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Signs of a Cheating Spouse

2012-02-13T00:00:00-07:00

What do private investigators say are the most common signs of a cheating spouse?

When you suspect infidelity in your relationship it can be difficult to determine whether or not your suspicions are valid and if so, what to do next. At PInow, we surveyed our network of trusted infidelity investigators to find out what, in their experience, are the common indications of infidelity in a relationship. The following graphic displays the six major signs of a cheating spouse, what to expect in an infidelity investigation and other statistics on infidelity and marriage.

And the 6 common signs of a cheating spouse are ...

1. Changes in Intimacy	2. Suspicious Phone Habits	3. Changes in Appearance

4. Suspicious Internet Use	5. Changes in Work Routine	6. Changes in Bathing Habits

Other signs included concealing credit card statements or having bills mailed to a P.O. box, finding strange receipts, going out or running long errands without the spouse, flirting with friends of the opposite sex and a change in overall attitude. Infidelity investigations can cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000 and last anywhere from 4 hours to 6 months. Most investigators said their investigations verify infidelity 75-100% of the time. Other statistics show that when spouses cheat, 55% of the time it's the husband while 45% of the time it's the wife. 30-60% of married people will cheat on their spouse according to a range that compensates for dishonesty among study participants. 74% of husbands and 68% of wives say they would have an affair if they knew they wouldn't get caught. 85% of wives who suspect their husbands are cheating are correct 85% of the time, while husbands who suspect their wives are cheating are correct 50% of the time. Marriage statistics were provided by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Indiana University, Business Week, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If you have further questions or are concerned that your spouse may be cheating, contact a PInow investigator in your area.

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76 Private Investigation Professionals You Should Follow on Twitter

2011-10-09T06:00:00-06:00

Private investigators rely on real-time information and the latest forms of communication, so it makes sense that they would embrace Twitter. Twitter enables private investigators to share breaking news, network and even have a little fun - all with short messages of 140 characters or fewer.

PInow decided to compile a list of the top tweeting private investigators because there are many people who deserve to be recognized for using Twitter as another tool to keep the industry informed. While there is no specific formulaic ranking that was used here, we did reference influence as measured by WeFollow, number of followers, most recent activity and tweet relevance to the industry. This list will continue to grow and evolve each year, so please keep that in mind if you disagree with the rankings.

If you are a private investigator and you actively tweet, please contact us to get added to our "Up and Coming" list at the bottom of this post.

#1 PInow | follow: @investigator_pi

PInow.com is a network of trusted, pre-screened private investigators. We connect thousands of legal professionals with qualified investigators all over the U.S. and internationally on a daily basis. Use our quick quotes feature to quickly send your request a quote from investigator firms that cover a specific region.

#2 J. Ryan Winter | follow: @CanadianPI

Canadian private investigator, entrepreneur, blackberry addict, single father of 3 and believer in karma with a love of soccer, flying, technology, Lego & Dogs

#3 Tamara Thompson | follow: @PIBuzz

Tamara Thompson - San Francisco Bay Area - blogger/speaker/investigator - Internet search, public records.

#4 Central Legal PI| follow: @AlliedDetective

Private Investigator, Commercial Detective, People Tracer, Enquiry Agent. Surveillance, Process & Legal Services Northamptonshire, Warwickshire border UK.

#5 Jorge Salgado-Reyes | follow: @AlliedCentral

I am part of the Allied Detectives Network with an office in Croydon and Santiago. Also writing a Sci-Fi novel set in a London of the future.

#6 Eagle Investigative | follow: @EaglePiServices

Private Detective and Investigative Service helping individuals, corporations and attorneys solve any problem creatively, effectively and affordably.

#7 Seagal Investigations| follow: @UK_PI

Seagal Investigations Ltd. Professional International Private Investigation Agency.

#8 Pursuit Magazine | follow: @PursuitMag

Online magazine for Private Investigators, Bail Enforcement Agents (Bounty Hunters), Process Servers, Repossession and other Investigation / Law Professionals.

#9 Chris Maklary | follow: @RCInvestigation

Process Service, Skip Tracing, Video Services in Northeast Alabama

#10 Official Investigations | follow: @offinvest

Ohio, Kentucky & Indiana licensed private investigation & security company. Notary Public: Ohio & Kentucky.

#11 Pi Jobs | follow: @GetPriInvestJobs

Private Investigator jobs, careers and community site.

#12 Freelance Security | follow: @freesec

Project marketplace for private investigators, bodyguards, security consultants, detectives and more.

#13 British Agents | follow: @BritishAgents

Britain’s Private Investigators solving cases from around the world - Tell no one where I am.

#14 Michael West | follow: @ArkInv

Professional investigator in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana.

#15 Investigations Direct | follow: @InvestigationsD

Private Investigator agency in London .

#16 Executive Investigations | follow: @OZ_Private_Eye

Canberra ACT based Private Investigation agency servicing Australia Wide.

#17 John J. Kearney | follow: @celebprotect

Celebrity Protection Services A Division of U.S.R. Corporate Offering High Risk International Protection Operatives, Sub Rosa Investigations and Intel.

#18 Sherlock Investigations | follow: @Number1PI

Skipp Porteous: Electronic eavesdropping detection specialist. Owns Sherlock Investigations, New York. If one door closes, pick the lock.

#19 NYC Private Investigators, Inc. | follow: @NYCprivateEYE

Private Investigators, ICORP Investigations. Toll Free 866-984-2677. Infidelity,Family Law, Insurance Investigations, Competitive Intelligence, VIP Protection.

#20 Constantia Private Security | follow: @949GoGuardCom

Constantia Private Security.

#21 Scott Harrell | follow: @lscottharrell

Private Investigator, Bounty Hunter, Author and Trainer. Entrepreneurial Animal.

#22 ELPS Private Detective Agency | follow: @ELPSPDA

A licensed Private Investigator in PA with a BS in criminal justice. Owner of ELPS Private Detective Agency.

#23 CMP Protective & Investigative Group | follow: @tomruskin

Our office has been paperless now for over five years. “Going green” was around but no one was taking it seriously.

#24 Philip Becnel | follow: @PhilipBecnel

I'm a private investigator and the author of an investigative textbook. I get excited about technologies and theories that change how people do investigations.

#25 Clark Dickenscheidt | follow: @katytexaspi

Licensed Private Investigator with 20+ years in the industry investigating insurance fraud, civil litigation, criminal defense and corporate due diligence.

26. Navigator Research @navigatorinc

27. Bob Rahn @nysleuth

28. Davis Investigations @davisinvest

29. Justin Hibbard, CFE @hibbard

30. Spencer Elrod @SpencerPI

31. UK Private Investigators @UKDetective

32. HSI Private Investigations @hsipi

33. Roy Cox @GWSecurity

34. Nigel Parsons @AnswersPI

35. Rock Legal Services @rocklegal

36. Jeremiah Jones @boscolegal

37. [Truth] Investigations @RVAinvestigator

38. Eric Konohia @BPISecurity

39. Association of Certified Fraud Examiners @theACFE

40. Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman @Writingpis

41. Catherine Flowers @catseyepi

42. Right Path Investigations @rightpi

43. D. Wayne Patterson @NighthawkPI

44. Fred Archer @archerPI

45. Martinelli Investigations @GAprivateEYE

46. ICORP Investigations, Inc. @PrivateEyeLI

47. Melissa Jones @AristocratPI

48. FC Research @frenchPI

49. Lawrence W. Daly @LawrenceWDaly

50. Barbara Baughman @oregonpi

51. Phil Johnson @philjjassociate

52. J.G. Adams, Jr. @SecureServices

53. Steve Handlin @BoltPI

54. Pacific Northwest Association of Investigators @PacNWAssocInvst

55. Big Horn Investigations @wyinvestigator

56. Hewett & Associates @hewettpi

57. JMP Investigations @JMPInvestigator

58. CA Investigators @CaDetectives

59. California Association of Private Investigators @calipiorg

60. Brian Diggs @oicgroupusa

61. Centennial Investigations @CentennialInv

62. Kevin D. Murray @Spybusters

63. BPS @bps_security

64. Front Range Surveillance @frlps

65. Crane Investigations @melbournepi

66. T.J. Altman @ThaiSpy

67. David Matheson @bulletcatcher1

68. Millennium Group @milgrp2001

69. Unified Investigations & Sciences @dadamsuisusa

70. COVERT INTELLIGENCE, LLC @CovertIntell

71. M Wishart Investigations @mwishartpi

72. Hawaii P.I. @cybersherlock

73. Silvania Investigative Services @jsilvania

74. Fred Schroeder, 6th @Schroeder6th

75. United States Association of Professional Investigators @USAPI

76. Shannon Tulloss @ShannonTulloss

Up and coming...

John Scrivner @jscrivnerpi
Paperless P.I. @paperlesspi
Sulivant & Sulivant Investigations @statewidepi
Eagle Office Private Detective @SorinMatei1
BJH Hamel @bjhPI
Francisco J. Marques @HorusDetectives
Scott Stys @thecurbsidepi
Catherine Olen @kateolen
Michael Evans @Mevans251
Gray & Gray Investigations @thesiu
Wendy Shepherd @wyshepherd
Marcone Investigations, Inc. @naplespi
DRM, Inc. @drm_inc
Harris Investigations @harrisinv
MJB Group @MJBGROUP_PI
Mission Possible Investigations @mpinvestigation
Kelly Townsend @childrescue
Accurate Investigations @Glad4JC
Dragon Private Investigations @dpi92231
Assets International @AssetsIntl
Ohio Special Services Group @OhioSSG
Sue Martinez @Doveinflight1
Heather Thompson @hthompsondpi
Citywide Investigations @citywide_PI
Security Specialists LLC @OffDutyCops
Wayne Edwards @harjanpi
Curtis Burkett @KnoxvilleTN_PI
Brett Lund @RMTNCC

Made the List!

If you made the list, you may add the following badge to your company web site to show your clients your influence in the private investigation industry. And while you're at it, why not tweet this story to your faithful followers?

Copy the following code to display the badge on your site:

Tweet it Loud!

If you make the list, please click the tweet button below to share the following message with your followers: "I made the PInow list of top private investigators to follow!"

Didn't make the List?

We tried our best to find all the active Twitter users in the industry, but I'm sure we overlooked many. Please contact us and let us know if we missed you and we will add you to our "Up and Coming" List.

What is a Private Investigator?

2011-07-29T00:00:00-06:00

A private investigator is a professional who is hired by law firms, corporations, insurance agencies, private individuals and other entities to gather intelligence and confirm or disprove information. Professional private investigators often have law enforcement backgrounds or other relevant experience and training that has prepared them to investigate and research.

Examples of instances in which someone might hire a private investigator include investigating suspicions of infidelity, performing background checks on potential employees, investigating the validity of an insurance claim, or finding a missing person. The reasons for hiring a private investigator are numerous, but investigators remain the most effective way to get to the bottom of a complex issue.

Types of Private Investigators

Private investigators specialize in different investigation types, so when hiring an investigator it helps to find one who is experienced in the services you require. For example, if you suspect you are the victim of online fraud, an investigator who is highly experienced in computer forensics will be able to recover data, monitor computer usage and employ other methods to discover any criminal activities. To learn more about the different kinds of investigations, visit our investigation types section.

When presented with an assignment, private investigators use their experience and training to implement several investigation tactics, including:

Private Investigator Qualifications

Professional private investigators not only have the skills and experience to handle a case, they have the legal and ethical knowledge to make sure that the investigation is completely lawful. This knowledge base ensures that any evidence the investigator obtains during the investigation is admissible in court.

Professional investigators also possess any licenses, certifications, education, and other credentials required in their areas of operation. States vary on what they require investigators to maintain in order to be in business, but you want to make sure that the investigator you work with is fully in compliance with all local requirements.

Find a Trusted Investigator Today

If you need to hire a private investigator, you should work with someone with the experience, skills and qualifications necessary to successfully handle your case. PInow has taken the guesswork out of your search for a trusted private investigator by pre-screening and vetting each of our members, so all you need to do is search for someone in your area.

Find a Trusted Investigator Now

How to Find Birth Parents Using a Private Investigator

2010-12-06T00:00:00-07:00

There are a number of reasons why adopted individuals desire to search for their birth parents. Of the more common ones are to obtain general family information such as names and locations, to uncover familial traits and personalities, to obtain medical information such as genetic conditions which may impact the seekers health, and to understand the circumstances of the adoption. Recently, there has been an increasing trend for birth parents to search for their adult children given up for adoption years ago as well as by adoptive parents looking to get information about their adopted children. Information from the Child Welfare Information Gateway (www.childwelfare.gov) suggests that nearly half of all adoptive persons will search for their birth parents at some point during their lives.

Using a private investigator is more costly than attempting a search by oneself; these investigators have the experience and resources to substantially reduce the amount of time and energy spent to find relevant information. Further, prior to hiring an investigator it is recommended that the searcher takes the time to consider every possible outcome and to prepare for whatever may happen. Some private investigators will help an individual track down his or her birth parents and facilitate contact. However, out of respect for privacy, most investigators will ask for birth parents consent before giving out their contact information.

In some cases, even a private investigator may not be able to obtain the desired results. In closed adoptions, the information is essentially sealed. Confidentiality surrounding adoption in the U.S. dates back to the early 1900s in order to protect all parties involved. More recently, the Adoption Information Act permits the sharing of information provided all parties waive their rights to confidentiality. Sometimes, filing a court petition may yield success in closed or otherwise difficult cases, but there may be legitimate reasons why an adoption was closed such as drug problems or abuse by the parents which could be detrimental to the searcher's well-being. Understanding that not every search will yield positive results and that sometimes information is best left hidden is crucial.

When interviewing a potential investigator, it is important to ensure that the tools to which the investigator has access are of a higher caliber than simple Internet search engines available to the general public. A specialized investigator utilizes law-enforcement-grade databases and search engines to increase the potential for success. Also, because of the typical high cost involved, it would be a good idea to ask the investigator about his case history and success rate. Finally, having as much information as possible prior to hiring an investigator can increase chances of success. To learn more about hiring a private investigator, read our article on questions to ask a private investigator before hiring him or her.

To find a private investigator to assist with the search, PInow.com has a nationwide network of local private investigators who specialize in adoption-based searches as well as a number of relevant articles and resources.

Questions to Ask a Private Investigator before Hiring Them

2010-11-04T00:00:00-06:00

When it comes to hiring a private investigator, there are many questions that need to be covered in order to ensure that your final results are met. The most common misconception about private investigators is that they are all the same. The truth is that most private investigators specialize in very different things, and individually they offer a wide variety of services and market themselves accordingly.

The first step in hiring a private investigator is to sit down with each particular private investigator you are interested in hiring and interview them about their knowledge or past experiences with your exact problem. Narrowing down a private investigator based on specialty services and solid work experience is the first step to finding the right person for your case.

Next, ask them what kind of equipment they will be using and how they plan to use it to successfully fulfill your requirements. Make notes about the specific equipment that they will be using and do some research on your own. Make sure you know background information about the legality of their equipment, as you both could be held liable in certain states.

Throughout your conversation, pay attention to how many questions the private investigator is asking you. It is imperative of a private investigator to know all the details surrounding a case before starting it. This will also ensure that there is a full understanding of what goal and end result you are looking for. Be cautious of investigators that ask little or no questions about your case in particular.

Once you are confident in your chosen investigator and you feel they have a clear understanding of your case, they should provide you with different options and strategies of how they can accomplish your objective. Make sure you discuss their plan thoroughly so there are no misunderstandings or unrealistic expectations for either party involved. Also, make sure you ask who specifically will be conducting your case. Sometimes, when working with larger firms your initial meeting may not be with the person who is working on your case. Make sure you schedule a time to talk to the person who will be on your case so you can get a better idea of their background and experience.

Discuss how you would like to conduct all communication about your case. Many clients will want a discrete way of communicating and the private investigator being hired needs to know exactly how and where to contact you in case communication between the two of you is needed at any point during the investigation.

Lastly, ask about price and budget. Once you have developed a plan for conducting an investigation, they will have a general idea of what they will charge based on experience, time spent working on the case, specific equipment being used, and their experience level.Getting an upfront bid for the services being provided is important to make sure the financial boundaries are understood by all parties involved. Once the financial aspects are out of the way, always ask to see a copy of their state license and insurance (based on state licensing and insurance requirements.)

If at any point through this process you feel uncomfortable about the experience or knowledge of a private investigator, trust your natural instincts and either find another private investigator that satisfies your needs, or re-negotiate the investigation. Most importantly, before hiring a private investigator make sure you have done plenty of research and have a clear vision of what you would like to be accomplished before hiring them for their services.

Find a Trusted Private Investigator

PInow is the fastest way for you to find a pre-screened, qualified private investigator. Search by location and investigation type to find trusted private investigators who have been pre-screened and vetted.

Find a Private Investigator

LegalShows.com a New, Better Way to Promote Legal Events

2010-09-14T16:45:02-06:00

Are you looking to increase attendance at your upcoming legal trade show, conference, continuing education course or association meeting? You now have a new promotional tool in LegalShows.com, the first and only comprehensive directory of state, national and worldwide legal events for all fields within the legal community.

LegalShows.com was founded with the goal of helping members of the legal community advance their respective fields by sharing information about career-building events. These legal events inform, educate and provide excellent networking opportunities, which contributes to improved ethics, legislative knowledge and professionalism.

To help legal professionals share and search for events, LegalShows.com offers users the following capabilities:

Add legal events to the calendar for free, allowing people around the world to view the event descriptions you provide.
Search for events by specific category, such as private investigators, arbitrators or process servers.
Suggest new event categories.
Follow LegalShow.com events on Facebook and Twitter.

Promote your legal event today for free

To share your upcoming events or find events geared toward helping you excel in your career, visit www.LegalShows.com.

7 Myths About Private Investigators

2010-08-11T00:00:00-06:00

Surely we all have our preconceived notions about private investigators: the glamorous lifestyle, the abundance of technology, and the fancy cars. However the life of a PI is not as fancy as it is portrayed on television and film. In an effort to dispel private investigator myths, here is an inside look at the truth about how PIs live and work.

Myth 1: Private investigators have access to information that is not public.
PIs cannot access information such as police intelligence, CIA or FBI intelligence records, or sift through confidential documents. However, most PIs can locate information you are looking for might be located to give you leverage in a case or provide information for future warrants and subpoenas. Private investigators may also have connections with law enforcement officials or others in the industry who can help to get the information you need.

Myth 2: PIs can always listen in on private communication on telephones.
Although it happens in the movies, in many states, the law prohibits private investigators from bugging telephones or listening in on private telephone calls.

Myth 3: All PIs drive fancy cars.
Another one of the common private investigator myths is that all PIs drive fancy cars, just because spies and private detectives do in the movies. In fact, most PIs live a normal lifestyle away from the glitz and glam of Hollywood. In fact, driving a fancy car could actually detract from a PIs ability to do a job since the fancy car would be more likely to be seen or attract attention when trying to do surveillance.

Myth 4: PIs wear deerstalkers (Sherlock Holmes-type hats).
Most people are aware of these hats that are associated with Sherlock Holmes: a brim in the front and another at the back of a plaid hat. This, however, is not a part of the PI uniform in fact, PIs dress like most people do for work.

Myth 5: PIs can access private bank accounts.
One of the private investigator myths that persists in our culture today is that PIs have a magic key that opens any bank account that is protected. PIs cannot access most bank accounts or the account information without written consent of the person who holds the account.

Myth 6: PIs can access an individuals credit information.
Simply put, PIs cannot access credit information about an individual without notifying them. The passage of The Fair Credit Reporting Act in the United States went even further to limit how easily an individual can obtain credit information about another individual.

Myth 7: PIs put together the comprehensive background reports that you can purchase for $20 online.
Many people who order a comprehensive individual reports or comprehensive background reports online would be interested to know that these inexpensive reports are usually compiled with basic information that is available publicly online. PIs are usually not at the other end of the transaction actively compiling information; instead, that top secret info is generated by a computer. When you purchase this inexpensive report, you are actually just paying a computer to do work you could search for yourself.

Think you know all about private investigators now? Click here to read more about interesting private investigator facts.

What a private investigator can do for you
Now that you know the truth about these private investigator myths, you can be better equipped to understand what these investigators can and cannot do. Private investigators can be extremely helpful in any legal situation since they can advise you where to find information and can compile relevant information that will help you build a stronger case. If you choose to hire a private investigator, make sure to get a detailed report of what he or she can do for your case: do not assume that the profession is how it is portrayed on television! Click here to read more about questions you should ask before hiring a private investigator.

If you would like to redistribute this article on your blog, website or newsletter please contact us at sdavis@pinow.com.

Join PInow

Join PInow.coms trusted network of private investigators by calling 1 (888) 997-4669 or visiting http://www.pinow.com/advertise.php.

New Investigation Into the Anthony Case

2008-12-03T00:00:00-07:00

Cindy Anthony says someone hacked into her email and sent out messages and documents containing sensitive information about the case. WFTV reporter Kathi Belich received four of the emails herself, but when she realized something didn’t seem right about them she forwarded the emails to the FBI.

Now, the FBI is investigating.

The Anthonys have used their home computer to email their spokesman, their private investigators and others about the case, but they say someone accessed their account when they weren’t even home during the holiday weekend.

Cindy Anthony hammered the point home earlier this year that people were going too far and she was trying to protect her home turf. But over the Thanksgiving weekend, she says someone broke through the boundaries in a more underhanded way, by somehow getting into her Yahoo email account, gaining access to her messages and even confidential documents pertaining to her daughter Casey’s defense and sending them out posing as Cindy.

Kathi Belch received four of them on Friday. One of the emails involved the Caylee hairbrush story Eyewitness News broke last week. It seemed odd that Cindy would send Kathi such apparently personal and sensitive information.

Kathi text messaged Cindy right away and forwarded the emails to the FBI, which is already investigating an allegation that Cindy gave investigators the wrong hairbrush when they were trying to get a DNA sample for Caylee.

Cindy told Kathi she had not sent any emails and Monday said she had been locked out of her account over the weekend and said Yahoo found someone in Ocala who might have gotten in.

“It would be a connection between Ocala and Orlando or several protesters that we did run background checks on throughout that period. As to me saying it would be attributed to them, not what I’m saying, but possibly an Ocala to Orlando,” said Dominic Casey, Anthonys’ private investigator.

The FBI asked Eyewitness News not to reveal the details of emails because of their investigation. They include exchanges between Cindy Anthony and her spokesman, her private investigator, and even the PR person for Kid Finders, angry with Eyewitness News after exposing their founder has a criminal background.

“This is an extreme invasion of privacy of delicate, sensitive information,” Dominic Casey said.

CASEY, CAYLEE #2 SEARCHED NEWS STORY

It’s a sign of just how much the story of Casey and Caylee Anthony has captured the country’s attention.

On Monday, Yahoo.com released its list of the top news stories searched on its site in 2008 and Caylee and Casey Anthony was the second most popular news search.

Yahoo said the most searched news stories in order were on hurricanes, Caylee and Casey Anthony, election 2008, Pakistan, pregnant man, China, Iraq, Shelley Malil, Patrick Swayze and Afghanistan.

CASEY EATS THANKSGIVING DINNER IN JAIL

Channel 9 learned Casey’s father, George Anthony, spent part of his Thanksgiving driving by himself around downtown Orlando and Winter Park towing his “Where is Caylee billboard.” Even after new evidence was released to support the theory Casey killed her daughter Caylee, George has continued searching for a live Caylee.

Meanwhile, Casey Anthony spent Thanksgiving alone in the Orange County Jail. Officials said the Anthony family did not visit Casey Thursday nor did she request any visitors or phone calls for the holiday.

Instead, she dined with other prisoners on turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, bread and butter. For dessert, Casey had a slice of pumpkin spice cake.

FAMILY FEUDS OVER WHETHER CAYLEE IS DEAD

Eyewitness News has obtained new documents from prosecutors that show Casey’s own relatives believe she killed her daughter. In the 700 pages of evidence there were emails that started a family feud between Cindy Anthony and her brother.

Cindy’s brother said he’s frustrated that she believes Casey. In early August reporters asked Cindy Anthony a lot of tough questions about Casey’s lies and Eyewitness News has learned Cindy’s own brother was asking those same questions.

However, his inquiries ended in a family feud. In an email exchanged in August, Cindy’s brother Rick Plesea, who she rarely talked to, told her his theory: “Caylee drowned in the pool, and Casey put Caylee’s body in the trunk of her car.” and “That is why the dogs hit on the trunk.” From there the exchange deteriorated to insults.

Cindy wrote: “The next time you say Caylee is dead I will personally come there and kick your sorry a** all the way to hell.”

Her brother fired back: “Your granddaughter is dead. There, I said it. Casey has killed her someway either by accident or on purpose.”

“You have both lost your minds,” Plesea writes to Cindy and George.

He also said Casey Anthony attended his wedding seven months pregnant with Caylee and when Rick asked Cindy about it she said Casey told her she wasn’t pregnant then proceeded to say, “She would have to have sex to be pregnant.”

Rick Plesea forwarded all of his emails to detectives.

CASEY DOCUMENTS TALK OF CHLOROFORM, NECK-BREAKING

Nearly 700 pages of evidence released in the Casey Anthony case contain disturbing internet searches, a accusation of a frame-up and allegations of potential incest in the Anthony family.

The investigation has brought out accusations Casey had been making against those closest to her, namely that her father George has abused her, and that her brother Lee made inappropriate sexual advances toward her once when she was in junior high. The documents show Casey said her mother Cindy did not believe that to be true.

The newly released court documents show Casey Anthony searched for information on chloroform, types of shovels and neck-breaking on her computer in the time before her young daughter Caylee disappeared.

The documents reveal that Casey searched those items in March, at the same time she was also looking on missing children web sites. Casey reported her daughter missing in June. Casey claims she left Caylee with a babysitter but that person has never been found and Casey now stands charged with Caylee’s murder.

DOCUMENT DETAILS

Some of the information found on Casey’s computer also related to the chemicals peroxide, acetone and alcohol, which can be used to make chloroform.

Traces of chloroform were found in the trunk of Casey’s car, along with DNA evidence that suggests the dead body of Caylee had also been in there.

Investigators say they found that Casey’s mother Cindy was not at home when the searches were done. They say she was at work but that her father, George, was not employed at the time.

Casey’s ex-fiance’, Jesse Grund, told investigators he has heard that Casey has been cooking up a story to frame him for Caylee’s murder, even though she insists Caylee is alive. Grund claims Casey tried to convince her lawyer, with her mother’s help, that Grund killed Caylee because of his “obsession” with her and planted evidence in the back of her (Casey’s) car.

The documents also show there was no rotting pizza in the trunk of Casey’s car. Cindy Anthony has long claimed a horrible smell that detectives have described as the smell of death, was due to a rotting pizza. But the documents show there was nothing but an empty pizza box in a bag in the trunk.

Investigators say when George opened the car trunk at a towing company, with a towing company employee next to him, flies flew out of the trunk. The pair tossed the trash bag that was in the trunk into the dumpster. Later, when investigators went back to it and opened it, they found flies, maggots, and the empty pizza box.

The new records also show that Casey told her parents during a jail visit that her message to “Zenaida,” the mysterious nanny, was “she (Zenaida) needs to return Caylee” and “I forgive her.”

Casey hinted that she told Cindy long ago that she might have given someone a key to their house but didn’t say who.

Casey also gave a description of Zenaida: she’s 5-feet, 7-inches tall, has curly brown hair that had been straightened, weighs 140 pounds, and has brown eyes, and a lot of money.

Also released Wednesday, investigators say Casey’s slacks, which her mother removed from the car and washed because they reeked of the same odor inside the car, were apparently the same slacks Casey was wearing on the day Caylee disappeared and is believed to have been murdered. Investigators did not ask for those slacks early on because they had already been laundered at least once.

Investigators also say the documents indicate that Casey might have been considering coming clean a couple of times. On the day she was indicted for murder she actually called her attorney from the sheriff’s headquarters and hinted she might help investigators find Caylee. But once she talked to him she changed her mind. In August, she was about to meet with her father at the jail but once again it appears her attorney talked her out of it.

FAMILY TENSION

The released documents show Grund also told investigators Cindy wanted Caylee to call her “Mommy” in front of Casey.

Casey’s parents’ financial problems almost shattered their marriage but ended up saving it because Cindy couldn’t afford divorce. The investigation showed Cindy supported George for years. He lost thousands of dollars in a U.K. lottery scam.

The documents also show the following:

Cindy told her mother that Caylee was her life and her mother says if not for Caylee, Cindy might have harmed herself.

Just before Caylee disappeared, Cindy was about to throw Casey out of the house and try to get custody of Caylee. She caught Casey lying. At one point, Cindy talked about choking Casey, presumably out of frustration.

Friends said Casey was “annoyingly giddy” two weeks after investigators believe Casey murdered Caylee because her boyfriend, Tony Lazzaro was returning to Orlando after a trip home to New York for the Fourth of July weekend. Lazzaro told investigators that Caylee was “great” but he did remember telling Casey that he wanted to have sons, because his little sisters taught him how tough it is to raise girls.

Investigators also found Casey’s doodlings, writing her name as Lazzaro’s wife, with hearts in the script.

Investigators Stumped Over 1972 Killings

2008-09-18T00:00:00-06:00

His wrinkled hands grip a flier he had printed more than 30 years ago.

“I wish they were still alive,” Bob Allen says in a hushed voice as he stares at black-and-white photos on the page:

His sister, Bernice Peak, with her broad smile and a strand of pearls circling her neck.

Her husband, retired Col. Bill Peak, his brush cut hinting of his military service.

Their youngest, 14-year-old Barbara, her long hair styled with a middle part.

Above their pictures, bold-face letters scream:

$10,000.00

REWARD

MURDER

This poster soliciting tips helped start Allen’s paper war to solve the startling triple slaying 36 years ago Sept. 9 near Grand Island.

In the decades since, Allen has accumulated a 6-inch stack of correspondence and clippings on the case and others like it in his office at his department store, Allen’s, in Hastings.

His office walls hold shrines to his achievements. Meeting Fidel Castro when he was Hastings’ mayor, serving as a University of Nebraska regent, being one of Nebraska’s longest-running retailers.

For everything Allen has accomplished in his 82 years, there is one thing he hasn’t.

He still doesn’t know who killed his sister.

Allen’s white, wavy hair is combed back and stark against his sharp black blazer, a monogrammed shirt pocket peeking out. Age has bent his tall frame.

His oversize, blond-stained desk is covered by stacks of papers and files. He backs up his stream-of-consciousness conversation style with instant footnotes, such as a 1956 Pasadena Playhouse brochure to show he considered acting.

In less than a minute, he can find a yellowed plat map to show why his sister, Bernice, and her family came to Nebraska.

Her husband was an Army colonel who served as a military attaché in Russia and Hungary.

Allen’s parents persuaded the Peaks to retire to Grand Island, where Bill Peak could run an Allen’s store they would build at 13th and Webb Streets. Bob Allen already had his store in Hastings, and his brother, Bruce, had one in North Platte.

The Grand Island building permit was on the City Council agenda for Sept. 11, 1972.

The Peaks wouldn’t see the day.

The weekend before was the first Husker game of the year. Allen and his wife had flown to the game at UCLA, the first since Nebraska won the 1971 national championship.

The day after the game, Bob Allen’s father, Ron, went to the Peaks’ lakeside home — just off Gunbarrel Road — to watch the Bob Devaney show with them.

Instead, he found their bodies in the master bedroom.

Bill, Bernice and Barbara all had been shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun.

Bernice, despite a shot to the face, still was alive.

The Allens flew home and rushed to Bernice’s bedside. “How many were there?” Allen remembers asking his sister.

Unable to talk or write, Bernice held up several fingers.

The family hoped for details as her condition improved.

Bernice took any answers to her grave, dying two months later of an infection.

Two days after her death, Allen sent a letter pleading for help. He criticized Hall County authorities, although other investigators later commended their work.

“Dear Governor Exon:” Allen wrote.

“The Pentagon was understandably upset over Col. Peak’s murder because of Bill having gone through so many dangerous wars and situations and then to be shot down and killed in his bedroom upon returning to supposedly safe Nebraska.

“The murders of the Peaks will not obviously help attract other people to select Nebraska to retire to. It will help the state if these murderers are found and brought to justice.”

Exon ordered the State Patrol to review the case.

The crime scene showed no sign of sexual assaults or even a struggle. In fact, Peak seemed to be lighting a cigarette — he had a lighter in one hand and a cigarette beneath his body.

Bill Peak’s wallet and credit cards were found in the street in Grand Island, but no fingerprints were found on them. Nothing else was missing.

Investigators ruled out two men arrested on drug charges. A mysterious car seen in the area turned out to belong to an amorous couple, not a killer.

Bill Peak’s Army travels spurred talk of Russian hit men, which Allen finds ridiculous — professional killers wouldn’t have left his sister alive.

Allen has collected tips from locals about a biker and a rumor that the Peaks were going to disclose information about a “wife-swapping routine.”

A resident of a Nebraska psychiatric center sent him a letter: “During a drug deal in Nogales, Arizona, a man asked me if I ever killed anyone. I said I brokered the hit on the Peak family. I did not do it. Alcohol and my twisted mind spoke it out. . . . I like you and hope you understand.”

In 1997, in a news article on the 25th anniversary of the slayings, one retired investigator said the deaths could have been a murder-suicide, with Allen’s father hiding the gun, contradicting public statements by other investigators and infuriating Allen. A patrol investigator and national FBI personnel later reconfirmed it was a triple homicide.

In the absence of answers, Allen and his wife have created their own theories.

Allen is convinced the Peaks were killed by a Peeping Tom sneaking looks at Barbara, who had an “adult torso,” as he puts it.

“I think Bill was trying to talk with him and reason with him, and he just shot him,” Allen says. “I’m sure that Bernice fell apart. She just adored him.

“And Barbara? No-o-o,” he says, seeming newly astonished that someone could shoot the girl.

His wife, Georgene, scoffs at her husband’s idea. “Peeping Toms — would they be armed?”

She was suspicious of several “long-haired” boys, college friends of another daughter, who had stayed at the Peak house.

Allen twice has hired private investigators to work the case and kept sending letters pressing state officials for help, working every angle that came to mind.

He pressured: To Gov. Kay Orr, 1987: “We have no choice but to use legal means and public notice through the news media.”

He schmoozed: To Gov. Ben Nelson, 1993: “We did not receive the support from the State Patrol when the Republicans were in charge of the governor’s mansion.”

He cozied up: To Gov. Mike Johanns, 2001: “We agree with you in so many areas such as your desire to see speedier execution, also your defense of tax breaks for big businesses.”

He personalized the victims. A 1998 letter to the State Patrol chief included a news article with a trooper’s picture: “When I look at his picture, it reminds me of Bill Peak. Bill was a brilliant Army officer. . . .”

Allen has a simple reason for his three decades of persistence.

“I don’t think people who murder should get away with it,” he says.

State Patrol Lt. Dennis Leonard reviewed the case after one of Allen’s letters.

“He’s been in contact with, I think, every governor, asking not to let this thing just fade away, please do what you can,” he said. “I admire his devotion.”

Even though the file is fat, evidence doesn’t point toward any suspect or the chance of DNA tests, making it lower priority than other cases, Leonard said.

“We’re going to spend more time and more dollars on those cases that have a high probability of solvability,” he said.

“But it doesn’t mean we’re going to forget the others.”

Allen’s commitment has outlasted his parents and only brother; Gov. Exon; the original patrol investigator; and both private investigators.

His letter writing waned about five years ago, after the cold-case investigator got involved. Allen was surprised to learn the investigator juggled dozens of cases.

“The Peak murder is just one. In the movies, it’s just one case at a time,” he says.

“After several years, you just get discouraged.”

The Role of Informants

2008-02-20T00:00:00-07:00

To catch a thief, use a thief. That axiom is especially true in busting drug dealers. Use a drug user to bring down a dealer. Cast a minnow to hook the big fish.

Those minnows are confidential informants — CI’s in police talk.

Whatever they’re called, they can be a cop’s eyes and ears and calling cards. They can vouch for undercover investigators and get them inside the inner circles of criminal enterprises.

Problem is, most CI’s are bad guys, too, with criminal records. That’s exactly what makes them one of the best tools to infiltrate the illegal drug trade. Birds of a feather do drugs together.

“The CI’s have the inside track,” says Stewart Field, a retired New York State Police undercover drug investigator. “They know and have dealt with the bad guys. The bad guys trust them. They have the information, contacts and knowledge that police don’t have.”

That’s why informants were used in the August 2007 Operation Crack Hammer investigation in Elmira that resulted in the arrest of more than 20 drug dealers, says Elmira Police Chief Scott Drake.

“Drugs drive the criminal justice system,” says Richard W. Rich Jr., the Chemung County Public Advocate who has represented hundreds of drug defendants. “Other crimes, like burglaries, robberies and petit larcenies, are done to get money to buy drugs or for the drug dealers to exist.”

Drug investigations are unique and more difficult than say, a burglary. With a burglary, the crime has been committed, and police have evidence, like fingerprints.

But when it comes to drugs, police may suspect someone of selling them, but there’s no crime or evidence until police or an informant actually buys drugs from the dealer. With a drug investigation, the police have to set up the crime and need an informant to make the buy, says Rich.

Where do these informants come from? Some are law-abiding citizens who want to help rid their community of drugs.

But those folks are rare, says Drake. Usually the informants have been arrested, are behind bars or are about to get a long prison sentence, Drake adds. They’re backed into a corner and want to make a deal, like a shorter sentence for helping police catch a bigger fish.

“Or they know we’re breathing down their necks, and they’re going to get arrested next, so they come to us to make a deal,” says Dan O’Brien, a retired Chemung County Sheriff’s Office drug investigator.

The informants know the cops want the ringleaders, and CI’s are willing to cooperate if it will save their hides.

In return, the district attorney may agree to drop some charges against the informants or recommend a shorter prison sentence if the informants help solve a bigger crime.

On rare occasions, the informants receive cash for their information, usually with money confiscated in previous drug busts.

“There were very few that we gave money to,” O’Brien says. “When we did, it could be as little as $20 to as much as $1,000, depending on how badly we needed the information.”

But money isn’t as big of a carrot-and-stick incentive as a promise of reduced prison time. When informants work for cash, their hearts aren’t in it as much as if they were working to get out of jail, say police. And there’s always the possibility that informants may use the money to buy drugs.

Often, police develop and nurture potential informants.

“Let’s say you pull a guy over for speeding, and you know he’s running around with some bad guys you’re investigating,” says O’Brien, owner of O’Brien Private Investigations in Horseheads. “You give him a break. You give him a scolding and let him go, but you do it with the understanding that he will come through with some confidential information for you in the future on a felony.”

Some people may disagree with cutting a criminal a break. If someone does the crime, he does the time. But police say the end justifies the means.

Reliable informants save time and money, and more importantly, they are often the best way to get an airtight conviction against drug dealers, say cops and lawyers.

Police know that using informants is a delicate give-and-take situation that can go bad faster than a speeding bullet.

Informants can lie to investigators and commit crimes while working for police. Once that happens, the deal is off.

“We tell the (district attorney) that the CI was jerking us around, and the DA works to get the maximum sentence possible,” O’Brien says.

That happened years ago with a CI in Corning who was giving investigators information on other drug dealers.

“While he was working as a CI, he was out doing burglaries and drug deals,” O’Brien says. “He was informing on his (drug-dealing) competition to put them out of business.”

That’s why police often put their informants under surveillance or have other informants watch and report back on a new snitch.

“You have to meet with them face to face as often as possible and keep tabs on them,” O’Brien says.

That’s why the cops don’t tell informants much of anything. If they do, it’s to test the informant.

“Sometimes we ask them to get us information we already know to see if what they come back with and tell us is true,” says Field, who worked more than 150 drug cases involving CI’s. “It takes a lot of police investigation work to make sure an informant is reliable.”

Of course those meetings don’t take place at police headquarters or with uniformed officers.

Instead, they meet in a secluded place, like the middle of a rural dirt road or a church or wherever people won’t expect it.

Wherever the contact occurs, though, police always have to be wary of what the CI’s say.

“Never trust them. Every time they tell you something, you have to say to yourself, ‘They are lying,’” O’Brien says. “You have to verify everything they tell you. You have to know what they are doing, where they are going and who they are hanging out with, and make sure they’re not taking information from you and taking it back to the bad guys.

“Nothing is sacred when dealing with informants.”

Jim Pfiffer’s Real Life column about people, places and life in the Twin Tiers appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can reach him by e-mail: jpfiffer@stargazette.com or call (607) 271-8277.

Top 10 Resources Every Victim of Identity Fraud Should Have

2008-01-09T00:00:00-07:00

According to the Federal Trade Commission, as many as 9 million Americans may have been affected by identity theft in the last year alone. Identity theft is a serious crime in which someone steals another person's personal information or online identity. In most cases, fraudsters use the information to open accounts in the victim's name.

If you have been a victim of identity fraud or know someone who has been, these resources can help:

http://www.idtheftcenter.org/ -- Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) is a non-profit organization that offers advocacy, as well as educational resources about identity theft. Here, you can find information about identity theft including information on how to avoid it. The website has a list of letter templates (http://www.idtheftcenter.org/artman2/publish/v_templates/index.shtml) that victims can use as well as local and state resources (http://www.idtheftcenter.org/map.html).
http://www.privacyrights.org/identity.htm -- The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) is a non-profit consumer organization that provides identity theft quizzes and fact sheets along with information for those who have already become the victims of identity theft.
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft// -- The FTC has a separate page about identity theft. Here you can learn about common crimes and cases of identity theft, as well as what the government is doing to prevent the crime and protect victims.
Credit Bureaus Most people are not even aware of the fact that they have become victims of identity theft. The first sign often is new accounts opened in the victims name. You can find out whether someone has been using your name to open accounts by viewing your credit reports and looking for unrecognized accounts. You can get credit reports by contacting the credit bureaus: http://www.experiangroup.com/, http://www.equifax.com/home/, http://www.transunion.com/ and http://www.callcredit.co.uk/home.
http://www.phonebusters.com/english/recognizeit_identitythetips.html -- PhoneBusters lists popular types of telephone fraud that scammers use to steal identities. This Canadian site tells consumers how to spot scams and also provides recent news releases about identity theft.
http://www.ic3.gov/ -- The FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) provides information about online identity theft and allows you to file a claim against scammers who have targeted you.
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/keyIssues/ki-qc/mc-ki-idt_e.asp -- In Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada offers news releases about identity theft, information, resources, warnings about known scams being perpetuated on Canadians and other resources.
http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/fraudschemes/mailtheft/IdentityTheft.aspx -- If you suspect that someone has gained or is trying to gain your personal information via the mail, consult the USPS website for information on preventing this type of crime.
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10064.html -- If someone is using your Social Security Number to open accounts in your name or cause problems, this site tells you what steps you can take.
http://www.PInow.com If you have been the victim of identity theft, the police may have limited resources to dedicate to your case. If you, like many victims, have lost assets or title to your home as a result of a scammer, you may want to hire a PI to find the fraudster and also your assets. In some cases, if you act quickly, you can recover some or most of your assets before the criminal spends the money. Proving wrong-doing also can help you to argue your case with lenders and creditors. If you need to hire a PI, PInow.com can help you quickly locate qualified private investigators in your area.

Legality of Arson Investigation Explained

2008-01-03T00:00:00-07:00

Each state has various guidelines for what constitutes arson. In general, however, arson can be separated into two categories:

Felony arson: The knowing and willful burning of another person's property.
Misdemeanor arson: Reckless or negligent burning which destroys property, even though there is no overt intent to destroy.

Some researchers have found that arson may be involved in as many as 25 percent of the fires in the United States. Despite this, successful prosecution in cases of arson is quite rare. 15 percent of urban arson cases and 23 percent of rural arson cases are successfully prosecuted. In many cases, even when evidence is very strong, investigations are found to violate a suspects Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment and deemed illegal. Even when these investigations yield evidence that is vital for a case, if the data is gathered incorrectly it is inadmissible in court.
To make matters even more confusing, the guidelines that fire investigators must follow are different for firefighters, government officials and private investigators. Private fire investigators often approach a case once firefighters arrive. Firefighters often gather useful information, such as evidence of accelerants, smoke color, area first burned and damage incurred. This information is very important to private fire investigators, who usually do not arrive until much later. In virtually all cases, investigative professionals read the official report prepared by the firefighters and also interview the firefighters who were first on the scene.

Private investigators do have some leeway. A number of state courts have found that physical evidence gathered by a private investigator is admissible in arson cases and does not violate Fourth Amendment rights, when the search is legally conducted. Furthermore, a private fire investigator conducts a fire investigation as a private citizen and is therefore not bound by guidelines pertaining to the Fourth Amendment in the same way that government officials are.

The complicated state laws surrounding fire investigations make it imperative that anyone needing a fire investigation conducted seek out a qualified, experienced private fire investigator. This is the only way to ensure that your case does not become part of the grim statistics concerning unprosecuted arson.

Arson investigations are extremely complex, and finding someone who is experienced can be difficult. To find a qualified arson investigator, visit PInow.com.

Ex-Government Agents Are the PIs of Choice for Big Business

2007-12-19T00:00:00-07:00

In early September 2006, a vice president of Wal-Mart sent a highly personal email to his boss through what he thought was a safe email account. “My Gmail is secure,” Sean Womack assured Julie Ann Roehm, the company’s senior vice president for marketing communications. “Write to me. Tell me something, anything…. I feel the need to be inside your head if I cannot be near you.”

Roehm had persuaded the company to hire Womack only three months before. “I hate not being able to call you or write you,” she replied. “I think about us together all of the time. Little moments like watching your face when you kiss me. I loved your voicemail last night and love the idea of memory and kept thinking/wishing that it would have been you and I there last night.” Then she signed off, saying she had to take her two children to the park.

Unfortunately for Roehm and Womack, who were both married to other people, their intimate email exchanges would become public in a legal dispute between Roehm and their employer. Wal-Mart learned about the relationship while investigating Roehm for accepting gifts from an ad agency that received a huge contract with the retailer. Ultimately, Wal-Mart fired both execs for violating company policy and later accused them of carrying out a love affair on company time.

Largely overlooked in the furor was the role that Wal-Mart’s internal security department had played in digging up the salacious details. This department, a global operation, was headed by a former senior security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and staffed by former agents from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other government agencies. (See our Spy Slang guide) A person familiar with the episode said in an interview that an ex-C.I.A. computer specialist was involved in piecing together the email evidence—which included copies of Womack’s private Gmail messages, provided by his estranged wife—and that another former government agent had supervised the overall investigation.

Ex-government agents appear to be Wal-Mart’s investigators of choice. The retailer has emailed job listings to members of the Association for Intelligence Officers as well as posted ads on its site seeking to hire “global threat analysts” with backgrounds in intelligence. The job description for the analysts, who would have reported to a former Army intelligence officer, entailed collecting information from “professional contacts” to gauge threats from “suspect individuals and groups.” In practice, their responsibilities would have extended to gathering information about Wal-Mart employees, suppliers, and customers; Wal-Mart monitors shoppers for suspicious or potentially criminal activity. A Wal-Mart spokesman said the company does not comment on security matters.

Roehm sued the retailer for breach of contract over her firing but dropped her case in November. She has denied all wrongdoing, including the affair.

Sam Morgan, Roehm’s lawyer, declined to discuss the suit. But corporate espionage is becoming almost as sophisticated as government spying. Morgan said, “There is no right to privacy in the private-sector workplace.”

Roehm and Womack were unwittingly drawn into a new world of intrigue in which rivalries between superpowers have been replaced by global competition among the titans of capitalism, where companies use the most advanced techniques available to scrutinize competitors and employees alike. From New York and London to Moscow and Beijing, today’s corporations are venturing into a netherworld populated by former agents who have been schooled in the arts of detection and deception by the C.I.A., the F.B.I., Britain’s secret services, and the former Soviet Union’s K.G.B. Instead of probing for state secrets or recruiting government ministers as double agents, these latter-day George Smileys are selling their old skills and contacts to multinationals, hedge funds, and oligarchs. They’re digging up dirt on competitors, ferreting out internal corruption, and uncovering secrets buried in the pasts of job applicants, boardroom rivals, and investment targets.

The best estimate is that several hundred former intelligence agents now work in corporate espionage, including some who left the C.I.A. during the agency turmoil that followed 9/11. They quickly joined private-investigation firms whose U.S. corporate clients were planning to expand into Russia, China, and other countries with opaque business practices and few public records, and who needed the skinny on international partners or rivals.

These ex-spies apply a higher level of expertise, honed by government service, to the cruder tactics already practiced by private investigators. One such ploy is pretexting—obtaining information by pretending to be somebody else. While private detectives have long posed as freelance reporters or job recruiters to get people to talk, former agents have elevated pretexting to an art.

At Diligence, a New York private-investigation firm founded by former C.I.A. and British agents, ex-intelligence officers have taught newcomers how to construct false identities by using fake business cards, creating phony websites, and directing incoming calls to cell phones reserved for each separate identity. “You are establishing a cover, like in the C.I.A.,” said a former Diligence employee, adding that there are people who know investigators only by their phony identities.

Similarly, ex-agents have helped popularize the use of G.P.S.-based monitoring devices and long-range cameras for following people around. One corporate-espionage technique comes straight from the C.I.A. playbook. In the constant search for the slightest edge, some hedge funds and investment companies have turned to a handful of private-investigation firms for a tactic that seems to fall between science and voodoo. Called tactical behavior assessment, it relies on dozens of verbal and nonverbal cues to determine whether someone is lying. Signs of potential deception include meandering off topic rather than sticking to the facts and excessive personal grooming, such as nervously picking lint off a jacket. This method was developed by former lie-detector experts from the C.I.A.’s Office of Security, which administers polygraph tests to keep agents honest and verify the stories of would-be defectors.

Don Carlson is the former chief executive of a Boston research-and-analysis firm, Business Intelligence Advisors, where ex-C.I.A. agents have turned the human-lie-detector technique into a business tool. Carlson said hedge fund managers have hired ex-C.I.A. polygraphers from B.I.A. to sit beside them as a company executive delivered a rosy business forecast. The former agents were supposed to signal the manager if they sensed that the executive was dissembling. Carlson said he is convinced that human lie detectors work, though others scoff at the notion.

B.I.A. did not return calls. But I was told that Cascade Investment, the vehicle set up by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to handle his wealth, was among the B.I.A. clients resorting to the human lie detector. Gates relied on B.I.A. investigators to analyze security risks in foreign countries that he and his wife, Melinda, plan to visit. Gates also employs a former C.I.A. agent as head of his personal security team.

Most of the ex-agents’ activities, from surveillance to lie detection, are perfectly legal. In the wake of the 2006 Hewlett-Packard scandal, detectives used pretexting to obtain the private telephone records of company directors, employees, and journalists. In an effort to track leaks to the media, federal law was tightened to prohibit using fraudulent means to obtain telephone records. Financial records were already off-limits. But federal law doesn’t forbid assuming a false identity to get other information—an area that ex-spies exploit.

Still, a few techniques favored by the spies-for-hire do appear to violate privacy statutes. One of these involves using “data haunts,” extreme methods of electronic monitoring such as tracking cell-phone calls and gathering emails by relying on secretly installed software to record computer keystrokes. An ex-C.I.A. agent described a group of his former colleagues who set up shop offshore so that they could tap into telephone calls—a practice prohibited by federal law—outside U.S. jurisdiction. “They call themselves the bad boys in the Bahamas,” he said.

Even some of the legal methods are controversial within the industry. Certain old-school firms won’t stoop to dumpster diving or stealing garbage—which is usually legal as long as the trash is on a curb or other public property—because they consider it unethical. They say that the prevalence of former intelligence agents in the field and the rise of unscrupulous tactics have tarnished a business that often struggles with its reputation. One longtime investigator complained that he recently lost business to some ex-C.I.A. officers who promised a potential client that they could obtain the phone and bank records of a target—something that is illegal in most cases.

The investigator told me that nearly every major security firm employs ex-agents, though most don’t break the law.
“But plenty of people are worried about the potential damage to all of us when someone gets caught,” the investigator says.

Penetrating the secret world of corporate espionage has never been easy, and spies are trained to leave no tracks. Still, when disputes like the Wal-Mart case become public, it’s increasingly likely that former intelligence officers are lurking in the background. For instance, in March 2007, Oracle, the software company, filed suit in San Francisco federal court against German rival SAP, accusing it of systematically and illegally downloading thousands of pieces of proprietary software. According to a source involved in the case, Oracle’s documentation featured an analysis by forensic computer experts who used to do top-secret work for the federal government. SAP’s chief executive, Henning Kagermann, acknowledged in July that “inappropriate downloads” had occurred, although he maintained that Oracle was not seriously harmed. The suit is pending.

Another federal case involving former intelligence operatives traces its roots to the central-Asian nation of Uzbekistan and the family of its autocratic ruler, Islam Karimov. In a July 2007 libel suit, the owners of the New Jersey export company Roz Trading complained that they were the victims of an elaborate campaign staged by GlobalOptions Group, a New York corporate-security firm that used to describe itself on its website as a “private C.I.A., Defense Department, Justice Department, and F.B.I.” Its advisory board included William Webster, the former head of the C.I.A. and F.B.I., and James Woolsey, another former C.I.A. chief. Ex-intelligence agents studded its roster of investigators. Its chief executive at the time of the alleged libels was Neil Livingstone, a former consultant to the Pentagon and State Department.

GlobalOptions’ client was a Swiss firm that the lawsuit alleges was controlled by the dictator’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova. The suit contends that Global-Options sought to discredit Roz’s principals, including Karimova’s ex-husband, by setting up websites that falsely accused them of tax evasion, bribery, and fraud.

Livingstone declined to comment. He left GlobalOptions in late 2006 and founded another firm, ExecutiveAction, which also employs former intelligence officers and bills itself as a “McKinsey & Co. with muscle.” A GlobalOptions spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, that it no longer fashions itself as a private C.I.A., and that it has dropped the description from its website.

Private investigation has long attracted former government workers, but until recently, they were usually cops. In the 1980s, Kroll, an investigation behemoth with 4,800 employees and offices in 33 countries, became one of the first private-investigation firms to hire C.I.A. agents. The practice spread with the cold war’s end, which put a lot of spies on both sides of the iron curtain out of work.

Mike Baker, a former counterinsurgency officer, left the C.I.A. in 1998 because he felt the agency had become risk-averse and reactive. “The collapse of the Berlin Wall had an impact,” Baker said. “The cold war was over.”

After the September 11 attacks, agents held responsible for the intelligence failure or disenchanted by the debacle migrated to private firms. With business clients expanding beyond Western Europe into volatile regions like the Middle East, these companies needed investigators with the knowledge to ask the right questions and the connections to get the answers, requirements often met by ex-C.I.A. operatives. The $150,000 to $200,000 salaries these organizations offered—well above C.I.A. pay—were alluring, especially for baby boomers facing the costs of their children’s college tuition and their own retirement. Soon, almost every big-time investigative firm had at least one former C.I.A. agent on its payroll, and many had half a dozen or more.

It’s unclear from C.I.A. statistics whether the agency is losing more and more people to private firms, as it doesn’t track where ex-officers find employment. The C.I.A. attrition rate, which covers retirements, resignations, and firings, has hovered around 6 percent a year for more than a decade but improved in fiscal 2007 to 4.6 percent.

Some who have left the C.I.A. say that disenchanted veteran agents with 10 to 15 years’ experience are departing for the lucrative private sector. “Old-timers, good guys who love the place, are leaving because the culture is broken,” said Robert Baer, the former undercover operative who was the model for George Clooney’s character in Syriana. “The place is total frustration, and there is the question of money. After 25 years, when your wife or husband couldn’t work because of what you do, and the kids are in college, you can’t make it on your C.I.A. salary.”

Shortly after being promoted for leading a C.I.A. counterterrorism team that captured an Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan, John Kiriakou quit the agency in 2004, burned out by the punishing workload. “I love the agency. I loved my career there. But at the same time, if you want to have a strong marriage and relationships with your children, the agency is not the place to work,” said Kiriakou, who doubled his salary by taking a job gathering corporate intelligence for a private firm.

Some big names have also left the C.I.A. for the world of corporate espionage in recent years. Robert Grenier, the agency’s former head of counterterrorism, now works in Kroll’s Washington office. Stephen Kappes, who spent 12 years overseas as an undercover operative and speaks Farsi and Russian, went to work for the security firm ArmorGroup International before returning to the agency as deputy director in mid-2006. Jack Devine, a 32-year veteran who once ran the agency’s foreign operations, set up the Arkin Group with New York lawyer Stanley Arkin almost 10 years ago.

“The private sector has virtually all the same techniques as the government,” Devine told me. A favorite haunt for former American spies is the elegantly appointed dining room of the Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner in McLean, Virginia, a short drive from the cafeteria they used to patronize at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley. The large room, with its tables spaced well apart, swallows the hushed conversations. Leaving the C.I.A. for corporate espionage is a “growth business,” an agent-turned-investigator told me over breakfast there, indicating half a dozen other diners who had made the same career move. “Everyone has hung out a shingle.”

The influx of spies into the corporate sector isn’t limited to Americans. Firms relying on former British intelligence operatives have sprung up in London, the financial center of Europe. Trident Group, based in Arlington, Virginia, was started by former K.G.B. and Russian military officers. Trident works for blue-chip American and British companies, including the law firms Baker & McKenzie and Latham & Watkins, helping them navigate the tricky shoals of the Russian business environment.

Trident president Yuri Koshkin, a former officer in the Soviet military, is a naturalized American citizen—a status granted to him because the U.S. government deemed it in the national interest, as it often does with would-be citizens who are well educated or exceptionally talented. Koshkin and a Russian lawyer started Trident in 1996, just as the oligarchs were rising on the scene, but Koshkin says he was leery of “Russian business people who could not explain the source of their money.” He decided not to work for them. “The concept was to provide services to Western companies in Russia,” he explained in his office, which commands a view across Georgetown to the white walls of the Russian embassy. “We had to take care of our reputation,” Koshkin says.

On a Sunday evening in the fall of 2006, Mark D’Anastasio, the head of Emerging Markets Communications, a public relations firm in Washington, and a former Moscow bureau chief for BusinessWeek, carried his trash to the curb in front of his suburban Virginia home, as he had done weekly for years.

Before the garbage truck started plying the route, while D’Anastasio and his family were still sleeping, a short, red-haired young man named Patrick pulled up in a car outside the house. He jumped out, grabbed the trash bags from D’Anastasio’s container, tossed them into the car’s backseat, and sped off into the night. The garbage grabbing went on for several weeks. Sometimes Patrick would do it; sometimes another employee of Diligence would.

Old habits die hard at Diligence, whose alleged hijinks embody the danger of turning spies and their bag of tricks loose on the corporate world. Mike Baker, the former C.I.A. counterinsurgency officer, and Nick Day, a short-timer at Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, established Diligence in London in 2000. The pair had met in the 1990s through their old jobs and later joined a British company that investigated corporate fraud.

Eager to cash in on what looked like a potential boom in demand for their talents, they formed Diligence. “When we first started, Nick and I were literally walking down a street in London trying to figure out how to get the money for a couple of mobile phones,” Baker, a lean man with short graying hair, recalled recently.

Soon, however, Diligence had not only mobile phones but also offices in London and Washington and a roster of gold-plated clients that included Enron, oil and pharmaceutical companies, and law firms. They had staffed up with investigators with intelligence, military, and journalism backgrounds and were, Baker said, “hyperaggressive at getting business.”

The firm expanded swiftly after a 2001 merger with Barbour Griffith & Rogers, a high-powered Washington lobbying group. In early 2005, B.G.R. partners sold their interest in Diligence. So did Baker, who left to start his own firm.
Day took over as chief executive and embarked on a hiring spree. According to insiders, Day, who declined to comment on Diligence’s specific operations and methods, hired a handful of veterans from the C.I.A. and elsewhere and also enlisted a number of eager but inexperienced recruits.

“He carried his modus operandi from the intelligence world and introduced it to the private sector,” explained one former Diligence employee who, like most others, spoke on condition that he not be named. Another former employee said Day’s mantra was “Let’s be creative.”

The ex-spies schooled the young guns in the art of espionage. One former Diligence investigator described participating in a surveillance-training exercise in New York using Gretchen King, a young woman in the New York office, as what the C.I.A. veteran referred to as the rabbit. The object was to keep the rabbit under watch without letting her know she was being followed. Her job was to lose her pursuers. In the exercise, 10 investigators in radio contact trailed King through Grand Central Terminal and into various shops on Manhattan’s East Side.

Current and former employees said Diligence’s ex-spies also held classes in using false identities to obtain confidential information. Ex-employees said it wasn’t unusual for an investigator to have five or six cell phones, each representing a different identity, on his or her desk. And while ex-C.I.A. and former MI5 agents were old hands at such deception, the new initiates sometimes got confused and answered a phone with the wrong name.

On occasion, Diligence investigators were dispatched to collect garbage from a target’s home or office. In some cases, two former employees said, Diligence hired off-duty or retired police officers to take trash so that they could wave their badges and fend off any awkward questions.

In the spring of 2005, Nick Day and others at Diligence began plotting a secret mission, code-named Project Yucca, to penetrate KPMG, the multinational accounting firm. Diligence sought to gather information on behalf of one of its biggest clients, Alfa Group Consortium, a Russian conglomerate. Private Diligence communications, court records, interviews, and confidential reports by outside private investigators tell a story of corporate espionage run amok.
Alfa Group was embroiled in a fight with IPOC International Growth Fund, a Bermuda-based investment company with ties to a senior government minister in Moscow. The stakes were high—control of a Russian telecommunications company worth billions of dollars.

The Bermudan government had appointed two auditors from KPMG to examine IPOC’s business operations in the spring of 2004. Diligence was looking to infiltrate KPMG’s investigation. “We are doing it in a way that gives plausible deniability,” Day wrote in an internal memo.

It soon became clear what “plausible deniability” meant. According to confidential Diligence materials and interviews with former and current employees, Gretchen King—the rabbit from the surveillance lesson—and another young woman from the New York office were sent to Bermuda to pose as conference planners working for White & Case, a prominent New York law firm. They contacted KPMG’s offices and, under the pretense of organizing a legal conference, obtained a list of employees. Databases fleshed out the list, and a couple of workers with access to the IPOC investigation were identified. One, a British accountant named Guy Enright, was selected as a potential leaker.

Day flew to Bermuda and telephoned Enright, using the fake name Nick Hamilton and implying that he was from the British secret service. After several calls and meetings, Enright agreed to provide confidential information that he thought was being used in a British inquiry into IPOC. Day persuaded Enright to deposit sensitive auditing records and other documents in a container hidden beneath a stone near a beach. King accompanied Day at least once, calling herself “Liz from Langley,” according to a later lawsuit. A Diligence insider said neither Day nor King claimed outright to be government agents, relying instead on what he characterized as tradecraft to give that impression. To ensure that Enright was not a double agent, Diligence investigators trailed him from his meetings with Day and King and poked through the trash at his Bermuda home.

Court files and documents show that Alfa paid Diligence $25,000 a month plus expenses through B.G.R. When Day prevailed on Enright to turn over a draft of the report KPMG was submitting to the Bermudan government, Diligence was rewarded with a $60,000 bonus, according to a person familiar with the records.

But then Diligence’s escapades blew up in its face. In September 2005, someone—fingers are pointing to a disgruntled former Diligence executive—tipped off KPMG to the snooping. (The former executive’s lawyers declined to comment.) Copies of Diligence emails and other records detailing the operation mysteriously turned up at a KPMG office in New Jersey.

On November 10, KPMG filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, accusing Diligence of fraudulently obtaining confidential documents. Diligence settled the suit in June 2006, paying $1.7 million to KPMG, according to a February 2007 BusinessWeek article. Day said that Diligence is “constantly reviewing its methodologies and policies” to ensure that they are both legal and “operationally effective.”

Meanwhile, word that Diligence employees had been taken for British agents had reached the British embassy in the U.S. According to a former Diligence investigator, it dispatched an intelligence officer to chide Day and other senior Diligence officials and caution them against further misrepresentations. But a former employee says that, before parting, the intelligence officer confided that he found Diligence’s work very interesting and wondered about job prospects there.

Undaunted, diligence turned its attention to Mark D’Anastasio’s trash. The former Moscow bureau chief for BusinessWeek had done some consulting for Russian telecommunications minister Leonid Reiman, who is believed to be the secret owner of IPOC and is a longtime nemesis of Alfa Group, Diligence’s client.

The Diligence insider acknowledged that the firm nabbed D’Anastasio’s garbage for several weeks but said a subcontractor handled the task. According to a former employee, Diligence higher-ups boasted that they had gleaned valuable information from the trash.

When I spoke with D’Anastasio recently, he said he’d heard that Diligence had some interest in his activities but wasn’t aware that it had gone that far. D’Anastasio, whose own public relations firm sometimes works with ex-spies and other private investigators, referred to the members of the profession as “sewer rats.” Stealing his trash “is just the kind of thing they would do,” he added. “It’s no-holds-barred, and they do whatever they need to do.”

Executive Protection is About More than Executives

2007-12-17T00:00:00-07:00

When the average person hears the term "executive protection" they may imagine bodyguards for CEOs and top business people. While security for executives is an important part of executive protection services - especially today, when CEOs and other company members travel overseas, sometimes to less-than-safe destinations for business trips - executive protection is not always just about personal safety.

In fact, the top executive protection companies and services are expanding to offer a range of business services, including:

Security for cargo. Shipments of cargo easily can get lost, mislaid, delayed, or otherwise harmed while in transit. When a very important shipment must make it to its destination safely, it can be more cost-effective to hire executive protection services rather than risk losing the shipment. Trained security personnel can accompany the shipment from its original destination to its final destination, ensuring that the shipment is properly handled, stored, shipped correctly and delivered as promised. In an age where even simple packages can be handled by a dozen people or more, this sort of protection offers great peace of mind to executives and company owners.
Overseas security. As many companies go overseas to save on money and expand their customer bases, overseas security has become big business. Offering bodyguard and personal protection to executives overseas is still part of the equation, but so is protecting against fraud and safeguarding company assets and property abroad. Security personnel often are trained in various languages so that they can investigate any signs of wrongdoing and can protect against any actions against a companys image, trademark or assets.
Threat assessment. Most companies are unaware of the risks their assets and employees can face. Therefore, many executive protection companies offer risk audits or threat assessments that can help companies evaluate worst-case scenarios, weak points in current security systems and where threats might come from in the future. This can be invaluable to help a company evaluate action to take to prevent security melt downs.
Deterrents or responses. If a security problem does occur, executive protection services often can move in and respond while the problem is relatively small to prevent a larger tragedy. For example, if someone makes threats against a company or its founder, verbal threats often are not enough to get the police involved. However, trained executive protection professionals can respond, stepping up security and even using surveillance to ensure that someone making threats is not making plans to cause serious harm.
Emergency plans. Executive protection companies often will work with companies to develop worst-case-scenario plans. These can include adding panic rooms and covert alarm signals to companies to help team members react appropriately and safely to a threat. It can include emergency drills, as well as the development of escape routes.

Many executive protection companies are becoming full-service firms, offering services that allow companies to define, evaluate, and respond to threats. Both domestically and internationally, businesses can rely on these services not only to keep executives and employees safe, but also to keep company property secure. To locate an executive protection firm in your area, visit http://www.PInow.com.

About PInow.com

PInow.com is a Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators that enables law firms, corporations and the general public to find investigators anywhere. PInow.com strives to be the most trusted resource on the web to locate qualified investigators. All investigators listed on PInow.com are pre-screened and must meet specific listing requirements.

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory.

Does Hiring a Private Investigator To Investigate Cheating Spouses During And After the Holidays Makes Sense?

2007-12-04T00:00:00-07:00

For happy couples, the holiday season is a great time to reminisce, spend time together, and enjoy seasonal celebrations. For couples who are affected by mistrust and infidelity, however, the holiday season can be especially lonely and painful. Most private investigators agree that seeking professional help regarding a cheating spouse in important during the holidays.

The holidays can help PIs catch a cheating spouse
Most PIs agree that during the holiday season, it can be easier to catch a cheating spouse. This is because:

Most unfaithful spouses make mistakes during the season. The holiday season is hectic for everyone, but even more so for the individual who is surreptitiously trying to see two people at once. This individual will want to spend time with both partners and the added pressure of the holiday season can mean mistakes and clues. For example, a harried spouse may forget to erase voice mail or may be less cautious about signing out of email accounts. A private investigator has the skills and knowledge to make the most of these mistakes to gather solid evidence of infidelity.
Gifts can be important clues. Cheating spouses likely will want to buy special gifts for their loved ones including for those individuals they are cheating with. Their spouses may notice an increased interest in shopping and additional use of credit cards few cheating spouses can afford to buy gifts for their families and lavish presents for their new partners without the use of debt. Investigations into phone and credit card bills can reveal details about where a gift was delivered.
A cheating spouse will want to visit with his or her cheating partner during the holidays. Spouses sometimes notice that unfaithful partners are busier than usual around this time of year and seem to spend a great deal of time out. This makes it relatively easy for private investigators to launch a surveillance operation to get quick answers.

Should you start a cheating spouse investigation during the holidays?
Of course, the holidays are hectic enough and many families dont want stress or bad news during the holidays. However, feeling cheated or betrayed during the holidays is just as painful as learning an unpleasant truth. Because it may be easier to find the answers during the holiday season, it is a good time to consider hiring a private investigator. Getting answers can help you start fresh this new year. If you find out the worst, you can use the new year to start taking actions toward a better life. If you find out that your worries were unfounded, you can begin the new year in a better and more loving relationship.

If you cannot cope with the idea of launching an investigation during the holidays, you still may wish to speak with an investigative professional. The professional may want to start an investigation now and you can arrange to get the results and answers you want after the holidays, when you are prepared to cope with the situation. In either case, an investigative professional can help you get the answers you deserve. To find a local, pre-screened private investigator to help with your infidelity needs, visit PInow.com.

How The Internet Has Changed The Background Check

2007-11-08T00:00:00-07:00

Background checks predate the internet by many decades. In the seventeenth centuries and earlier, when people tended to live in the same place over time, a background check might have consisted of a letter of introduction. A new employee or a new friend might have given his or her credentials by presenting a letter from someone credible. In the nineteenth century, greater mobility and larger cities made it harder for people to determine who could be trusted and who should be avoided. It's no surprise, then, that the nineteenth century saw the birth of Sherlock Holmes and the PI industry.

In the earlier 20th century, detectives conducted background checks by checking into court documents and, in some cases, by questioning people who knew the person being investigated. Today, though, there are many databases of personal information online. For PIs, the Internet means:

1) More work.

There are multiple databases online, all purporting to offer background check information. Unfortunately, finding the most reliable sources and then hand-checking them for accuracy is time-consuming. One problem with online background check databases of information is that the information has to be entered into a computer. Many errors sneak into the material during the data entry stage and some confusion over similar names leads to a high rate of error.

2) Less focus on locality.

Thanks to the Internet, PIs can technically access material from across the country or even around the world at the touch of a button. They can access databases around the clock, even when the courts are closed. Although the information still needs to be hand-checked for accuracy, investigative professionals can still get started on a case instantly.

3) More competition.

There are lots of services promising to give customers free background checks or instant checks for a fee. Many customers who at one time might have gone to a PI are now heading online to run background checks. This is unfortunate, since these people are not always aware of accuracy issues and may end up accepting incorrect information at face value. This means that PIs must work harder to secure these customers and inform them of the problems with online background checks.

4) More ways of getting information.

Online background checks are not the only ways of getting information online. Thanks to the Internet, PIs now have an arsenal of potential information online. Social networking sites are a great way to get information. Individuals who set up sites on MySpace or Facebook often share very personal information online information that can be very useful during a background check. Even a quick Google search on a name can yield past addresses, employment information and other facts about someone. Net-savvy PIs can often get free and important background information without paying for an online check. This information can be used to supplement the information gathered from the Department of Motor Vehicles and the court house.

To be successful in the 21st century private investigators must understand the vast resources available on the internet, know which databases are available to them and they must work harder to obtain accurate information. To find a pre-screened, local private investigator, visit http://www.PInow.com.

About PInow.com

PInow.com (http://www.pinow.com/) is a Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators that enables law firms, corporations and the general public to find investigators anywhere. PInow.com strives to be the most trusted resource on the web to locate qualified investigators. All investigators listed on PInow.com are pre-screened and must meet specific listing requirements.

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

Visit PInow.com to find investigators who can help with all your investigation needs.

New law eliminates waiting period for gun in Missouri

2007-08-28T00:00:00-06:00

A new Missouri law makes it faster and easier than ever to get a gun. Backers say it just cuts through red tape. Gun control advocates say it’s not a huge change, but believe lawmakers should have spent taxpayer dollars making more important revisions.

“Let’s say there’s a person who has an issue where they’re in fear for their life and they need to get a gun fairly quickly,” says Michael Meyer, of the St. Louis Association of Firearms Training Instructors. “If they had to wait ten days, that may be too late.”

Now when you walk in a gun store, you can walk out with a gun, in minutes not days.

“It makes it fair as far as protection,” Meyer says. “You won’t be a victim.”

Meyer says the law change does not mean Missouri is going soft on gun control, but simply cutting through red tape, and a duplication of background checks.

Study Suggests Why Cheating Spouses Need to be Confronted Fast

2007-07-10T00:00:00-06:00

A study finds that infidelity can be a form of emotional violence that leaves betrayed partners with the same symptoms as an abusive partnership. Finding out the facts and acting on the cheating early may help the healing process.

A study conducted by Monash University in Melbourne, Australia finds that infidelity may have more in common with physical and psychological abuse than anyone has previously thought. The study conducted interviews with men and women affected by extramarital affairs and found that unfaithful partners share many of the same characteristics as abusive partners: they show little regard for their betrayed partner, and they experience the same guilt and remorse as abusers do after their cheating. Betrayed partners display many of the same characteristics as abused persons, the study concluded. Betrayed spouses may experience anxiety, an inaccurate perception of reality, depression, and poor self-esteem.

Study findings suggest link between abuse and cheating

In fact, the study found that there are many ways that infidelity and domestic violence are linked:

    * The psychology of abusers and cheaters can be very similar. Both may justify their actions, deny their actions, or otherwise refuse to take responsibility for their behaviour. In both cases, the betraying party experiences some short-term remorse, but generally shows no concern about their partner’s feelings or well-being.
    * The cycle of events and reactions is often similar in both. In both cases, a partnership may experience a build-up of tension, followed by introduction of pain (either abuse or unfaithfulness), followed by a short period of guilt and reconciliation, which may include a short resolution period, after which the cycle starts again with renewed tension. As with abuse, cheating can become a habitual pattern in a relationship, possibly compounding the emotional trauma it creates.
    * Psychological response of victims. A betrayed partner may experience the same sort of trauma as a victim of domestic violence, researchers found. Betrayed partners often express feelings of worthlessness and low-self esteem, hopelessness, dependency, vulnerability, lack of control, and shame. Many victims – both of abuse and infidelity report that they lose sight of reality and start to blame themselves for their partner’s actions.

Breaking the abusive infidelity cycle

The findings suggest that getting out of an unfaithful relationship can be as crucial as breaking free of an abusive one. One step that can help partners to break free is to gather concrete evidence of unfaithfulness. Since unfaithful partners often take no responsibility for their actions, they may simply deny involvement in an extramarital affair when questioned. Concrete evidence gathered by a professional investigator can help bring the issue to the fore by providing tangible proof. Best of all, a private investigator can provide help and an objective insight into a relationship. If infidelity leads to legal action or a divorce, the testimony or evidence gathered legally by an investigator can stand up in court and can help protect a betrayed partner.

Partners who are ready to break free can consult the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators to find local, experienced investigators. The PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators even has free resources that can help. With this free resource, finding professional help to overcome infidelity becomes a little easier.

About PInow.com
PInow.com (http://www.pinow.com/) is a Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators that enables law firms, corporations and the general public to find investigators anywhere. PInow.com strives to be the most trusted resource on the web to locate qualified investigators. All investigators listed on PInow.com are pre-screened and must meet specific listing requirements.

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

Visit PInow.com to find investigators who can help with all your investigation needs.

An Easy Source of Additional Revenue for Servers

2007-06-11T00:00:00-06:00

Process servers are always looking for ways to increase billing. A very effective way to do this is to provide ancillary services to their existing clients. From time to time, all attorneys need skiptracing services. You can solicit a skiptracing assignment on each bad address and/or offer the service as a stand alone product. An easy way to sell this services is to charge anywhere from $75 - $150 if the subject is located and nothing if the subject is not located. And, in addition to the extra revenue, once you the subject is located you have created another piece of process to serve.

Many servers offer a field locate with all service of process. This means that your client automatically authorizes an attempted locate of the subject if it is determined that the given address is a bad address. A field locate provides an incentive to the server to talk to the neighbors while in the field. Typically, the charge is $25-$50 if the subject is found. If the server does not locate the subject in the field, there is still an opportunity to try to find the subject before the client is called for an authorization for a full-priced skiptrace. It is easy to sell a $150 job if you tell your client that you have already checked phone books, called directory assistance and checked with several neighbors and, there will be no charge unless the subject is found.

Read the rest of Michael Dores' article by clicking the link below:
An Easy Source of Additional Revenue for Servers

Using and Choosing Data Providers

2007-06-11T00:00:00-06:00

Acquiring data to work a case or locate a person is critical for a process serving and investigative business. There is a lot of data that can be found in free public records databases but when it comes to getting more sensitive data you may need to turn to an established data broker.

Who are Data Providers and what kind of data do they offer?

Companies like IRBsearch, LocatePlus, Merlin, Tracers Info and many others offer research tools for private investigators, process servers, bail agents and other legal professionals. These tools query billions of records to assist in finding information on people and businesses. Common searches include assets, criminal records, court records, phone number look-ups, driving records and much more.

"Every service done by our company is researched before it leaves the office. Businesses are checked using the Secretary of State's website for registered agent and corporate officers. We use data providers to check residential addresses," said Stuart Perlmutter of Professional Process Service, LLC in Waterbury, CT. "This saves substantial time and effort in the field."

Where does their Data come from?

Data providers acquire information from hundreds of sources that include billions of records with updates coming on a daily basis. Data originates from governmental agencies and privates companies. Many companies pull from the same data sources including ChoicePoint and Lexis Nexis.

According to Merlin, they pull data from over 130 sources, while IRBsearch claims to take daily updates from more than 33 billion records and over 750 sources.

How do I choose a data provider?

There tends to be one common response to this question.

You should never depend on any single data provider, says Jimmie Mesis of PI Magazine. These companies are all data aggregators and while many do get data from the same major suppliers, each one does acquire unique data from different sources. Some companies are also stronger in different parts of the country.

And its not just the data they have, its how they use it, adds Vicki Siedow of Siedow & Associations in La Crescenta, CA. The interface, how and when they update, lots of little differences make the outcome of a search vary sometimes widely from company to company.

Many other industry professionals have weighed in on this topic in the ServeNow.com and PInow.com Yahoo Groups. In addition to echoing the above sentiments, the general consensus says that you should use this information as a guide and you should always validate your findings.

I never accept the results I get from any source. I use it as a lead, then confirm it, said Ron Rugen of Rugen Team Investigations in Columbia, MO.

Getting Access to the Data

Once you find a data provider you want to work with, you must adhere to state and national laws to gain access to their services. Each provider has their own application and credentialing process. Federal laws mandate that potential users identify the intent for the information they seek. Merlin asks for documentation of business and professional licenses and checks all available databases to determine if the applicant is who they say they are. If the applicant wants to receive data with full social security numbers, they must agree to an on-site inspection.

The Bottom Line

Even though the industry has seen a price increase in the last year, basic searches through these data providers are still reasonable, starting around $1. As you request more detailed data, searches become more expensive. This is especially true with criminal and driving records.

"The days of the quarter search are over and I'm surprised that they were able to keep such valuable information at that price. The data companies we buy information from are now paying more for information themselves and they will obviously pass the added expense on to us - the end users. Even at the higher price its still amazing at how much information we are able to get for such a minimal amount, added Mesis.

What are your thoughts?

The ServeNow.com and PInow.com team would like to give you the opportunity to provide your input and experience with data providers. Please feel free to comment below.

Participating Data Provider Summaries

The following companies assisted in putting together this article. We have given them an opportunity to share information regarding their companies here. If you would like to know more about their services and products, please contact them directly.

Merlin Data | http://www.merlindata.com
Merlin has all the tools to locate people quickly. A leading innovator and provider of online public record and skiptracing databases, Merlin Information Services provides quality data essential to the successful investigator.

Find current phone numbers and addresses with our pay-per-search or for volume savings, choose affordably-priced subscription billing.

Search the Merlin Cross-Directory and access over 150 million households and 14 million businesses including over 90 million phone listings. Or choose the Link to America credit header product, the best skiptracing database in the industry.

IRBSearch | http://www.irbsearch.com
IRBsearch is the powerhouse of online data information for the United States. IRBsearch was developed by licensed private investigators specifically for the industries we serve: private investigators, process servers, recovery agents, and bail bondsmen. Whether you investigate cases, serve process, locate skips, or track down relatives and associates, IRBsearch is the treasure map of choice for industry professionals. Our Person Search offers access to the most current addresses and up to a 30-plus year address history. No waiting, no set-up fees, and no monthly minimums: get results within seconds! The Most, The Best, The Fastest!

TracersInfo | http://www.tracersinfo.com
TracersInfo is a premiere online information source, providing instant access to current, accurate data products created by integrating billions of records from public record and proprietary data sources in a simple, easy-to-use format. The system offers a wide array of features that aren't available anywhere else, giving investigative professionals a quick, cost-effective way to turn the information they have into the information they need, including current address info, full SSNs and DOBs, criminal history searches, driving records, instant return wants & warrants searches, asset searches and much more. No signup fees. No monthly minimums.

Telephone Surveillance and Bugging - Is it Legal?

2007-05-23T00:00:00-06:00

Recording conversations or listening in to telephone conversations using wiretap is strictly controlled by laws. Understanding how these laws work protects everyone's privacy and can help prevent needless lawsuits.

Telephone bugging, telephone surveillance, wiretapping: these are just a few names for what is essentially the same thing -- listening into someone else's conversation or recording it for later use. While there are many instances of people whose telephones are illegally tapped, placing a bug on a phone must be authorized by a search warrant or court order. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to listen to someone's telephone conversation, knowing what the laws are surrounding private conversations is important for anyone who wants to avoid messy lawsuit.

According to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 1,773 wiretap orders were issued by courts in 2005 alone. Obviously, it is much harder to get accurate statistics on illegal telephone surveillance, although it does occur.

What is telephone surveillance?

There are actually a few ways to listen to a telephone conversation or record it. Listeners can use sweeping devices to target phone signals and listen in to conversations. Most often, listeners directly access a telephone line by getting phone access to the line from the phone company. In some cases, listeners use a device and transmitter in order to record a conversation. All these methods are controlled by law.

What are the laws?

According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal law enforcement is allowed to engage in telephone surveillance, but only after getting a court order and only after demonstrating probable cause of a specific colony. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act controls how much and how law-enforcement can wiretap the phone -- in most cases, the communication that is wiretapped must relate only to the felony, and law enforcement is usually only allowed a specific number of days -- usually 30 -- in order to engage in telephone surveillance. Usually, law enforcement is only allowed to obtain wiretaps in cases where aggravated kidnapping, murder, bombings, and any plans to commit these felonies are involved.

In some cases, a warrant may not be required to eavesdrop on a conversation. Federal law enforcement officials with a federal warrant may be able to obtain a wiretap warrant through federal court, even in cases where state officials would not be able to obtain that warrant. In some cases, if law-enforcement authorities have the consent of one person to a telephone conversation, that conversation can be monitored. This allows, for example, someone such as a government informant to give law enforcement officials the right to monitor a conversation for which no warrant has been obtained.

Who can listen in?

In addition, telephone company employees as well as the employees of certain other companies may be able to listen in to conversations. For example, the telephone company is allowed to listen in to telephone conversations in order to inspect the phone system, in order to inspect the quality of telephone service, in order to guard against service fraud or other crimes, and in order to provide customers with service. Some companies may monitor telephone conversations with employees and customers, in order to provide employee training, employee monitoring, and better service. For example, when a customer calls in to a computer tech help call center, a computerized voice may tell them your call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes, and in these cases the telephone conversation may be recorded.

Companies who wish to monitor telephone conversations within the company, spouses who wish to monitor their partners telephone conversations and anyone who requires information that is passed through telephone conversations needs to proceed with extreme caution. Laws surrounding the taping and listening in to private conversations is quite strict. The best option is to hire a private investigator with the experience as well as the knowledge of laws to conduct a thorough, legal investigation. Anyone who needs answers can now turn to the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators to hire a local, qualified investigative professional.

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PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

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Who Should Use a Polygraph?

2007-04-19T00:00:00-06:00

A polygraph can be a useful tool that can be used as part of a larger investigation to get answers. However, businesses interested in using the test need to follow the law to the letter to avoid legal action.

Polygraph tests have caused a lot of controversy and have generated many myths over the years. In November 2006, A Jacksonville, Florida firefighter fought the results of a polygraph test that he says was inaccurate. The man took the test as part of an internal investigation into an incident which allegedly involved nooses being placed on his uniform. The polygraph results suggested deception, but the firefighter has always consistently claimed that he found nooses on his uniform an act that can be seen as a hate crime or a form of harassment. Administrators of the test are defending the polygraph as a reliable tool but the firefighter and his attorney are pointing out the many documented studies that suggest the test is highly fallible.

A polygraph is sometimes called the lie detector test but this is a misnomer. The test is really nothing more than a way of measuring the bodys responses when questions are asked. Polygraph examiners compare physical responses to questions to see how a subject reacts to questions for which the answer is known (such as what is your name?) and to questions for which the answer is unclear (such as where were you on the night of September 30?). By comparing the two, proponents of the polygraph claim that deception can easily be uncovered, since people react physically when they lie.

Should you look to a polygraph to get answers?

There are many situations when someone may want to use a polygraph test:

Defendants interested in proving their innocence. Defendants involved in a case do not always have hard evidence to prove their innocence. In some of these cases, voluntarily taking a polygraph test can impress on the court that the defendant has nothing to hide and is telling the truth.
Attorneys involved in criminal trials or civil cases -- and their plaintiffs. Attorneys do not always like to use polygraph tests, since the test results are not predictable. Nevertheless, polygraph test results can be used as part of the larger evidence of a case to prove guilt or innocence. Also, polygraph examiners can be called to the stand to testify.
Banks and other businesses involved in internal investigations. Corporations running internal investigations into theft, crimes, or other workplace dangers will sometimes use a polygraph to determine whether employees are being truthful in an investigation and whether employees are loyal to a company.
Some hiring committees. Some government agencies and companies use polygraph testing when hiring candidates. This type of screening is most common in jobs that require high-level security clearance or considerable responsibilities.

Legal issues to keep in mind

According to the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 ("EPPA"), not everyone can use the polygraph test. According to the act, employers can only ask their employees to take a polygraph test as part of an "ongoing investigation" into a case that involves business losses or financial losses to the company. The employer can only request the test of employees who are reasonably under suspicion for the crime or incident in question. Employers cannot randomly use the test to uncover theft or crime in the workplace and employees always have the right to refuse to take the test. Even in cases where a polygraph test seems to indicate wrongdoing, the test itself cannot be used to indict an employee. At most, the test can be used as part of an overall investigation or as supporting evidence.

What do businesses need to know?

Businesses interested in using the polygraph as part of company investigations need to proceed with caution. Laws protect employees and potential employees and overstepping these laws can mean long legal battles. Savvy businesses know that hiring a professional investigator to run polygraph tests or internal investigations is often smartest. A good, local investigator can run a thorough, legal check which provides real answers that can stand up in court. Now, finding such an investigator is easier than ever, thanks to the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators. The PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators is a free polygraph resource, with lots of useful information. It is also a database that allows anyone to find experienced, local investigators.

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When Does Online Cheating Cross the Line?

2007-03-06T00:00:00-07:00

Online cheaters connect with other partners in cyberspace for adventures that range from erotic virtual encounters to basic flirting. While some dont consider it cheating, many experts agree that online infidelity crosses the line and can lead to real cheating in person.

Online cheating has many forms. Some internet users log onto online dating sites or specifically, online dating sites designed especially for discreet married people to meet someone in person. Many others simply flirt and have affairs online, without ever meeting the person they are speaking with.

What is online cheating?

Some justify hot chats as harmless fun, but this sort of behaviour has caused marital rifts and has even lead to in-person affairs offline. At best, cybersex means that a partner starts spending time with someone besides their partner time that can better be invested in the relationship. Since online flirting or online sex is simpler and fantasy-based, it can fuel desire even more, leading someone to seek a real-life affair. Of course, there is always the real possibility that the cheaters partner will be upset and hurt when they find out about such online activity.

Flirting, and even having an erotic encounter online, is as simple as logging onto a chat group to meet people. Partners who meet this way can even go into private online rooms to continue their virtual conversations. Instant messaging, email, and forums are all communication devices that can allow online couples to have virtual encounters. Thanks to fictional usernames, these encounters can remain completely anonymous and completely online.

Why online affairs?

There are many reasons why people turn to online affairs. For instance, these relationships are really not relationships at all. They require far less work than a real marriage or partnership. In addition, virtual affairs are also fantasy-based in some cases. There is no need to discuss or face responsibility, and there is no need to work on the relationship. Fake usernames make many people feel that their online activities are remote from everyday life and completely anonymous.

Many experts view online intimacy as a move towards a relationship break-up. Some partners who start going online for intimacy start displaying addictive behaviours by spending more and more time online rather than in their real relationship. Others start taking their online fantasies to the next level by meeting in person with those they have met online. In either case, the partner of these online cheaters is left alone in a relationship, and the relationship starts to deteriorate quickly when two people are not communicating. The partner of the online cheater may start to feel envious or insecure about the online intimacy and resentment may formulate.

What can a couple do?

In any event, getting the facts straight is always the first step. In rare cases, a partner may be completely honest about their online activities. However, in most cases, a partner will simply see some signs that an online affair is taking place, such as noticing that their other partner is spending a lot of time online, getting very secretive about online activity, and/or withdrawing from the relationship. In all these cases, it is important to find out what is going on. Knowing whether an affair is virtual or in-person, and knowing the scope of the affair, can help bring closure and answers that lead to some concrete decisions.

A private investigator can provide concrete, indisputable answers even answers that can stand up in court if an affair leads to a divorce. A professional investigator can tell a partner whether a spouse is having an affair, and can often identify the other party involved. In many cases, an investigator can set up a simple computer surveillance system that can track online chats and messages, thus revealing the real scope of an online affair. Finding a local, qualified investigator is as simple as visiting the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators. The PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators allows users to browse an online database of investigators and browse free cheating resources that can bring real peace of mind and real answers.

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PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

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How to Tell Whether a Partner is Having an Emotional Affair

2007-02-23T00:00:00-07:00

Look out for the signs of an emotional affair. Emotional cheating can lead to a traditional affair, so keeping an eye out for the classic signs can help partners outwit pain down the road.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with a friendship. However, friendships do not involve the deception and the type of inappropriate emotional closeness that an emotional affair entails. Despite its name, an emotional affair can involve physical intimacy, although it does not always. What this type of infidelity always dishes out, though is pain: pain caused by a partner who invests more emotionally into another relationship.

Emotional affairs involve someone who builds an inappropriately intimate relationship with someone outside their partnership. This may mean that a husband suddenly starts confiding all his personal and work-related problems to a female co-worker rather than his wife. It could also mean a wife suddenly confiding all her successes and desires to a new male friend rather than her husband. An emotional affair is usually also marked by secrecy – a partner may downplay or outright lie about the amount of time spent with a new partner. Sexual attraction is almost always part of the equation, too, although it is not always acted upon.

How to tell?

There are several signs that a partner is having an emotional affair:

1) Sudden, intense interest with someone of the opposite sex. Whether it is a new co-worker or a new friend met through a hobby, a partner may suddenly start spending lots of time with this new person. They may show an unusual amount of interest in this person.

2) A partner starts talking about – or not talking about – someone. An emotional affair can be confusing. A partner may start talking about a new friend excessively or may start complaining about them, just in order to speak about a new object of their affection. In other cases, guilt about confusing feelings may make a partner clam up. A partner may spend inordinate amounts of time with someone, but may simply never mention them.

3) A partner suddenly seems moody or withdrawn. Guilt and the pressure of deception may mean a sudden withdrawal from the existing relationship. A partner may also start to act very affectionate in order to “make up” for their feelings, only to start acting cranky again when confusion sets in.

4) Sudden extended hours online or out at work. A partner will generally spend considerable amounts of time conversing and communicating with the new object of their affection. In many cases, these communications will not be explicitly sexual, but will be very intimate, covering fears, desires, goals, and problems that the individual is not even sharing with their current partner.

5) Sudden interest in appearance. Emotional affairs almost always have an undercurrent of sexual attraction, even when no physical infidelity takes place. A partner may start fussing with their appearance more or altering their appearance (to suit the new partner’s tastes).

How to find out the truth?

Emotional affairs are tricky to prove. In some cases, they cross boundaries of friendship in very subtle – but very important – ways. Proving that deception takes place is often a job for a professional. Since some emotional cheating does progress into traditional affairs, it is crucial to take steps to find out the truth early on, to have the knowledge to make the right decisions for the relationship. Finding a private investigator who can get to the bottom of a partner’s strange behaviour is as easy as browsing the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators. The PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators has free infidelity resources as well as a free, searchable database that lets anyone find local, qualified investigators fast.

About PInow.com
PInow.com (http://www.pinow.com/) is a Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators that enables law firms, corporations and the general public to find investigators anywhere. PInow.com strives to be the most trusted resource on the web to locate qualified investigators. All investigators listed on PInow.com are pre-screened and must meet specific listing requirements.

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Is Your Ex Avoiding Child Support?

2007-02-22T00:00:00-07:00

Many parents and children are in financial difficulty today because parents are not paying the child support ordered by courts. Hiring a private investigator can help parents augment resource-strapped legal systems so that payment can finally be made.

Deadbeat parents cost children a lot of money. In the state of Hawaii alone, more than half a billion dollars represents the amount of delinquent child support payments. According to 2005 statistics, the state is only able to successfully collect 40% of delinquent accounts. The District of Columbia is not much better, collecting only in 37% of cases. Most states have passed laws to get deadbeat parents to pay up -- in some states; parents who fall behind on their child support can find their pay checks cut, their credit dinged, or their licenses suspended.

Despite the legal measures, though, parents still report that deadbeat parents do not pay child support. Child advocacy groups point out that some parents move or change identities in order to avoid child support, while others only make a payment or two when threatened with cut pay or loss of a license and then return to non-payment. In many cases, law enforcement and child services simply do not have the resources to find and compel non-paying parents to make payments.

What can parents do that the courts have not tried?

This leaves many families and many children devoid of the financial support promised to them by courts. The financial distress this causes leads many to private investigators. Investigative professionals with child support investigation experience can offer a number of services, including:

Tracking down parents who have changed their place of residence or their identity to avoid child support payments.
Tracking down a parents place of employment, so that child support payments can be deducted from their pay.
Asset searches that can prove how much money a parent has. This service can even help uncover hidden assets including hard assets such as real property -- that can be used towards child support.
Surveillance to prove that a non-paying parent is living a lifestyle which includes enough money to make payments.

Why choose an investigator?

While the government may not be able to uncover the information a parent needs, an investigator will work until all information is available. The custodial parent can then use this information in order to get the legal system to take action. With evidence in hand, it is easier for a parent to get the legal system to compel the non-paying parent to meet their financial obligations.

Since parents seeking child support investigations are often low on money, many investigators set fixed fees for these services. Some are willing to accept payment after a parent has collected payment from the other parent. In many cases, a child support investigation is an investment.

A free child support investigation resource

Parents now have an additional resource to help them get their child support. The PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators is a free-to-use private investigator directory that can help parents quickly and easily find qualified, experienced investigators in their area. With the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators, parents can find a professional who can help them conduct a through, legal investigation that gets results. The PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators even has a full resource library that can help parents get the most from their investigation.

About PInow.com

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

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Real Estate Fraud Is On the Rise: Protect Yourself

2007-02-16T00:00:00-07:00

Real estate fraud is on the rise. Knowing the popular scams out there and knowing how to protect against this type of criminal activity is essential.

Real estate fraud is an umbrella term for criminal activity involving real estate criminal activity that usually amounts to little more than theft. According to new statistics, the problem seems to be getting worse. The FBI reported that in 2005 alone, real estate fraud cost the country at least $606 million. The Treasury Department is tracking 35% more suspicious through 2006. The IRS reports that cases of mortgage fraud that have been brought to their attention have been doubling every two years, starting with this decade. This worrisome trend means that all real estate investors and homeowners should be on the alert.

What is real estate fraud?

This type of fraud is usually a means of stealing money from homeowners or lenders. It can take many shapes:

Fraudulent real estate mortgage lenders and other professionals. Sometimes, criminals pose as real estate professionals in order to gather money from homeowners, lenders, mortgage holders, or others. Once they have money in hand, they may quickly disappear.
Scams involving investments. Some criminals target investors, especially new real estate investors. They may market information products that promise investors the secrets of investments or they may market actual investment offers. Once the investor pays up, they generally either find that they have paid for nothing, or else for something worth far less than the asking price.
Identity theft resulting in theft of property title or equity. This is a very popular scam. A criminal will steal a persons identity and get a mortgage in their name. In another variation, the fraudster will target homeowners and will steal their identity in order to assume the title on the home in order to get an equity loan. Victims of identity fraud may not notice anything is wrong until they start getting angry calls from lenders. Even though lenders may not have checked the loan applicants identity carefully, lenders will often put pressure on the victim of fraud to pay up.
Stop foreclosure scams. There are many fraudsters who target homeowners who are about to lose their homes. They may offer these owners a fraction of the value of the home or equity in exchange for help. The victim may realize that foreclosure still takes place or that they have lost ownership or equity for far less than they were entitled to.
Illegal financing scams. Fraudulent lenders may offer homeowners mortgages at illegal rates or with highly suspect terms. Home equity loans scams fall into this same category homeowners may sign up for home equity loans only to find that the terms make their loan unaffordable and so lead to repossession of the home.
Scams involving falsified information. Some fraudsters over-appraise or falsify appraisal information in order to get a home loan. By the time lenders have realized their mistake, the criminal is long gone along with the money.

What can customers do to protect themselves?

There are many things that can be done to safeguard against scams:

Be careful with contracts. Always have written contracts for any major transaction and have those contracts looked over by a qualified attorney.
Keep tabs on credit reports. Checking a credit report is a good way to ensure that no new mortgages have been added. Credit reports are a good way to catch fraudsters fast possibly while they are still in the country and can be caught.
Always check out sellers of real estate products, lenders, borrowers, and others. If large amounts of money need to change hands, running a simple background check can uncover past criminal activity or other problems that can be a red flag.

What if it is too late?

Those who have already been victimized should seek legal help and the help of a professional investigator. Legal counsel can help a victim understand their rights and options. An investigator can find the criminal and any assets they have which can be used to repay the victim. Also, a qualified investigator can find other victims of the same fraudster, which can help mount a better court case against him or her. Finding a qualified, local investigator with the right experience is as simple as consulting the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators. With resources and a free, easy-to-use database of resources, the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators is an ideal place for answers.

About PInow.com

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

Visit PInow.com to find investigators who can help with all your investigation needs.

Computer Surveillance - What Does it Offer?

2007-01-24T00:00:00-07:00

Computer monitoring software can uncover exactly what computer users are doing online. Anyone interested in installing this type of software, though, needs to select the program carefully.

According to a 2001 American Management Association survey, 77.7% of major U.S. companies used computer surveillance to check employee e-mail, Internet use, phone calls, computer use, and files. Some companies even used computer surveillance to videotape workers. The reason is not hard to see: According to IDC Research, 30 to 40% of Internet use during work hours is for personal use. Employers are concerned that they are losing worker productivity, thanks to employees who use work hours to surf the Internet and to send personal email. Employers are also concerned that workers who use company computers to commit fraud crimes, or use the system to send sexually explicit materials may embroil the company in a lawsuit.

It's not just employers who are concerned, either. Parents and spouses are worried as well. According to a US Congressional Study submitted on June 8, 2000, more than 20% of children have been solicited for sex online. According to the 1999 Greenfield and Rivet Internet Use and Abuse Survey 1999, 57% of Internet users use their Internet connection to flirt. The high proliferation of online dating sites some catering specifically to married people looking for discreet affairs also gives many couples pause. Computer monitoring allows anyone who is worried about an unfaithful partner, an ineffective employee, or a child at risk to monitor computer use for signs of trouble.

What is computer surveillance?

Computer surveillance usually takes place through computer monitoring software. This software is easy to install, widely available both through online downloads and through software packages, and generally costs under $100. Some companies even offer computer surveillance services with monthly or weekly updates of information. Once software or services are installed on a system, the program is invisible to most users and usually works quietly to record every keystroke made on the computer system.

The person who has installed the software and is aware of its presence can then use their software password to log onto the program and get information about where other users of the computer have been online. The program will provide passwords, web sites visited, and other information, so it can give a pretty clear picture of what a person has been doing online and on the computer. The person who has installed the computer surveillance software can even access other users e-mail accounts and password protected online accounts, thanks to the fact that the computer software records all keystrokes -- including passwords. If other users of the computer system have written e-mails on the computer, these can be read by the person who has installed computer surveillance software.

At the same time, no one but the person who has installed the software is aware of the program is there -- it is a completely hidden program that does not change the performance of the computer and does not provide an icon for other users to be aware of the software. In some cases, the surveillance is self protected, so that even if the computer is cleaned and reinstalled, the software remains, hidden on the system.

Some surveillance software is installed without any computer users awareness or agreement. These pieces of software -- called spyware -- are considered malevolent software and can now be detected by antivirus and antispam or anti-spyware programs. Spyware is often installed by companies who wish to do marketing research on online users. It can also be installed by hackers or online criminals.

Who can use computer surveillance?

Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, system administrators are allowed to monitor computer activity, including users messages, in the normal course of work. Under the law, administrators are not required to alert users of the surveillance, although legal experts do advise employers to tell employees when and how monitoring will take place.

Companies and individuals interested in computer surveillance do need to find legal and workable solutions that give them the answers they need. Not all online surveillance systems are as safe, or as discreet, as advertisements suggest. Thats why many companies and even individuals are turning to investigators with e-surveillance experience for help. Qualified investigative professionals can set up legal surveillance systems, run security audits, and can provide consultations that ensure real security both in the workplace and in the home. Finding a local private investigator is now easier than ever with the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators, and the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators even offers free surveillance resources that can help anyone with questions get started.

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PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

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Scooby Doo, Magnum PI and the 8 other 'best private detectives of all time'

2007-01-11T00:00:00-07:00

The Staff at PInow.com, a worldwide directory of investigators, compiled a top 10 list of the most interesting, sexy, and cool fictional detectives and PIs of all time.

You watch them on TV, you read about them in your favourite novels and watch them on the old silver screen, but how do your favourite PIs and detectives fare against the best of the best? Read on:

10) Scooby-Doo and Those Pesky Kids (Fred "Freddie" Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Norville "Shaggy" Rogers). First an animated show and then a cultural phenomenon, this is where most of us first learned about private investigation. The members of Mystery, Inc., are definitely unlicensed, but few professionals make driving around in an old van and uncovering old crooks dressed as ghosts look so cool.

9) Inspector Jules Maigret. The French do it, too. Georges Simeons police inspector was streetwise, kind, and unassuming as he solved Paris's crimes and worked for the Parisian police. Created by writer Georges Simenon, Maigret appeared in seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories from 1931 to 1972, after which he was the star in numerous television shows. In many ways, the loveable inspector embodied all our favourite stereotypes about detectives he smoked pipes, relied as much on intuition as on technique, and often stopped by watering holes for a drink.

8) Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie's Belgian detective appeared in more than 50 short stories and 30 novels. The very neat detective with the huge moustache and small frame was one of the eccentrics of the private eye world, worrying about his shoes and his stomach with all the fussiness of an old maid. For all that (and maybe because of it) we rather like the old chap.

7) The Shadow. The character created by Walter B. Gibson is pulp hero, appearing in movies, books, comic books, and radio shows. We love pulp heroes, and this detective was the star of the pulp fiction world through the 1930s and 1940s. With a mysterious past, the Shadow lurks out of sight, solving crimes. We love the fact that The Shadow was a hard-working detective he was featured in more than 325 books, solving hundreds of mysteries and crimes. Now thats work ethic.

6) Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade hails from the macho era of hard-boiled detectives. No great sensitivity here, just fedoras and plot twists and turns aplenty. Whether you are reading Hammett's short stories or watching or reading The Maltese Falcon, it's hard not to admire Sam. We always did like the strong, silent types.

5) Remington Steele. The title character of the TV show that made Pierce Brosnan a household name was not even a TV character at first. In the show, it is Laura Holt who is a private detective. When she finds that few clients are willing to work with a female detective, she invents an imaginary superior named Remington Steele. The fake name is eventually adopted by Brosnan's character.

4) Magnum, P.I. In this 80's television show, Thomas Magnum, played by Tom Selleck, was a private investigator working in Hawaii. Thomas Magnum preferred being called a private investigator over detective or private eye. With a tropical background and that famous, cool moustache, what's not to love about Magnum, P.I.?

3) Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote was the ultimate in nosey, loveable armchair detectives. A very prolific writer, Fletcher lived in quiet Cabot Cove, Maine, which somehow turned out to be a crime center that made NYC look tame by comparison. Who knew? Jessica was the one that taught all would-be authors that every book tour for mystery authors ended in a mystery or a murder. We also adore Angela Lansbury she made being a busybody positively glamorous (well, almost this was the 1980s).

2) Addison and Hayes. Where would we be without those wacky 80's PI shows? In the classic Moonlighting, Blue Moon Detective Agency has two partners, Madolyn 'Maddie' Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and David Addison (Bruce Willis), who solve crimes each week while bantering and flirting (while pretending not to flirt, of course). This is where all those professional but sexually tense TV relationships started way before Mulder and Scully.

1) Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character that author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew to hate, was the first one to make a deerstalker cap and magnifying glass something besides hopelessly geeky. Maybe his mastermind and cool, scientific reasoning made him more like a Star Trek Captain than a sexy James Bond, but at least Holmes was having fun snorting coke and playing his violin at 221B Baker Street.

There are many great fictional investigators and detectives that have adorned the big screens and television, and who have come alive through books and comics. We surely have overlooked some of your favourites.

Please comment on whom you would include on your top 10 and we will follow-up with a readers choice article.

About PInow.com

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

Visit PInow.com to find investigators who can help with all your investigation needs.

Understanding The Repossession Process

2007-01-09T00:00:00-07:00

Businesses that rent, borrow, lease or offer financing on products face risk of non-payment. When a customer does not make payment, the business stands to lose considerable amounts of money. Investing in a professional investigator with repossession experience can be the best way to collect property legally without losing additional money.

The repossession process today really begins with the way companies do business. In todays business world, many companies sell products and offer financing at the same time or lease and rent products. In all these cases, there is a risk that the customer will simply not honour their contract and will not pay.

When a customer does not pay, the business has a few options. They can write off the loss, they can keep trying to collect on the delinquent account, or they can repossess the item that has not been paid for. Repossession is a legal process that allows a business to legally take over a product in cases where a contract has been broken. No business likes to repossess it is a costly hassle and still results in some loss of money but in cases where money cannot be recovered, repossession lets a company recover some of their lost money and assets.

Repossession also lets a business cut their losses. Statistics have shown that most accounts more than 90 days outstanding will not be paid. The entire time that an account goes unpaid and an item goes uncollected, the seller or lender loses even more money in sending out collection letters. Plus, the items continue to be used, lowering its potential resale value even more. For all these reasons, repossession can be a good option for severely delinquent accounts.

The first step in repossession usually involves looking over the paperwork. The company will have to look over the contract between the business and the customer. The contract that the customer signed must state that the seller or lender can repossess the product. The contract should also outline exactly when the business can repossess. It is important that the business wait until this date has passed before making any attempts at repossession. Some contracts further state that the customer must pay certain fees if non-payment occurs, usually to cover the money that the seller or lender loses through repossession and through the reselling of the object.

Next, businesses must gather all evidence and paperwork related to the repossession. This can include a copy of the contract, evidence of non-payment, and letters of reminder and collection that have been sent to the customer. Finally, the business must contact a good private investigator or repossession service in order to have the products recovered.

There are plenty of good reasons to rely on a professional and, specifically, a professional investigator in the repossession process. Taking possession of products without help is time-consuming and can be risky. Each state has its own laws regarding trespassing and repossession. A business owner can break just one law and find themselves charged. Plus, any small legal oversight in the repossession process can give the customer all the ammunition they need to have the repossession declared illegal which can cause big headaches for the business already losing money. All this can be avoided by having a professional take care of the repossession.

Although there are plenty of repossession companies out there, there is a good reason to look for an investigator with repossession experience. Such a professional can not only repossess a product legally, but can also find customers who have moved away or who have concealed a product in order to keep it from being seized. Keep in mind that most customers take a very dim view of repossession and may resist repossession. An investigator has the experience and knowledge of what to do to get the product back for a business quickly and without damage.

Now, businesses can find local investigators more easily than ever before. Online, the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators is a free investigator directory that lets anyone find a qualified professional investigator in minutes. Plus, the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators has a free repossession resource library, full of tips for businesses.

About PInow.com

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

Visit PInow.com to find investigators who can help with all your investigation needs.

Tracking Down Emotional Affairs

2007-01-04T00:00:00-07:00

Emotional affairs often involve deep friendship and intimacy as well as sexuality, which can lead to real problems if they cause another relationship to form. Tracing and proving this sort of infidelity can be extremely difficult, however.

Emotional affairs are a type of infidelity that usually does not begin with physical intimacy or sex. In fact, by definition, this type of cheating begins with the emotions. Many people assume that cheating must involve physical intimacy, but this type of infidelity can also lead to broken relationships.

What is emotional cheating?

This sort of cheating is often characterized by:

Deception and secrecy. Those involved may not tell their partners about the amount of time they spend with each other. An individual involved in this type of affair, for example, may tell his or her spouse that they are staying late at work when they are really meeting with someone else. Even if no physical intimacy occurs, the deception does undermine existing relationships and clearly shows that those involved think they are doing something wrong. In other words, if there was really no harm in meeting with a friend, both parties would feel comfortable telling their partners the truth about where they are meeting and what they are discussing.
Inappropriate emotional intimacy. The partner being unfaithful may spend excessive time with someone of the opposite sex time that is not being spent with an actual partner. He or she may confide more in their new friend than in their partner and may share more intimate emotional feelings and secrets with their new partner than with their existing spouse. Any time that an individual invests more emotionally into a relationship with someone besides their partner, an existing partnership may suffer.
Sexual chemistry. Emotional affairs may not lead to physical intimacy, but some do. In most of these affairs, however, an unspoken attraction exists. A partner may spend extra time getting ready to see this new partner or may buy new clothing or change their appearance in order to seem attractive to this new person.

Are emotional affairs a real problem?

Emotional affairs can be as destructive to marriages and partnerships as sexual ones. They create real feelings of betrayal and anger. Whenever a partner is rushing off to meet a new friend rather than working on a current relationship, the existing relationship will suffer. Plus, the existing partner will feel extremely hurt if a spouse runs off to share exciting news or problems with someone else. An intimate relationship is where a person usually shares their desires, fears, and victories. When one partner starts sharing these details with someone else first, the relationship starts breaking down.

The problem with emotional affairs

This sort of cheating is very difficult to pin down. Many individuals defend such infidelity simply as friendship. There is often little physical evidence no clearly sexual notes or emails. In many cases, it takes a professional to uncover deception is taking place. A private investigator can gather evidence of lying and can use surveillance to find out how far an affair has gone. It is simple to find this type of professional through the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators. Plus, the PInow.com Worldwide Directory of Private Investigators even offers free infidelity resources that offer real answers.

About PInow.com

PInow.com was developed by the team that brought you the ServeNow.com Process Servers Directory (http://www.serve-now.com/).

Visit PInow.com to find investigators who can help with all your investigation needs.