Types Of Private Investigators
What are the different types of private investigators?
For all kinds of investigations, surveillance is pretty handy, whether you're doing a workers comp fraud or anything else. With workers comp all you're trying to determine is whether the guy is in the kind of physical condition he claims in his comp claim. That can only be done through observation. With domestic cases, you do surveillance because you want to see who they're cheating with, or maybe they're out using drugs or alcohol and they have got a kid in the car. In physical surveillance, you have investigators who specialize in surveillance. They know how to follow people without being caught. You have investigators that know public records, and ultimately they specialize in public records. They can pour over things and find that little kernel of information that will lead you to what you want. You also have investigators, and I actually have one guy on my staff who does bank fraud investigations whereby we are contracted to several banks. You have investigators that will be doing anti-stalking type cases. If you can think it up, there's an area of investigation for it. Anti-piracy, Computer crimes, Identity theft, and other things like that. A lot of people will want to hire a private investigator to make their case for them.
What is a 'surveillance investigator'?
Surveillance is a real good specialty. When you learn the techniques of how to follow someone without ever getting caught and you're good at it; like I say it takes a special kind of person to do that; then that's what you specialize in and a lot of private investigators, they will have a guy or a group of people on their staff that do nothing but surveillance. Generally a good surveillance isn't a one-man operation; it's a team of people and they have to work together well.
What is an 'insurance investigator'?
Insurance investigation can involve surveillance, but generally, they have two kinds of investigations. If you're talking about accidents, automobile accidents, or worker's comp, you have two types of investigations. You have the surveillance end for worker's comp to see if the person's really hurt the way they say they are, or you have what they call AOE/COE, which means arising out of or a clause of employment. Then you have insurance that can be fire or theft or those kind of claims, and you want to make sure the policyholder isn't the one who wasn't responsible for the fire or the theft. Those kind of things can go from checking bank accounts to checking their associates, and questioning other people they may know. There are a lot of different areas to find out if their claim is legitimate.
What is a 'corporate investigator'?
Corporate investigations actually involve a lot of different areas. You have investigators that might want to look into the defense on a wrongful termination suit. You might have investigators that are looking into if somebody is selling or compromising proprietary information to another business. You might look into internal theft. You might investigate, a lot of corporations are getting into this area, doing internal investigations into sexual harassment claims. So, basically you have to be prepared if they have a problem. You have forensic investigators that will basically be auditors that will look through books to see if there's any improprietary situations in business practices. There's just a lot of areas in corporate investigations, but basically the situation is you have one client - the corporation. You don't have to go out looking for work; you do in-house investigation, and there's a lot of corporations that have their investigative unit.
What is a 'civil and domestic investigator'?
Domestic stuff is civil. You have two types of domestic investigation though. Sometimes there is no court case involved. Sometimes they just want to know. The wife wants to know if her husband is cheating on her. She doesn't plan on divorcing him, she doesn't plan on taking him to court, or vice versa, they just want to know. It's curiosity. Other times there's a civil case filed, there's a divorce pending, and there's child custody and you want to look into the other person's background, so you're armed to the teeth when you're ready to go into court to make your claim as to why you should be the person that has custody of the children, or why you shouldn't have to pay so much alimony, those sort of things. The other thing that a civil investigator does is defending lawsuits and looking into the assets of another person. Sometimes a civil investigator or private investigator will do a pre-employment background check. So those are all civil. As a condition of employment, a prospective employee might sign a release saying, I'm authorizing the company to look into my background. There's a lot of areas in civil litigation that, where you use a private investigator to dig up information, usually public records, and find out who their associates are. Simple things like that sometimes.
What is a 'skiptracing investigator'?
Skip tracing investigations are pretty much, database stuff. They are a very lucrative business to be in. It's when somebody has, basically, skipped out on a debt, and they owe money. They have got creditors looking for them, and you're trying to find out what address they're living at now so you can go serve them with whatever paperwork to get them to pay that debt. That is one of those things that, unless you want to go live in a cave in the mountain in Tibet, you're going to have to leave a trail. There are very few people that don't have some information in some database somewhere telling the investigator where they're currently living.
What is a 'cyber investigator'?
What is a 'criminal defense investigator'?
A defense investigator for criminal cases is usually somebody who was formerly in law enforcement, and who has now got the “shoe on the other foot.” He's been hired by the defense attorney to look into getting evidence that proves that their client is innocent, or examining the evidence that's been gathered by the prosecution, and trying to find that “chip in the enamel” that they can find, or if they made a mistake or possibly find where the chain of evidence wasn't properly maintained; that's what they do, they kind of balance the “scales” for you.
