Summer is just around the corner and that means families will reignite their love and affection for one another by piling into a small American car and driving 500 miles without working air conditioning in 2,000 degree heat to a place designed to suck more money out of their pockets that some kind of money sucking vacuum.
But don’t fret. Some families have learned how to recoup their lawsuits against amusement parks by filing some strange lawsuits. The Orlando Sentinel compiled some of the stranger suits filed against parks from their neck of the woods.
One attendee of the Magic Kingdom claimed he was falsely arrested when he “joked” about having a bomb in his bags. So thank this man, America. From now on, everyone going to Disneyworld will have to undergo a full cavity search.
Another man at Disneyworld claimed an employee told him he was standing in the wrong line, fainted from humiliation and injured himself from the fall. I wonder if the same thing happened to him when his lawsuit hit the newspapers.
Melbourne, April 26 (ANI): Social networking sites like Facebook are being used by private investigators to uncover false claims made to insurance companies.
International experts have revealed that the sites are ‘gold’ for identity thieves, reports Courier Mail.
They are perusing photos and comments made on the sites of claimants and witnesses to see if they tally with statements made to insurance companies.
In some cases investigators are uncovering photos showing people who claim to have injuries preventing them from working doing activities such as skiing.
But sites such as Facebook also have become a tool for investigators to uncover people doing undeclared jobs, to track down those who owe debts and uncover the shady past of job applicants.
Investigation firm MPOL Investigations Australia has an agent dedicated to searching the social networking sites.
Using a social networking site, the company discovered that a claimant who was suspected of having undeclared income did have a hidden part-time job.
While the Facebook site had a privacy block, the investigators were able to search an open “friend” site, which provided a clear link to their subject.
The investigation firm used photos on a social networking site to prove that people who claimed their home had been broken into were at home at the time, having a party.
Julia Robson, the company’s social networking specialist, said one person claiming to have a foot injury posted family pictures showing him playing soccer.
Craig Adams of Brisbane’s CA Investigations said information gleaned from social networking sites mostly was used to gauge how much people exaggerated their claims.
He said in one case a woman who claimed she had a psychological injury and could not socialise, posted Facebook photos of herself sitting in bars on Melbourne Cup Day. (ANI)
Edward Herdrich can’t bug your ex’s phone. Nor does he carry a gun. He’s never been shot at or had a knife or gun pulled on him.
But he’s helped reunite parents with their runaway children, exposed people lying on workers’ compensation cases and even spent four months on a company bowling team to build trust so he could root out workplace crime.
The 48-year-old Elgin man and private investigator shared anecdotes and dispelled some myths about the work of detectives on Sunday afternoon while promoting his book, “Private Investigation: A Guide for the Beginner,” at Books At Sunset in Elgin.
“It’s not always like Agatha Christie where you have high friends in high places to help you along the way,” said Herdrich.
He described his book as a general reader about how to get started pursuing a career in the field. The book also contains real-life stories about some of the cases during his 19-year career.
He specializes in fraud investigations, criminal defense and locations, such as finding runaways or the birth parents of clients who were adopted.
Herdrich, who has taught continuing education classes on private investigation at Elgin Community College for five years and Harper College in Palatine for three years, said he doesn’t like to do surveillance work because it’s time consuming and he can only focus on one case.
He likes “the puzzle” behind location-type cases.
“Communication skills are so important in this industry because you don’t know who you’re going to have to talk to to get information,” he said. “A good private detective is the first person to arrive, the last person to leave and the person nobody remembers that much about.”
Herdrich said private investigators in Illinois must be licensed by the state, but there is no formal college program to earn a degree to become a detective.
A lot of investigators have military or law enforcement backgrounds, but it’s not essential. Future private eyes must work several years for a licensed investigator and later pass a state test.
“There’s no real education. I’d like to see that changed,” he said.
Herdrich is slated to speak again at 2 p.m. April 25 at Books at Sunset, 1100 South St. For more information, call (847) 888-1868. Source
At the World Investigators Conference in Dallas, Rhonda Hines inspects a device that can detect hidden cameras. Some 600 private detectives from around the world attended.
DALLAS — Let’s say you’re a private investigator, and your client wants to get the goods on that philandering spouse.
You could do it the old-fashioned way, trailing him (or her) all over town.
Or, for $695, you could buy a GPS Personal Asset Tracker and hide it under the bumper of the subject’s car. Then you could sit back in your office, turn on the computer and, via a secure Web site, get the location of every place Cheatin’ Heart goes.
“It works in real time so if they’re in a bar or at someone’s house, you can show up,” said Cody Woods, a private investigator and manager of the Spy Exchange & Security Center in Austin, Texas.
Technology is one of many factors changing the P.I. business, and nowhere was that more evident than at the recent World Investigators Conference in Dallas. Some 600 gumshoes from as far away as Thailand were on hand to learn about the latest gizmos and services for “getting the competitive edge” in a down economy, as one speaker put it.
Woods’ booth, for example, featured a cornucopia of surveillance gear, including $10 sunglasses that enable the wearer to see behind him. Or for $195, P.I.s can surreptitiously photograph a subject with tiny cameras hidden in everything from belt buckles and baseball caps to pens, watches, flashlights and key chains.
“People know cameras are in cell phones and might be a little wary,” Woods said, “but who’s going to think about a camera in a key chain? You can take a key chain anywhere.”
The three-day conference was partly sponsored by TLO, the Boca Raton company whose corporate slogan is “lightning in a bottle.” TLO founder Hank Asher developed Accurint, a database used by investigators to find people, and a highlight of the conference was to be Asher’s unveiling of a supposedly superior new product called Accurint Killer.
But there was no demonstration.
“The lightning isn’t quite in the bottle,” said Asher, who was accompanied to Dallas by most of his management team, including former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth.
Nonetheless, the crowd had plenty to take in.
Since Eugene Francois Vidocq became the world’s first private detective in the 1800s, tracking fraudsters around France, the P.I. business has grown ever-more specialized. At a book stall, conference participants could browse scores of titles ranging from Practical Homicide Investigations to Kidnap for Ransom to Financial Investigation and Forensic Accounting (Second edition).
“One reason P.I.s come here is to find other things to do,” said James Jessel of Signal Auditing.
His New York-based company is hired by DirecTV, a satellite service, to find bars and restaurants that show non-network National Football League games without paying for them. Signal Auditing in turn hires local private eyes to ferret out scofflaws.
“If we have somebody in Gainesville, they can access the legal list (of DirecTV) customers and know what restaurant is paying the legal rates,” Jessel said.
Darren McCulley’s specialty is more traditional. He does “fugitive recovery,” but the job has become easier thanks to Google and Web sites like Facebook and MySpace where even crooks post personal information.
“You could spend six months in a car or you could jump online and do a little profiling with social network sites,” said McCulley, a Dallas P.I. who recently found a notorious parole violator. “I think human nature is to want people to know what they’re doing.”
For P.I.s who need help navigating such sites, a Hernando County company, Tracers of Spring Hill, was touting its latest product: “Social Network Profile Search.”
The new service, which costs $2 (“no hit, no fee”) identifies the actual owner or user of a specific e-mail address and also finds Web postings, pictures, personal details, family, friends and more.
“I call it the George Orwell Search — a little 1984,” said Sarah Dyer of Tracers. “It implies Big Brother is watching you, but actually this is information that’s out there.”
The economy has taken its toll on private investigators, with thousands nationwide said to have dropped out of the business in the past few years. While the number of repossession agents in Florida is up, the number of P.I.s. has remained flat at about 7,900.
“The fact this hasn’t grown in a state where we’re used to occupations growing says something,” notes Terence McElroy, a spokesman for Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, which regulates private investigators.
Private eyes have long been popular in literature (Sherlock Holmes), movies (Sam Spade) and on television (Peter Gunn, the Rockford Files). Judging from the conference crowd, it remains a field dominated by men, many of them military veterans or former law enforcement officers.
But P.I.s of both genders have a disdain for one staple of the trade — spending long hours parked across from a No-Tel Motel, hoping to catch an unfaithful spouse.
“Surveillance is so ugly. I just hate it; I always did,” said Dana Miller, a Denton, Texas, investigator for 20 years. “It’s always raining or snowing or you’ve got to pee. That’s the hardest part for women.”… Source
Drive-by shooting epic fail: Forgetting to roll down your car window before you start shooting from the driver’s seat. Whoops.
Andrew J. Burwitz, 20, of Appleton, Wis., allegedly tried to do a drive-by shooting at the home of his ex-girlfriend’s family and another random house. Police found him because he failed to roll down his car window and shattered it when he made the first shot. Source
He was charged Wednesday with four counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, four counts of endangering safety by reckless use of a firearm, disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property.
More from the Appleton Post-Crescent:
According to court documents, the occupants of the house in the Town of Buchanan were awakened about 2 a.m. Monday to the sounds of breaking glass.
They saw a car driving off and found two bullets had struck the exterior of the house and three had entered the living room. None of the four people in the house was injured. The ex-girlfriend was attending school out of state.
Sheriff’s deputies examining the area found broken auto glass in the street, and, later that day, contacted area auto glass repair shops and found Burwitz had his car window replaced after filing an insurance claim.
Burwitz had been drinking heavily that night. But seriously, you still forgot to roll down the window? Boggles our mind.
It wasn’t exactly the crime of the century, but several folks’ nights were ruined last week when a pair of armed robbers attacked a Domino’s delivery driver and made off with $36 worth of chicken wings.
According to reports, the 19-year-old driver was attempting to make a delivery at a residence on the outskirts of Columbus, GA, at around 8:50 p.m. when the two suspects made their move, brandishing what appeared to be a chrome pistol at the unfortunate delivery man.
After one of the suspects, apparently recognizing the delivery man asked, “Is that you, Stevie?” the robbers then demanded, “Give me the wings” before fleeing the scene, leaving the driver unscathed.
It is unknown if the stolen food was actual Buffalo chicken wings, or the boneless Domino’s Buffalo Chicken Kickers… Source
