Writer’s Question: Could you please talk about the problem of human trafficking coming up in investigations? For example, does an investigation lead a PI there, maybe? Could you also direct me to resources addressing the issue from the point of view of an investigator?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoe’s Answer: This isn’t an area we investigate, but we have a few resources for you (listed below). As to an investigation leading a PI to a human trafficking situation, Colleen has known PIs (from a group of women investigators that she belongs to) who successfully helped a young girl escape from a trafficking situation (the women PIs, from different states, coordinated a safe pick-up and travel arrangements for the girl). To the best of her recall of the situation, Colleen believes the girl had found her way to a phone, called a relative, who then called a local PI (that PI then coordinated the group-PI/multi-state effort).

Miscellaneous Resources on Trafficking

Dottie Lassiter trains organizations on the financial risks of human trafficking

Human Trafficking organization

FBI’s page on human trafficking (which has numerous resources & articles)

Ty Ritter, PI in California, who specializes in kidnap recovery in other countries (we’re heard praises about his work from other PIs)

PI’s DeClassified is an Internet radio show run by a well-respected PI, Francine Koehler. One of her past shows was on human trafficking. One of its past guests was Dottie Lassiter (see above) who talked about human trafficking.

Writer’s Question: What about illegal exotic animal trafficking? Can you provide me some background information on that?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoe’s Answer: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of Homeland Security, oversees the enforcement of exotic animal importation restrictions.

Also, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which supervises enforcement of human trafficking laws, has a public affairs officer listed on their site, so that might be an excellent resource to ask further questions about human, as well as exotic animal, trafficking (Jenny Burke 202-344-1313).

Today we’re answering a few writers’ questions about their stories where kidnappings occur and people hire private investigators. How might a U.S. private investigator get involved? What if the kidnapping occurred in another territory or country?

Writer’s Question: In my story, a 16-year-old girl is kidnapped and taken to Puerto Rico. Would an American PI have to check-in with the local police while searching for the missing girl in Puerto Rico?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s Answer: What if the PI visited Puerto Rico as a family friend? Personally, if we were contacted by someone who wanted to find a missing person in Puerto Rico, we’d go through our network to find a reliable, experienced PI in Puerto Rico and affiliate with that person. Our past experience has been 1-we can get into sticky legal situations if we go to another territory and 2-a local PI best knows the region, contacts, law enforcement, etc.

But for your story, perhaps you want your Florida PI-heroine to travel to Puerto Rico. Okay, back to her calling herself a family friend — that would work. Or, perhaps she does contact local law enforcement for advice, directions, or to let them know that she’s going to be doing things and visiting places related to the case, but she’s not a kidnapper herself. When we investigate cases in remote regions in Colorado, we always contact local law enforcement first (for their advice, directions, and sometimes just so they know we’re not suspicious characters).  But does your fictional PI have to contact law enforcement?  No.

Writer’s Question: What would happen if an American PI did not check-in with another country’s law enforcement and went about her business investigating?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoe’s Answer: She could be brought in for questioning although she probably wouldn’t be charged with anything unless she impedes that government’s or the U.S. federal investigations of the missing person. If the American PI is licensed in a state (currently, only five U.S. states do not require licensure for PIs) — we’re guessing that state regulatory agency wouldn’t care if she’s in another country unless she committed a crime there. But we’re guessing. It’s a good idea to contact the state professional private investigator association (for the state in which your fictional PI is licensed) and see what they say about your story scenario.

Writer’s Question: How would you know if the missing person case you’re working on has crossed paths with the FBI? Would information be closed off to you? Would they pay you a visit in some way?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoe’s Answer: The only way a PI is going to earn a visit from the FBI is if the PI interferes with the federal investigation. Yes, they would pay an in-person visit most likely.

Had an interesting experience this morning. Logged in to one of our email accounts…and had a lengthy message from Google+ with suggestions, based on the activity in that email account, for blogs we might like to follow. Oh, really? Like, uh, we wanted to know that? Scrolled down to the bottom of the message where Google+, in fine and barely legible print (tinted a lighter shade of pale), identified where to click to change preferences we’d never set up. De-selected checkmarks for every single item.

DuckDuckGo Is the Way to Go-Go

Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo doesn’t share your searches with sites. As they state on their home page, they don’t “track or bubble”
you. Here at Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes, we like to think we’re relatively techno-savvy, but we needed to read up on what “bubble” means. For those of you in the same boat, here’s a link where DuckDuckGo nicely presents an infographic of what the term means and how they don’t bubble your searches: DuckDuckGo’s Definition of Bubble.

We’ll still use Google for some searches because it’s the most comprehensive, free public search engine available. Otherwise, we’re going with DuckDuckGo.

Social Media Sites: The Fraud Investigator’s New Best Friend

Interesting article in The Fraud Examiner about mining social media sites for clues in fraud investigations. To read article, click here.

The Old-Fashioned Way to Track a Subject: Rolling Surveillance

Colleen Collins, one of the Gums, Gams, and Gumshoes PIs, writes about her experience tracking a felon across three counties several years ago. It’s interesting how many people think 21st-century PIs do everything electronically — this article is a reminder that sometimes PIs still gumshoe it the “old-fashioned” way. To read the article, click on link below:

The Day I Tracked a Felon Across Three Counties

Have a great weekend, Writing PIs

Sure, Jake Gittes did it in the movie Chinatown, but in real-life a PI getting involved with a client is a bad idea. Although in many jurisdictions there is no ban against a PI having a romantic relationship with a client, a PI doesn’t want to lose their objectivity in a case — or even appear to have lost that objectivity. It could compromise legal proceedings, the PI’s professional reputation…and if the PI is working on behalf of an attorney, that attorney could lose their license. Why? Because the PI’s conduct is covered by the attorney’s code of professional responsbility.

Juicy stuff for writers. Bad stuff for real-life PIs.

Today Colleen Collins, one of the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s PIs, writes about PIs and the pros and cons of their romantic entanglements at mystery writer Terry Odell’s blog: Lust, Ethics, and the Private Eye. Colleen is also giving away copies of her current mystery, The Zen Man — to be eligible, leave a comment between today, Feb. 14, and Friday, Feb. 17 at Terry’s Place. Two winners’ names will be randomly selected Friday evening and notified by email.

Have a great Valentine’s Day, Writing PIs

Ah, it’s almost Valentine’s Day. A time to celebrate love with that special person in your life. A time to share a romantic evening with candlelight, roses, champagne…maybe even pop the question. You know the one. Which is a whole lot more than a romantic evening out…now we’re talking about spending your life with someone, sharing sensitive financial data and resources, possibly raising children together, combining assets and more.

How well do you know this person? Do you know his/her background?

Even if you’re not planning on getting married, knowing your beloved’s background is important. Not the background they choose to share, the black-and-white background documented in public records, such as a criminal history, arrest history, driving history, previous marriages and divorces. Keep in mind that co-habitation is as much a business venture as it is as a romantic enterprise.

You might be thinking, “But he’s [she's] a fantastic person! No way I’m going to sneak around behind their back to find out their history!”

But if you’re interested in this special person, seriously considering taking the next step — be it a committed relationship, moving in together or getting married — it’s smart to do a background check. Better to know the facts ahead of time than be surprised down the road.

Below are a few cases that have come into our office.

I’ve met this great guy, but I know so little about him…

This client called several years ago, referred to us by an attorney who’d handled her previous divorce. After she’d told the attorney she’d fallen for this great guy, but she knew so little about him, he stopped her right there, told her to contact us for a background check. We ran a quick criminal background check…and our jaws dropped! This dude had reams of felony charges and arrests, including a stint in prison for a felony conviction in another state. Seemed he was big on embezzlement…and when we shared this news with her, she admitted she’d been “loaning” him a lot of money, to the tune of thousands of dollars.

She ended the relationship. Then she started carefully reviewing her credit card statements and bank statements, and learned he’d misappropriated her credit card information, forged checks, and promised various lenders and businesses that she’d co-sign on loans.

She never got her money back. Not a penny.

Shame she hadn’t obtained a background check on this guy beforehand.

My ex-girlfriend is going after my assets!

This poor guy lived with a girl for a year, then they broke up and she moved out. She promptly went to an attorney and claimed she and her ex-boyfriend had been secretly married in a ceremony at a hotel the year before and that she was entitled to half of his assets. The guy (we’ll call him Tom) had to hire his own attorney to counter her claims. We were hired as investigators on Tom’s case. After we obtained evidence that showed she’d denied being married while living with Tom –and in fact, identified herself as a single woman on a notarized document to the federal government, the court dismissed her case.

Unfortunately, hiring an attorney was costly to Tom. His ex-girlfriend, angry that she’d lost the opportunity to win half his assets, called his work and made false claims about his sexual behavior at a company function she’d attended with him back when they were an item…and poor Tom was then forced to fight that charge (more $$ to the attorney) and he wasn’t allowed to return physically to his office for months until that case, too, was dismissed.

In our investigations, we learned she’d done this exact same thing to another guy a few years before! Except the previous guy, rather than hire an attorney, just settled with her for $20,000 to go away.

How’d she get by with this? She knew the law. She worked as a paralegal for a divorce lawyer, so she knew the ins and outs of common law marriages, and the possibilities for profit.

Shame he hadn’t obtained a background check on this asset-happy woman beforehand.

Could you check out my new boyfriend…he seems nice, but after the last time…

Remember the woman who found out her boyfriend had been embezzling money from her (first story, above)? Well, after that experience, she called us when she started dating again, asked us to conduct a background check on the new guy in her life. Guess what? No criminal records, no messy divorces in his past, no arrests. Everything he’d shared about his past (that we could verify through public records) was true. They’re now an item, considering moving in together.

So you see, background checks can also be a safety measure so you can move forward to the next step.

How to Get a Background Check

Many PIs conduct background checks. An easy way to find a PI who specializes in this area is to contact your state professional private investigators association and request (or look up) the name of a PI who conducts background checks. Below is a link, courtesy of PI Magazine, that lists state PI associations:

Private Investigator Associations Listed by State

Have a great week, Writing PIs

How Do Private Eyes Do That?

How Do Private Eyes Do That? available on Kindle and Nook

Solving an Attempted Murder Case

Today we’re highlighting some investigations cases, from one of ours to a small down in Wisconsin to an impressive infographic that offers stats from dozens of PIs on infidelity cases.

Solving an Attempted Murder Case

At The Zen Man site, one of the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes PIs describes one of the more challenging cases we’ve ever worked…and thankfully solved: Attempted Murder, 4 Bullet Slugs, and a Dog Named Gus

A Small Town Hires a PI to Investigate the Town’s Only Cop

It almost seems like a Mayberry sitcom plot, but it’s real. A small town in Wisconsin has hired a PI to investigate its one and only cop — who’s afraid to leave his house because of death threats:

Village Hires Private Investigator to Investigate Its Only Police Officer

Signs of a Cheating Spouse

PINow.com details signs of a cheating spouse, based on interviews with dozens of private investigators, in an impressive infographic. To view, click here.

Have a great weekend, Writing PIs

Excerpt Article: How Does DNA Get to a Crime Scene?

There is known DNA evidence (produced by the victim) and there is evidence produced by a suspect (foreign depositor.) This evidence must be collected by a definite protocol because deviation from this collection method might spark a courtroom challenge to the reliability of that evidence.

How is a private investigator used in a case where DNA evidence is employed?

A private investigator might be retained and used to challenge the manner in which DNA evidence was gathered and handled by their opponent. The private investigator might look for evidence to substantiate a challenge to laboratory staff’s credentials or he might look for evidence that their test results have been successfully challenged in other cases.

When Is DNA Evidence Used?

DNA evidence is used in criminal prosecutions (to show a suspect is the perpetrator of a crime) and in an increasing variety of civil cases (to prove that an individual was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for a crime, to show paternity, and to establish lineage in estate matters.)

As an example, “wrongful conviction” cases have created a new type of litigation. Civil lawsuits are routinely brought by those exonerated through DNA evidence against police, prosecutors, and the forensic laboratories who helped bring about the wrongful conviction. For example three young men who played on Duke’s Lacrosse team and were falsely accused of rape and wrongfully prosecuted for that crime over a twelve-month period sued a North Carolina District Attorney and thirteen others. The trio also sued the laboratory used by the prosecutors for withholding evidence that pointed to their innocence. This is the laboratory that initially attested to a match between their DNA and samples taken from their accuser. This laboratory is now under scrutiny for its handling of evidence in this and other cases.

Note to writers: If you’re writing a story with a private investigator character, he/she (who could easily have a scientific or an investigative background) might be involved in gathering evidence about how certain laboratories are crooked, how they employ “bad science,” or even what makes some scientists charlatans.

PINow.com’s Top 44 PI Blogs

We just dragged ourselves back into our office after wrapping up 7 process services in anticipation of Denver’s incoming snowstorm (reports say it’ll be the worst snowstorm this year, with warnings of a blizzard later this evening). So it felt great to get those services out of the way (everything notarized, papers delivered to law firms). After putting the dogs outside, we checked our email and saw that PINow.com has listed its top 44 PI blogs…ranking Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes as #8 on the list! Cool. Thanks for the tribute, PINow.com.

We recognized others on that list, some are friends and others, professional acquaintances. One of our favorite blogs is #1, PIBuzz, authored by California PI Tamara Thompson. Since we opened our investigations agency 8 years ago, that’s been one of our go-to blogs to read about research tips, legislative issues, records research and more.

The #2 blog, Diligentia Group, actually listed Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes on its recent list of “15 Fraud and Investigation Blogs You Need to Follow in 2012.”  Diligentia, in turn, is a great site for reading in-depth articles in such areas as due diligence, legal investigations and background investigations. You can also subscribe to their free newsletter.

Then there’s one of our favorite PIs, a gentleman and an expert in bug/wiretap detection, Skipp Porteous. His #15 blog Sherlock’s Case Files covers “investigative tips, testimonials, and tantalizing topics.” Skipp is also the co-author of Into The Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper.

We’ll be checking out the other blogs as time permits…considering we might be snowed in, we might have plenty of time to do some reading over the next few days.

Have a great Friday, Writing PIs

How Do Private Eyes Do That? available on Kindle and Nook

“If you’re looking for the lowdown on private investigations, this is it. Packed with details and insights. A must-have for anybody writing private-eye fiction and for anybody who’s curious about what being a private-eye is really like.”
- Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series and many other novels in multiple genres

Excerpt from How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths, available on Kindle and Nook

Basically, loss prevention refers to people hired to prevent theft and fraud in a retail establishment. An investigator who specializes in loss prevention might handle the following types of cases:

• Credit frauds
• Employee thefts (for example theft of money or merchandise)
• Theft by store customers (for example, shoplifting, credit card scams, auto thefts)
• Staged accidents.

A Deeper Look Into Employee Theft

The majority of bankruptcies in the United States are filed by organizations and are attributable to employee theft.  One study shows that the company loss per customer shoplifting incident is $207.18 whereas the loss per employee theft incident is $1,341.02!  Employee theft causes bonuses, promotions and raises to decrease as profits shrink and the company losses increase. This means there’s a big incentive for an organization to hire an in-house investigator or an outside investigator who specializes in investigation of embezzlement, staged robberies, “shrinkage” and computer frauds.  A ripe specialization for your fictional PI!

What signs of employee theft (specifically, cash money) might your fictional PI encounter?

• No sales at register
• Fictitious refunds and voided sales
• Income from medical appointments paid with cash
• Failure to record sales
• Abundance of collections and donations
• Passing to friends
• Sales prior to opening the business
• Refunds/Voids after the business closes
• Questionable coupon redemption
• Robbery with scanty identification information.

Signs of employee non-cash money theft:

• Questionable credit card refunds
• Phantom payroll
• Fictitious vendor accounts
• Bogus travel expenses
• Kickback schemes
• Credit card fraud with friends.

Signs of employee merchandise theft:

• Direct theft
• Fictitious mail order
• Fraudulent receipts (free merchandise)
• Fraudulent computer entries.

As of the writing of this book, the online Loss Prevention magazine is free and offers access to past issues as well.  Great resource for researching topics such as asset protection technology, shoplifting cases, retail investigations and more.

Writer’s Slant: If Your PI Specializes in Loss Prevention, Think About

• His background — is he a former thief, or more likely, a former police officer?
• How did she get her skills in developing and documenting a case against a target?  (Many times a PI must present a completed case file ready for prosecution to a Deputy D.A. or to a company official who can then legally fire an employee.)
• What ambivalences might your PI have about going after someone without benefit of the tools that law enforcement agents have, such as search warrants and intelligence data?
• On the other hand, your fictional PI also has an easier job than a police officer in this investigative field because employees in the workplace might waive many constitutional rights to privacy, the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney’s presence when questioning takes place (steps the average police officer must respect).
• The relationship between this job and the kind of work done by other, similar investigators who assemble cases for submission to insurance companies so that a claim for loss is paid. After all, loss prevention investigators are frequently making a case for money from an insurance company, which is not all that different from how personal injury investigators work.

Praise for How to Write a Dick:

“If you want authenticity in creating a fictional private investigator for your stories, then this is a must-have reference book. Its authors, Colleen and Shaun, are living breathing PIs with years of actual experience in the PI game.” ~ R.T. Lawton, 25 years on the street as a federal special agent and author of 4 series in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

“What every wanna-be sleuth needs: a revolver, a bottle of scotch, a trusty sidekick, and this book.” ~ Mario Acevedo, author of Werewolf Smackdown

“How to Write a Dick is a gift to crime fiction authors everywhere, a comprehensive and no-nonsense compendium of information, analysis and thought-provoking writing prompts that will help you create your own 21st century shamus with confidence and class. An absolute must for the library of any PI writer!” ~ Kelli Stanley, critically acclaimed author of City of Dragons and the Miranda Corbie series

As some of you know, because one of the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes PIs is now a licensed attorney, our investigations agency has morphed into a law-firm-and-private-investigations agency this past year. Usually, it’s convenient to have an investigator down the hall, but recently the single investigator’s workload (she also works for other attorneys and clients) became overwhelming so it was necessary to sub-contract work to another PI.

Our Search for a Wing Man/Woman

We have 16 combined years as private investigators in our agency, with one of us having nearly three decades experience working in the criminal justice system, so we have high standards by which we measure a quality legal investigator. In our search, these were some of our guidelines:

Legal Acumen and Experience

The last thing we want our investigator to do is to kick in someone’s back door to serve them with a subpoena. This might be juicy stuff in fiction, but in real life it can result in lawsuits against us for failing to adequately investigate the background of our investigator. Ideally, we wanted someone who has extensive familiarity with the legal issues that arise during investigative activities such as rules of process service, laws of privacy, awareness of the fair debt collection practices act, legal definition of stalking, laws of eavesdropping and wiretapping.

Tenacity

A good investigator never gives up the hunt. We can’t count the number of cases we’ve broken because we stayed that extra fifteen minutes or asked that one last question.

Attention to Detail

It’s one thing to see the big picture in a case, or to know the goal, but it’s another to magnify a piece of the case and extract that telling detail that could crack it.

Must Like People

We wanted a private investigator who likes and deals well with people. Sure, we all love the tough-guy private eye in movies and books who grouches and argues and gets into slug fests, but that’s fiction. In reality, a private investigator needs to understand what makes people tick and how to coax information from them. This means the investigator must be part psychologist, part actor, part confidante, part interrogator and always trustworthy.

Accountability

A private investigator can be all of the above traits, but if he/she fails to respond to phone calls to our office or is suddenly “out of pocket” without explanation for hours or days, these delays can damage a case. Witnesses can disappear, evidence can be altered, crime scenes can be cleaned up…you get the picture.

How We Found the Best

We started out looking for a PI by:

• Contacting a few we’ve worked with in the past, asking if they were interested. One is no longer in the biz, and the other took so long to return our call we realized she was too busy for us.
• Chatting with some of our attorney-clients with whom we’ve worked closely, and whose work habits and practices we respect. One recommended a local PI who specializes in process services among other investigative tasks. When we called this guy, he might as well have answered his phone, “Hello, I Don’t Want Your Case” because after we told him he’d come highly recommended and we’d like to sub-contract work with him, he started telling us a story of woe about his stack of cases. How his caseload is so large, he would have to schedule our cases weeks out. He grumbled about some of his own cases. He might be good for this other attorney, but not us. We don’t need someone who’s too busy and gripes about his own clients to strangers.

Then We Recalled a PI We Contacted Several Years Ago…

We’d needed some last-minute help on a case. We contacted another PI who didn’t have the expertise necessary for our case and recommended we call Investigator X. We called, he wasn’t in, so we left a message. We hired another investigator because we were under a tight deadline, however Mr. X called us back a few hours later, apologized for not being available when we first called, and asked for us to keep him in mind for future cases.

Two years later, we remembered his message. The act of his calling back, and the tone of that voice message, demonstrated he was persistent, professional, engaging and a good businessman. We called him the other day, reminded him of his invitation two years ago to keep him in mind, and hired him for a job. Within twenty-four hours, he proved his legal acumen and experience, his tenacity, his attention to detail, his ability to deal with different personality types, and his accountability. He’s now our wing man.

Whether your a PI or not, this story shows the importance of simple, everyday business practices. You never know when the call you return opens other doors.

Have a great week, Writing PIs

How Do Private Eyes Do That? now available on Kindle and Nook