The internet age has made it easier than ever to save time and find the right private investigator to suit your needs. Websites that aggregate reviews make it simple to check multiple firm’s reputations at once. Utilizing email means investigators can respond to your inquiries lightning quick. With that in mind, here’s a few tips to help you find the right private investigator.
Find customer reviews and ask for references
Every business aims to satisfy it’s customers and private investigation firms are no different. One of the biggest benefits of the internet is the ability to quickly find reviews of just about anything. The Better Business Bureau, Yelp and Angie’s list are examples websites dedicated to keeping customers informed by aggregating reviews.
You can go to any of those sites and read hundreds of reviews from customers to help you figure out where to do business. Sometimes customers will give bad reviews for reasons outside of the business’s control. Luckily most review centric sites show the average of all reviews to help you determine if that bad review was an isolated incident or not.
Another way to determine where to spend your money is by asking the firm directly for references. Quality firms will be able to present references on request and if they can’t then it should set of alarm bells for potential clients. Always ask for references and reach out to as many past clients as you can.
You shouldn’t have to wait for a response to your inquiries
When you inquire with an investigation firm about doing business with them you should expect a quick response. With the advent of email it doesn’t make any sense that you would have to wait days to find out if you’re going to do business with a company or not. You may not get a fleshed out response right away, but it’s reasonable to expect acknowledgment of your request as soon as possible.
It benefits the client and the firm to respond expeditiously. Fast correspondence helps lay the groundwork for the level of service a client can expect and reflects the attention and importance with which a firm will serve them. Firms responding slowly or sporadically to your inquiries could be indicative of how they’ll handle your case. Do you want to wait for information about your case or do you want to know everything as soon as your investigators do?
Can they offer you a written cost estimate?
Ask anyone what the three most important considerations for where they do business are and you’re guaranteed to hear “price” listed early and often. Everyone is working within the constraints of their budget. Knowing what you’re going to spend ahead of time can help you maximize available funds and prevent unneeded stress.
Veteran investigators should be able to provide you with an estimate of the costs of your case, but it’s important that you get it in writing. Getting a written estimate will minimize the chances of miscommunication and confusion when the final bill arrives. Clients shouldn’t be caught off guard by the costs of the investigators work and veteran P.I.s understand this.
For Private Investigation Inquiry contact Thomas Lauth, Lauth Investigations 317-951-1100
David Schroeder, Blog Writer, Lauth Investigations International
The individual could be a witness, heir, a missing child, or a criminal. Maybe the individual is a former disgruntled employee who could whistle-blow about corporate misconduct or fraud. You might needing locate a subject in possession of the proverbial “smoking gun”—as in the case of stolen assets. Whether it’s an interview, serving papers, or investigate individuals, a Lauth PI can help you to identify and locate the subject.
2. We Locate Assets
Lauth Investigators are skilled at locating assets such as real estate, unclaimed property, and other valuable property like: artwork, antiques, collectibles, motor vehicles, aircraft, vessels, etc. A Lauth investigator can also help attorneys to identify the location both domestic and offshore bank accounts.
3. We Can Leverage for Negotiations
A Lauth Investigator can pull together key sources and intelligence to inform your side during litigation, in an M&A deal, during an internal investigation, or any other adversarial situation. It can make the difference between a favorable settlement and an unfavorable one.
4. We Can Help Attorneys Enforce Judgments
Obviously, a judgment is only useful if you are able to enforce it. A Lauth Investigator can help attorneys to identify current assets and uncover efforts to hide or misrepresent them through the transfer to family members, friends or other parties.
5. We Can Connect the Dots
Lauth Investigators can help you to know who is actually sitting on the other side of the table during litigation or a potential business deal. You can gain immeasurable negotiation power by identifying who is actually behind a faceless corporation or tying together undisclosed connections.
6. We Can Generate A Historical Reconstruction/Timeline
A historical reconstruction may be helpful in a number of different areas. Perhaps you need to review the history of a family to locate heirs. It could be a corporate history or a chain of title issue in a real estate matter. Whatever the issue, a Lauth Investigator can help to identify and piece together long lost documents, facts and witnesses.
Aaron Snyder — Research Investigator and Blog Writer — Lauth Investigations International
After the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession, several federal regulations and laws have been put in place to minimize the amount and extent of securities fraud. Security fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, includes any practice that induces investors to make financial or investment decisions on the basis of false information, particularly in the stock or commodities markets. Government agencies have worked to limit the financial damaged created by fraudulent activities by implementing whistleblower programs that empower and reward individuals who come forward with information regarding securities fraud or fraudulent activities.
The United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has an entire office designated to whistleblowers. The Commission believes that whistleblowers can be invaluable tools, helping the Commission to identify fraudulent activities, naming those involved, and detecting these activities much earlier. A major perk of the whistleblower program is that the Commission has been able to minimize the financial damage incurred by investors due to securities fraud.
The Dodd-Frank Act created in 2010 established the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Law in order to encourage company employees to come forward with information. The Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Law has given more power to the SEC to detect potentially financially disastrous securities fraud. According to the SEC website, the governmental department “oversees the key market participants in the securities world including securities exchanges, securities brokers and dealers, investment advisors, and mutual funds”. Some states have followed the national government’s model by adopting individual whistleblower programs. Indiana and Utah are two examples of states that have followed the federal government’s example. Edward Siedle, a representative of a whistleblower in Indiana stated “leveraging the power of the whistleblower is tremendously helpful, and it’s not costing the state anything.”
While the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Law establishes that whistleblowers can and should come forward and any interference by the company in question is strictly forbidden, the law does not force companies to establish their own programs aimed at increasing company transparency. Private Investigators can lobby companies to establish whistleblower programs that will help prevent securities fraud and other illicit activities. By creating company-wide whistleblower programs, companies can save significant amounts of money for the company itself and investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White stated in a speech to the Ray Garrett Jr. Corporate and Securities Law Institute at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago that she “would urge that, especially in the post-financial-crisis era, in which regulators and right minded companies are searching for new, more aggressive ways to improve corporate culture and compliance, it is past time to stop wringing our hands about whistleblowers”. According to Investment News it has been over five years since the SEC created the whistleblower program, and as Chairman White explained the SEC has “seen enough to know that whistleblowers increase our (SEC) efficiency and conserve our scarce resources”. The Chairwoman also noted the importance of individual internal compliance programs in companies. Hiring a Private Investigator to advocate for a company-wide whistleblower programs can prevent costly legal fees, poor publicity, and loss of faith in the company. The financial damage to a company because of securities fraud can be astronomical, and hiring a PI to help the company create or expand a whistleblower program can save companies millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
For More Information on Whistleblower Programs Visit: www.Sec.gov
Tiffany Walker – Blog Writer, Lauth Investigations
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation there were approximately 8,277,829 property crimes reported by law enforcement in 2014. These property crime reports include burglaries, vehicular theft, and larceny-thefts, with an estimated 14.3 billion in financial losses for the victims of these crimes. Of the total number of arrests made by law enforcement, only about 10 percent were for property crimes—even though property crimes make up a large sum of criminal reports.
Police Departments across the country have difficulty prioritizing theft investigations over those involving physical violence. Consequently, the theft of your grandmother’s pearl earrings will most likely not be a priority for the local law enforcement. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a police department can have to manage up to 50 reports of burglaries and around ninety percent of these cases will go unsolved.
Art Theft
The United States’ largest property crime, the Isabelle Stuart Gardner Museum heist, still remains unsolved. The financial losses incurred by the one property crime totaled more than $600 million. None of the stolen paintings have been recovered even after two decades. Private art collections or family heirlooms can be targets for criminals. However, private investigators can be extremely useful tools in finding your stolen property when law enforcement cannot help. Private Investigators have the experience and necessary tools needed to find your property in a timely manner. Unlikely police departments, private investigators can give your case individual attention in order to recover your valuables.
Electronic Theft
The FBI’s National Crime Information Center also tracked the number of reported electronic thefts in the United States. Laptop thefts have increase almost fifty percent from 2007 until 2009. The number of reports jumped from 73,700 to 109,000. During the same period, the number of reported thefts of cell phones also increased about 33 percent. More shockingly, the amount of theft of music players reports increased over ninety percent, with the number of reports rising from 8,900 to over 17,000. More recent estimates suggest that 1.6 million smart phones were stolen in 2012 to 3.1 million in 2013.
Stolen personal electronics are not always reported to police in order to avoid potentially wasted time. Many people have opted for a private investigation in order to ensure more attention to their particular case.
How Private Investigators Can Help
With property theft it is important to act as quickly as possible. Contact the police to create an official report, but also hire a private investigator to ensure that you will have the best chance of finding your stolen items. Private investigators are able to dedicate many more hours than individual police officers because they often have a smaller caseload.
Private Investigators Can:
Conduct interviews with witnesses, pawn shops, and institutions
Dedicate more hours to a single case
Provide positive results more frequently than law enforcement
Begin investigating right away
Depending on the victims preferences, collect evidence for prosecution
Track the sale of stolen goods online
Conduct a more inconspicuous investigation—in order to avoid tipping off the perpetrator
Stolen items can have significant sentimental value and therefore are priceless, hire a private investigator to ensure you have the best chance of being reunited with your belongings.
Tiffany Walker – Blog Writer, Lauth Investigations
In December 2012 Lauth Investigations International’s Indianapolis office was retained to locate a stolen wedding band—valued at $35,750.
The Case
The owner of the ring was a local grandmother, who we will refer to as Client X. Client X was the grandmother of three, and the mother of two older children—both of whom were married. One of her grandchildren was a special needs child, and required near-constant care. The financial burden of the care was becoming too much for her son’s family. Meanwhile, the client and her daughter-in-law were estranged for many years.
Client X briefed Lauth Investigation’s Private Investigators on the case, and she was adamant that her daughter-in-law, the one with the special need son, could be responsible for the theft.
Client X insisted that she was responsible, and that her son had no knowledge of his spouse’s thieving behavior. In the briefing for Client X, she further explained that she was loaning her son money to pay for various things for their special needs son such as education, clothing and other necessities.
She also had purchased the house they lived which alleviated them of any mortgage or rent payment. The client was firm in remembering where she left the ring inside the home and felt comfortable implicating the daughter-in-law—as there was a history of small items disappearing from inside her home.
The Investigation
The client had contacted other local private investigation companies but they were unable to assist. Lauth Investigators requested that Client X file a police report, and to get the detectives name and report number for reference when speaking with vendors.
Lauth Investigations was confident they could utilize local sources in gathering evidence leading to the daughter-in-law and perhaps even locate the ring.
Lauth Investigators began the case by compiling a strong data timeline to track the various auctions and pawn shops. Investigators worked on a critical timeline to locate the ring before it was sold.
Investigators requested photos from Client X of the daughter-in-law, the ring, and any insurance statements or police reports she filed.
Investigators then compiled a geographical list of auctions and pawnshops near the subject’s home in order to interview shop owners and request receipts.
On Day-Two of the investigation, Lauth Investigations uncovered a receipt from a location nearly one-hour from the suspects home. Evidently, the suspect had sold the ring to a small jeweler for over $8,500.00—just two days after the ring was stolen.
After Client X authorized Investigators to proceed confronting her daughter-in-law regarding the theft, investigators took the receipt and written statement from the jeweler and then attempted to obtain a confession from subject. Investigators attempted to confront the woman to discuss but she adamantly denied the theft and refused to talk any further.
The confession attempt interaction then started a thunderstorm of conflict in the family and people began to shut down.
Investigators then scoured other jewelers and auctioneers and found an additional receipt for $4,000 from months before the other theft.
The Results
Lauth Investigators then contacted the original law enforcement detective on the case and reported their findings.
One week later suspect was arrested.
Client X was very happy to have received closure on her wedding ring, and she recommends anyone having a household theft problem to contact a private investigator.
– Thomas Lauth, CEO, Lauth Investigations International
