Remember, the parents knew that their child was not abducted and that if he was at the man’s home he went there on his own. In this particular case the police were given permission by the adult male to search his residence and they did not find the child. In fact they went twice to the same residence but on the second visit one of our investigators went inside the residence with the officers. Our investigator is a retired San Francisco Police Detective. Prior to the officers being called to the residence this second time, our investigator interviewed several neighbors who claimed that they had seen the child on a couple of occasions in the complex but they had not seen him enter the residence or leave the residence of the adult suspected of harboring the child. That information was sufficient for us to initiate surveillance on the townhouse complex and our investigator was about 75% certain he had seen the child come out the back door of the townhouse but he did not have a perfect view of the back door. We asked the boy’s parent to call the police again and when officers arrived they were again given permission to enter the townhouse.

Just as the officers were about to leave the townhouse our investigator noticed that there was an attic door in the ceiling above the second floor. He asked the officers to look in the attic and behold, the child was there. By law they could not arrest the man for harboring the child and he had no prior criminal record. The child was taken back to his parents who were thrilled to have their son back home. We suggested that the parents seek counseling to learn why the child ran away in the first place. Nice ending. For sure!

Clients seek to retain us when they find themselves in a precarious situation or when they are in a troubled state of mind because they are uninformed. We listen very carefully to the concerns of our clients and then we determine if we want to accept their case. Many people attempt to utilize the services of Private Investigators to gather information they have no legal right to have and should we suspect something is amiss we will refuse their request for our services. Unlike PI’s portrayed in the movies and on TV we don’t sit in dimly lit smoked filled offices. We have a light and bright atmosphere with a great view of the city and we’re not desperately waiting for our next assignment with no regard for what kind of case it is

Our Blog was created to enlighten the public as to the reality of what it is like to be a Private Investigator and a Personal Protection Specialist also referred to as a Bodyguard.

PROLOGUE

The Real World of a Private Investigator

We are inviting you into the real world of a private investigator’s life on any given day so you can become familiar with the reality of what it is like to conduct private investigations. Folks ask us all the time what it’s like to be a PI. We hope this blog illustrates that for you. We welcome your comments, suggestions and questions.

We receive investigative requests from all over the world. There are times when we nearly fall off our chairs when we’re asked to perform an investigative task that someone saw on a CSI show. TV’s CSI is a very successful and entertaining show and we’re not out to disparage or discourage your viewing of the show. Due to the requests we receive from time to time we thought you should be given some education about what is real and what is fiction. For example; not all of the technologies portrayed on CSI are real they are at times fictitious and they simply do not exist in the real world of Crime Scene Investigations. Some of the other fiction portrayed on CSI is; CSI personnel do not carry weapons they carry the forensic tools of their trade. CSI personnel do not interview suspects, police officers and detectives conduct interviews or interrogations of suspects. CSI personnel collect forensic evidence that they examine under specific guidelines established by the Forensic Science Community and State and Federal Prosecutors. Our staff wishes we could solve our cases within the 35 minutes CSI solve theirs (we subtracted commercial time).

Another show we wish we could duplicate is “Criminal Minds.” Yes there is an FBI Division that studies criminal behavior. They have become an essential group of experts who have contributed significantly to solving crimes. For those of you who are interested, here is a excerpt from the FBI website regarding profilers;

Question:
“17. I want to be an FBI “Profiler” – where do I begin the application process?

You first need to realize the FBI does not have a job called “Profiler.” The tasks commonly associated with “profiling” are performed by Supervisory Special Agents assigned to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) at Quantico, Virginia. Despite popular depictions, these FBI Special Agents don’t get “vibes” or experience “psychic flashes” while walking around fresh crime scenes. It is an exciting world of investigation and research — a world of inductive and deductive reasoning; crime-solving experience; and knowledge of criminal behavior, facts, and statistical probabilities.”

What we wouldn’t give to have a “Garcia” from Criminal Minds working for us. She types faster than a speeding bullet and she’s able to find out everything about anyone in less than a minute including the size of their socks LOL. Reality Check time, Garcia is a fictional character who is very entertaining. Most of the information she’s asked to find on her computers does not exist in reality. If it did exist we would be nearly a crime free country and we would be living under a totalitarian government. Wikipedia describes Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) as a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.[1] Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror.

Have you been watching “A Person of Interest” now there is a Private Investigator’s and law enforcement’s dream come true. To know about a crime before it happens and to jump on the investigation before it becomes a crime. My goodness, how delightful.

In our world there are no handbooks on how to find a runaway child or catch a cheating spouse or to save an innocent person from going to prison. Here is a case history about one such investigation we conducted that prevented an innocent man from going to prison. The client was an extremely successful businessman in Los Angeles where he had over three hundred employees working for him in a five hundred thousand square foot warehouse. He was in the freight forwarding business. His trucks would pickup goods arriving at the docks in Los Angeles and then transport them to his warehouse for temporary storage. Eventually he would receive instructions from his customers to size and package the goods and then transport them to his customer’s retail stores across the USA. This same client was also licensed by the US Customs Service to inspect various containers of goods arriving in the USA. His inspection business was another very lucrative business.

Our client employed his brother and both of them were dating two female employees. Eventually the client and his brother became disenchanted with their girlfriends and broke up with them. Then both brothers went on to marry two other women. As you can imagine the ex girlfriends were not very happy as “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Please pay close attention now because here’s where it gets a little complicated. While our client’s brother was dating his (now) ex girlfriend he eventually learned that she was married to man who was an informant for a Special Agent of the US Immigration Service. She told our client’s brother that she married the informant to become a legal resident of the USA (she was from the Philippines). Her husband was legally in the USA and he too was from the Philippines as was the Immigration Agent. Both men were US Citizens.

Eventually the Immigration Agent and his informant’s wife had an affair and to get the informant (husband) out of the way the Immigration Agent dispatched the husband out of town on a continual basis to be alone with his wife. While that was going on, our client broke up with his girlfriend and married someone else. Seems we need a scorecard about now. Two brothers break up with their girlfriends. One brother (not our client) girlfriend was sleeping with him, her husband and her husband’s boss. Then the brothers married two other women. Now we have two very upset ex girlfriends still in the employ of client’s company. By the way all the parties in this case with the exception of the brothers are all from the Philippines. Eventually, the ex girlfriends go to the Immigration Agent and ask for his help. They want to inflict serious pain on their ex boyfriends. As the saying goes, “Love conquers all” and since the Immigration Agent was in love with his informant’s wife he promised the ex girlfriends that he’ll teach the brothers a lesson they’ll never forget. We imagine by now you must be glued to this story (LOL) but we want to remind you that everything you’re reading was learned by us during an intense year long investigation.

After the ex girlfriends approached the Immigration Agent he walked into our client’s office and told him that he was going to file charges against him for hiring illegal immigrants. The Agent said nearly all of the employees were illegal and the fine for hiring them would be in the thousands. Here is where the story stops being humorous. The Immigration Agent, convinces our client to pay him off so he won’t report the illegal hiring. After that conversation the Immigration Agent went to the FBI and told them he was bribed by our client. He also told the FBI that they should bring in the DEA because our client is transporting and distributing illicit drugs throughout the USA. Adding to those allegations the Immigration Agent told the FBI that our client is paying bribes to US Customs Agents to bring in more containers for inspection so he can make more money. Last but not least he told the FBI that our client is paying all of his illegal employees under the table to avoid paying payroll tax and the IRS should be brought into the case. The FBI, the DEA, the US Customs Agency and the IRS all believed the Immigration Agent and they initiated a full scale two million dollar one year investigation that ended up with our client being indicted for bribery of a Federal Agent. No indictment was filed for illegal drugs or for bribing US Customs Agents or by the IRS as their investigation failed to turn up any evidence of those alleged crimes.

When we first met our client he had not called us to help him with his Federal case but rather with a problem he was having with his now estranged wife (he was just not lucky with love). Seems she broke into his warehouse and stole goods belonging to his customers and then sold the goods at swap meets. We caught her in the act and videotaped her. Our client was so pleased with our investigation that he asked us to look into his Federal indictment even though he had already plead guilty and was waiting for his sentencing hearing. We asked why he plead guilty and he explained he had spent a fortune on attorneys none of whom believed that he was innocent and none of who reviewed the evidence provided by the US Attorney General. “Are you guilty” we asked, he replied no and that he was set up by the US Immigration Agent who told him that for five thousand dollars he would not report the illegal hiring and our client was foolish enough to go along with the plan.

Our client and his brother asked us to review the evidence the US Attorney turned over to him and we discovered that all of the evidence was concocted by the Immigration Agent as a vendetta on behalf of the ex girlfriends. We also found that the evidence produced by the US Attorney was severely flawed and in reality they had no proof whatsoever that my client was involved in illicit drugs, payoffs to US Customs Agents or that he had not paid payroll taxes on his employees. We introduced our client to two partners at the law firm of Loeb & Loeb with whom we had worked with for many years and we asked them to review our client’s guilty plea because he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea after we confirmed that the government’s evidence clearly could be proven flawed. Once a defendant pleads guilty it is extremely difficult to reverse that plea. However, the firm won the motion and we proceeded to trial. Due to our investigation and our proving the existence of contrived and falsified evidence the judge dismissed the case in Federal Court and demanded a Grand Jury be convened to hear charges against the US Immigration Agent for Criminal Perjury.

The US Immigration Agent was forced to resign. He turned in his badge and gun was deported to the Philippines. The ex girlfriend who married the informant eventually divorced and was fired along with the brother’s ex girlfriend both of who received no satisfaction for any of thier vindictiveness. The Assistant US Attorney who prosecuted the case was fired because it became known by the Inspector General of the United States that he had known all along the evidence presented in court was deliberately concocted and flawed.

The sad part of this story was that the client eventually lost his business because he had spent everything he had on his defense but he was not found guilty and that was worth all of it. You can read about this case in the letters we received from the two Loeb attorneys under our Testimonial links. Our client eventually went into another business where today he is doing quite well and he certainly has learned a life lesson. We are still friends and we check in with each other now and then.

Stayed tuned for there is more to come. Thanks for dropping by.