted child (now an adult) may want to find their biological parents – cases that a detective working for law enforcement would never take.
Casework Examples
Many private investigators say that their reason for being in the business is the unexpected nature of the casework they get to pursue. Their work is limited only by the legality of what the client wishes to pursue, the client’s budget, and the skills and experience of the investigator. The following real-life cases illustrate the depth and breadth of work an investigator may undertake. All of these cases have been made public through court documents; in no instance did a private investigator violate his or her oath of confidentiality by sharing details of the case. However, some names have been changed to maintain privacy.
Case 1: Mary James, Sole Residence Susan Pickman, NYS Licensed Private Investigator, and Certified Fraud Examiner
In most investigative cases, the key is to know which research tools to use and to persist in using them until some lead takes the investigator to the data required. This is how Susan Pickman, a New York State licensed private investigator and former police officer, pursued and solved the primary residence case of Mrs. Mary James.
Mrs. James was a senior woman who received subsidized housing in Europe. The landlord, John Jones, claimed that she was living elsewhere, which violated her legal requirement to live in the apartment as her sole residence. Mr. Jones wanted to revoke Mrs. James right to the property, but first, he needed to prove that Mrs. James was living in another country. He required an NYS licensed private investigator, which is how he hired Susan Pickman.
hired Susan Pickman. Pickman began her search for evidence of Mrs. James’ residence elsewhere by looking through a number of public and proprietary databases. She found no trace of the woman, but she did discover an address for her son. By visiting this residence, Pickman found Mrs. James living there, and her affidavit was enough to allow European courts to issue a finding in favor of Mr. Jones.
Private investigators must often look tenaciously and use inconvenient or unconventional means to find the answers they seek. Thus, a great PI must have a voracious appetite for research and a keen ability to make links between seemingly unrelated information.
Case 2: Jack Patch, Missing Person Charles-Eric Gordon, Esq., Investigative Counsel
While private investigators tend to specialize, most take at least one missing person’s case. Such is the case of Jack Patch. This case was pursued by Charles-Eric Gordon, a New York State licensed attorney who conducted investigations into matters with a legal connection. (Due to being a licensed attorney, he was exempt from needing a private investigator license
In 1988, Gordon was hired to investigate the disappearance of Jack Patch, the husband of Sarah Patch, who had recently died. Sarah and Jack had separated before Sarah’s death, but Sarah set up a testamentary trust that would pay a generous amount of money each year to Jack, as long as he never divorced her and never married anyone else.
Checks from the trust had been delivered to a PO box in Manhattan – and cashed – for years until, in 1986, the PO box was suddenly closed with no forwarding address. The estate manager needed to either find Jack or confirm his death and locate next of kin, and so he hired Gordon.
Gordon began his investigation by consulting the white page directories and calling every listing with the name Patch. Eventually, he connected with Jack’s brother Joseph, who shared that Jack 4 Private Detectives had been born in 1898 and was buried somewhere on Staten Island. Because Gordon knew that Sarah, Jack, and their families were Jewish, he called Jewish cemeteries until he located Jack’s grave.
As he awaited Jack’s death certificate, Gordon continued to seek out Jack’s next of kin. The cemetery records had listed a second wife, Ida, but when Gordon tried to locate her, he was unsuccessful. Instead, he found and spoke with Jack’s nephew David, who implied that Jack and Ida had been married before Sarah died. To confirm this, Gordon once again used telephone directories to hunt down Jack’s daughter Randy. Randy ultimately confirmed that her mother (Ida) and father (Jack) had had a bigamous relationship, which defrauded the trust since bigamy was and still is a felony in New York.
What makes Gordon’s investigation particularly interesting is that it occurred in 1988 and 1989, before the Internet and online proprietary databases. Consequently, it involved a lot of telephone work and writing away for public records. This legwork is important to note, because while a lot of data is accessible by computer today, it would be misleading to assume that this cuts down on the amount of research involved in a PI’s job. In fact, a lot of online data is wrong and must, therefore, be carefully double-checked for accuracy and to ensure that no “red herrings” lead the investigator astray.
Case 3: Bob’s Carpets, Arson Bruce H. Hulme, Certified Fraud Examiner and Board Accredited Investigator
This case was about whether the owner of Bob’s Carpets, a carpet factory in Dalton, GA, had hired an arsonist to burn it down so that the owner could collect from the insurance company. The insurance company had determined that the fire had been set intentionally, but the owner’s alibi was airtight, so the insurance company hired Bruce H. Hulme, a certified fraud examiner and board accredited investigator, to identify the arsonist and ascertain if the owner had hired him or her.
When Hulme eventually located the professional arsonist in New Jersey, arrangements were made for his arrest by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and he was given immunity to testify against Bob, who he stated had hired him. However, the trial was to take place in the US district court for the Northern District of Georgia in Rome, and the law firm representing Bob was a “The Northern Georgia law firm representing Bob (a “Good Ole Boy”),” whereas the insurance company, based in New York, had hired a “Yankee” firm. Consequently, the insurance firm lost the case, in spite of Hulme’s having identified the arsonist and acquired his confession.
The lesson from this case is that investigative work – even successful investigative work that uncovers the evidence a plaintiff or defendant needed – does not always result in the legal case being won. Hulme was hired to investigate an arson case, and while he successfully verified that arson had, in fact, been committed and identified the perpetrator, his side still did not win the court case.
Conclusion
Private detectives are needed now more than ever before. Whether they work with law enforcement, legal counsel, corporations, or private individuals, the job of a PI is to persevere in finding information that others do not have the means, skills, or time to unearth. The work can be both tedious and challenging and requires both a voracious appetite for detail and the ability to engage and observe others. While PIs can come from a variety of professional and educational backgrounds, almost all will need field experience and a state license to work as a professional private detective. Once they obtain a license, PIs can continue with formal training and solicit particular work to specialize in an area like fraud, arson, or civil investigations. Specializing can then lead to cooperation with certain types of law enforcement or attorneys and can also result in being called as an expert witness in civil and criminal trials. Finally, no Private Detectives 5 matter the client, a PI should always exercise discretion in deciding whether or not to take a case; just because they can find something or someone does not always mean that they should.