Is there a network of private investigators?
Private investigator networking is a very big business. There's one company that specifically does that, it's called ION. They're located in Colorado. What they do is... As an example, let's say I'm in California and somebody comes to me and says, "I need to have this guy in Iowa investigated. I need three days of surveillance on him. Can you do that?" And you say, "Yes." You don't tell them that what you're going to do is call up ION. You tell ION, I need a surveillance specialist in Iowa. They have that guy call you and for ten percent of what his bill is. That's what they charge for the referral service. He does the whole surveillance, writes the reports. Sends you everything you need to satisfy your client. And you can charge a surcharge on top of what he's billing you for doing the investigation for you. Usually that surcharge, the amount of money you make as a profit, is what you would have spent if you had to travel there for three days. Stay in hotel, rent a car, have meals and all that. So your profit margin for farming the case out is that money you would have spent, if you had actually gone there yourself. And that's done; trading investigators is done all over the world. The World Association of Investigators does that all the time, you can call up and say, I'm a P.I. in California and I need an investigator. I work with an investigator in Tel Aviv, an Israeli investigator that calls me up all the time to work cases here. And he works cases for me in Israel. I've got an investigator in Mexico that I use.
