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Our
Mission is to empower our clients by providing them with the knowledge
they need to solve personal, legal and business problems.
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Over the years we have been asked
about the personal qualities of a good investigator. Our answer
has been consistent. A good investigator must have: |
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| Integrity |
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| Initiative |
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| Aggressiveness |
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| An inventive imagination |
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| Persistence |
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| Flexibility |
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| An ability to empathize with the
person we are investigating. |
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Please note that we have been talking
about the personal qualities of a good investigator -- as
differentiated from the assets of a successful investigator. A
successful investigator has three additional ingredients in the mix. |
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| Reliable sources of information. |
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| Adequate funding. |
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| Control of the investigation |
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Does that mean that a good
investigator -- an individual with personal attributes which make him
or her so admirably suited to the profession, will not succeed without
reliable sources of information, adequate funding and control of
the investigation? Yes, that is exactly what I mean. I
have seen isolated exceptions. But, far more often, I have seen
otherwise competent investigators fail to conduct successful
investigations because they lacked one or all of these key
ingredients. From a personal standpoint, I know that our least
successful performances have been turned in when we undertook
investigations when one or more of those items was missing. I'll have
more to say about this later on this page. |
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| Now, let's revisit each of these ten
items so that you, the potential client, can see how we apply them. |
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| Integrity |
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First and foremost we prize our
honesty and integrity. Should that be important to you? We think so.
We deal in information. That, and the ability to ferret out
information is our stock in trade. If we were to compromise our
honesty and integrity we would be selling our clients and ourselves
down the river. We would be devaluing our work product. We have never
done that and have no intention of starting now. |
| Having said
that, we hasten to add that in pursuit of our clients' investigative
objectives, we operate with no holds barred. If an
investigative approach is legal and appropriate to the situation, we
use it without the slightest concern that we might be totally immersed
in deception. Our duty to the assigned mission is paramount --
everything else is secondary! |
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| I had a
discussion about this with a California PI a few years ago. He
maintained that it was "unethical" to use stealth
and deception as investigative tools. I believe that the only thing
that is "unethical" is to fetter ones self with
artificial restrictions that impede or limit our ability to successfully
accomplish the mission. We won't break the law, but there is a
long way between committing a criminal act, and limiting
ourselves to reviews of public records and interviews of willing
witnesses. We spend much of our time operating in that middle,
sometimes, gray area, as well as the area that my colleague considered
"ethical". |
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| To us "integrity" also
means that we are going to decline certain assignments. Here are a
few. |
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| Situations in which we believe that
we are unable to help the client or do the job that is expected. |
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| Situations in which we believe that
even under the best circumstances, the client lacks the financial
resources that it would take to successfully address a significant
part of his or her problem. Now, we are not talking about pro bono
matters here. Those are taken on a very selective basis with our own
funding. |
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| Situations in which we have reason to
believe that the potential client plans to use the results of our
investigation to aid in the commission of a crime. Requests from
stalkers are one of the items that fall into this category. |
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| Situations in which we can foresee
physical harm of someone as being a possible outcome of a requested
investigation. |
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| Situations in which we have reason to
believe that our efforts will be used to support persons we believe to
be, or to have been, in the illicit drug business. There can be no
question that drugs have been, and continue to be, the most
significant social problem of our time. People are rightly
concerned by dramatic acts like school shootings and terrorist
bombings. However in terms of loss of life's potential and damage to
the fabric of American society, there is no greater evil than the drug
problem. I know of likable and talented PIs who have
become very wealthy catering to that clientele. I pity them and have
no desire to join that group. |
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| Matters in support of ACLU actions.
Although I believe that for the most part the American Civil Liberties
Union is made up of loyal and thoughtful Americans, their approach to
the Constitution and our country is so critically flawed as to make
that organization a major destructive force in our society. They might
consider a motto, "If its bad for America, we support it!"
Where else but in the ACLU, can we see support for such "Great
American Groups" as the Klan, the Communists and the Nazis?
Or support for such laudable citizens as murderers, rapists and child
molesters? |
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| We have had a long standing policy of
differentiating between "leads" and
"investigation". We decline to run
"leads". An "investigation", however, might
consist of a single lead. Before we accept any assignment, we ask the
client for the background and his investigative objectives. We, not
the client, then decide what lead or leads should be run to
accomplish those investigative objectives. In
addition to controlling the investigation, that approach helps
us to screen out stalkers and other whackos that are allowed to run
around loose out there. |
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| Initiative |
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| Many
investigations are merely passive compilations of historic fact. But,
many include ongoing activity. This latter group sometimes gives us
the opportunity to take control of an otherwise hopeless situation and
save the day. In some situations we can use our initiative to take the
initiative! |
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| We often hear
members of the media accused of "making news"
rather than just "reporting news". If true, that is
anything but laudable. On the other hand, we see as an integral part
of every assignment -- a requirement to seize on every opportunity
that is presented, to make the truth, good news rather than bad. We
see our job as going beyond reporting "just the facts", as
Jack Webb used to say. If we can legally and ethically do it,
we are going to try to change the outcome. We are obligated to report
the truth, but we are not obligated to stand idly by when we find
ourselves in a position to make things better for our client. Some PIs
would disagree. You have to be the judge. |
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| Several years
ago we were retained to determine the source of money of a man who was
in the process of conducting a hostile takeover of a our client's
company -- a listed company on the American Stock Exchange. At the
time we were hired, the SUBJECT of our investigation had purchased $10
million worth of the client's stock and his stock purchases continued
unabated. Our investigation disclosed that our SUBJECT had borrowed
$25 million from 3 banks using fraudulently obtained collateral.
Further he was currently in default on those loans. Armed with that
information and with concurrence of both our client and counsel, I
decided that it was time to take a couple of bankers to lunch. The
bankers were given the location of 50 odd brokerage houses where our
client's $10 million worth of stock reposed. A few days later, the
banks seized the $10 million in stock. The next day our SUBJECT
declared bankruptcy and the hostile takeover was
history! Most cases are less spectacular, but this is what
we mean by using your initiative to take the
initiative. |
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| Aggressiveness |
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| Even when we
are charged with the investigation of an historic event, we look for a
way to control future events for the benefit of our client. An example
of this can be found on the page titled
Victim's
Rights - How to get your money back |
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| An inventive
imagination |
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| Although most
of this comes from in-house brainstorming, over the years some of the
most innovative and inventive suggestions have come from our clients.
We take the view that if an approach is legal, practical and
responsive to the requirements of the mission, we want to at least
consider it. Sometimes an otherwise impractical idea can be modified
slightly to become a powerful tool. We encourage such inputs of ideas
from clients. . |
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| Persistence |
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| I never cease
to be amazed by the power of persistence in an investigation. Often,
that one extra step coverts failure into success. Many times I have
reflected upon how I seem to be stumbling around getting no place when
Somebody Up There looks down and drops the case in my lap. I
don't know if it is Divine Intervention or just a refusal to give up.
All I know is that it works! |
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| Flexibility |
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| In our
contracts we have a clause which says that regardless of prior plans
or commitments to the client, we have the absolute and final authority
to do what we think best in order to accomplish the investigative
objectives. This is just common sense. Situations often change, new
problems and new approaches evolve. It would be irresponsible for us
to remain rigid. |
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| An ability to
empathize with the person we are investigating. |
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| A powerful
investigative tool is the ability of the investigator to accurately
speculate as to the actions of the person under investigation (The
SUBJECT). We routinely tap the client for information of this type.
After all, in most cases the client knows the SUBJECT. Who could know
more? Unfortunately, in a large percentage of cases, particularly
cases involving a breach of trust, such as embezzlement and domestic
cases, our clients score very low in this area. In other words
the SUBJECT they think they know like a book, is upon investigation,
almost like a different person. That is not as strange as it sounds.
The client, as a victim, has been systematically lied to and deceived.
That is precisely the reason we are investigating -- to get to the
truth! |
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| Reliable
sources of information. |
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| Over the years
we have developed a number of both open and confidential sources. We
guard these sources jealously. Even though clients are sometimes
billed for source information, the source's identity is never revealed
and often the general nature of the source is not revealed.
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| Adequate
funding |
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something wholly within the client's control. Investigation costs
money. Sometimes costs are predictable - often they are not. Although
we often set a preliminary budget which cannot be exceeded without the
approval of the client, that approach can stop work in mid stream if
the client cannot be reached in time. We counsel our clients to make
certain that there is funding adequate to preclude that type of
problem. We, (and many clients) prefer a flat fee, all inclusive
arrangement in which we agree to commit whatever resources necessary
to accomplish the assignment. More often we use a hybrid arrangement
in which we agree to pay all expenses and commit all necessary
resources for investigation each day or each week.
On other occasions we can agree to operating
on a contingency basis -- that is, No Good, No Pay. Sometimes a
performance bonus is appended to a standard agreement. All of that is
subject to negotiation. |
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| Control of the
investigation |
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| This is "Basic Management
101" - With responsibility goes authority. We will not get into a
case, blind, without knowing the background and we insist on knowing
the client's overall objectives. Then we determine the correct course
of action. We are the professionals, we accept the responsibility for
failure and we insist on the full authority to get the job done.
Recently, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Even today, almost a
month later, that failure to fix the flawed structure sticks out
like a sore thumb. Yet, without a major policy revision, this type
of tragedy is certain to recur. |
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