Surveillance is essential when a company or individual needs to be discreet when looking into insurance claims, crimes, child custody issues, company theft or someone suspected marital infidelity.  What can an expert surveillance investigator do for you?   They have the training, equipment and experience to do what it takes to observe, document those observations and report their findings.  Our investigators work cases with the mindset that each surveillance investigator will end up in court to testify to the facts and findings of their work.

There are many a reasons one would hire a private investigator.  The below are just a few examples of the types of surveillances we perform.

Insurance companies cover a myriad of things from personal health and death benefits to coverage of property like vehicles or buildings.  These companies are bombarded with claims from trip and falls to staged car accidents.  Only a licensed-investigator can assist in uncovering these untruths and deceptions.  Insurance companies utilize investigators regularly due to suspected malingering claims, false claims or to simply follow up for their personal knowledge.

Do you know where and what your employees are up to?  Have you suspected product missing or being stolen out from under your nose?  Are your employees stealing company time?  Do they load extra items onto your delivery truck and make undocumented stops?  All of the above acts can cost you several tens of thousands of dollars.  We once caught a small ring of employees loading up extra furniture onto their delivery trucks and making additional stops along their route.  They would sell extra items (worth a few thousand dollars each) to customers who were looking for cash deals.  The customer would give the employees cash and buy the items without the company’s knowledge.  The employees would take the furniture home utilizing the company vehicles, finish them with the company’s paint, then deliver the item when the customer received their original order.  If you looked at this from the outside in, everything looked like it was business as usual.  It took a skilled licensed-investigator’s eye to uncover the above and document it.

Child custody surveillance is difficult because parents’ emotions run high.  Usually one parent isn’t following court orders and the other parent needs proof to show the court.  Another instance is when a parent isn’t with the child as much as he or she claims yet the parent is fighting for more custody.  This is typically done in order to reduce child support monies.  Our services are used when a parent wants someone to observe how the other parent is spending time with their child.  If a parent suspects his or her ex spouse of spending time with undesirables or abusing controlled substances, our investigators need to be hired to document this.  In most cases, we are hired to observe the child and his or her whereabouts, ascertain who is caring for them and report any odd observations.

Workers compensation surveillance isn’t as cut and dry as one would hope it to be.  This system was developed in the 1950s because of the way large corporations treated injured employees.  If you were hurt on the job and couldn’t work, you didn’t work.  It was that simple.  It was then most states developed a workers compensation system in hopes of taking care of the injured employees.  Nowadays, the licensed-investigator is the check and balance to the liberally written workers compensation system.  Licensed-investigators are utilized to gather information and document our observations on video which can then be shown in court.  Is your claimant working even though you received a doctor’s note stating that your employee can not lift more than 5 pounds?  Don’t think this could happen to you?

In this realm of insurance fraud we are hired by employers, insurance adjusters, self-insured corporations and attorneys because the “claimant” is savvy to the system and everything is stacked against the employer and insurance company.  We’ve worked a few cases where the attorneys and doctors “coached” the applicant about private investigators and what to look for.  There are specialists who exclusively teach claimant attorneys, doctors and the claimant our techniques and what to watch for when on a claim.

Marital infidelity is when someone is suspected of having extramarital relations.  We are usually hired when one spouse suspects the other of cheating.  The individual may have checked his or her spouse’s email address and come across a suggestive email from a co-worker.  Maybe the spouse came home from a late night at the office and smelled like perfume or cologne.  We’ve also been hired to simply double check how the individual comports his or herself when he or she is out of town.  Again, we are hired for a myriad of reasons to perform surveillance and no situation necessitating surveillance is the same.

Counter surveillance is often needed by corporate executives, celebrities or well-established individuals who are the targets of threats, corporate espionage and personal attacks.  We have excelled at surveillance for years and have spotted several other investigators, security guards, retired cops and stalkers performing surveillance on our “principals.”  It takes a good surveillance investigator to identify another investigator.  We once had a job for a corporate executive who was worried for his welfare and hired us in addition to a bodyguard service.  We documented nineteen surveillance investigators in three days!  This gave our client the ammunition he needed to build a harassment case that later settled out of court.