Tag Archive for: private investigator
Five Questions to Ask an Investigator Before Hiring
Where do you start in deciding which investigator to hire for a sensitive job?
It should be a business of trust, just as it is when choosing someone to come up with an estate plan, to sue a former business partner, or to handle a complex…
Why Does My Investigation Cost $2,400? A Breakdown of a Typical Bill
After years in business, one of my biggest marketing challenges is still explaining to potential clients why an investigator can’t just use a few mysterious databases and “deep Googling,” as one hopeful person described it, and produce…
The Divorce Asset Questionnaire
People often ask when it comes to searching for assets, “Where do you even begin to look?” This sometimes comes after we give them the grown-up news that there is no magic computer terminal that will accept a Social Security Number and churn…
Medical Records on Facebook? Tread Carefully
While clients who ought to know better frequently ask us to get banking and cell phone records, a request for a medical record is far more rare. All three are illegal for us to obtain without a court order by federal statute in nearly any circumstance,…
Europe’s Right to be Forgotten: Full Employment for Investigators
If anyone wondered what the practical side of Europe’s new Right to be Forgotten would turn out to be, here it is: In less than a month since a court in the E.U. decided Google links were substantial information and could be scrubbed…
News Anchor Pleads Guilty to Fraud Scheme with Private Investigator
Juliet Bickford, a Virginia news anchor, pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud and money laundering charges on Wednesday in connection with an international fraud scheme orchestrated by her private investigator boyfriend, Theodoros Grontis. …
The Masters: In Golf, Facts and Law Just Like in Real Life
There has been no end of snobbery over the years that makes fun of the conservatism of golf: so much space to serve so few athletes, the cost to the environment, the exclusivity of the private clubs, and so on. But this fascinating New York…
A Cyprus Reminder: For Money and Other Data, There IS No Cloud
Why is it that we would never decide to put $100,000 in the bank and tell people our deposits are “in the cloud,” but we readily do so with data that could be worth many times more than that? This week’s drama in Cyprus, in…
Forensic Investigations: Due Diligence Done Correctly
What’s the difference between a forensic audit and a regular audit? We think we know the difference when we see it, but what is it? The issue came up before a short talk I was giving to some accountants last week, and the answer…
