You Need an Investigative Team, Not Just An Investigator

I get calls from clients all the time, asking me,“Do you have any female investigators? Do you have a Hispanic Investigator? Do you have an Asian Investigator? Do you have an Investigator in San Francisco…” And so on.

One of the key characteristics a professional investigation company is having resources where the clients need them when then need them.  This mean being able to adapt to the specific needs of the case and the clients requests.  In short adaptability is a must.

You have to be flexible. Whether you need to switch from one case to another as developments arise, balance between multiple clients, and especially in order to take on a multitude of diverse cases all over the country.

An investigation company could lose on an opportunity to handle case because there’s something they can’t change; like the way they look, their age, gender or location.

There are times when a client needs an investigator who is of a specific ethnicity, gender, age, or background. They might even need a group of these diverse investigators to take on an assignment.

The reason I bring this up is because we recently had a case where the client wanted to hire us for an undercover investigation project that involved purchasing some items that they felt would be best completed by a younger (21-30 year old male or female) investigator.

The investigation started by making contact with the subject via email.  Our director of investigations, who is over 50 years old, followed up with the subject via phone. This enabled us to coordinate with our male field investigator who was out of the area to setup the meeting to acquire the goods.

The subject then insisted on the person making the purchase show their identification. Needless to say, this complicated things. Instead of being able to use a pseudonym, we had to find a way to use someone with an identity that could be revealed and not compromise the case.  In this time of social media and total transparency, not many people have a minimal online footprint. A trained investigator, however, knows to keep their online presence on the down low.

Then, at the last minute, there was a change of plans.

The subject decided that instead of doing the “deal” at the original meet up place where our female investigator was ready to deploy, now they wanted to meet in the greater Los Angeles area.  On the fly, we had to deploy a male investigator to pickup the “goods”, since our female investigator was too far away.

When all was said and done, our team of investigators succeeded in completing this undercover project for the client.

Here is the team that was needed to get the job done…

1) Male Investigator (Caucasian- 30-40 years old)- 40 plus years of experience

2) Male Investigator (Caucasian- 50 years plus)- Ex-Law Enforcement– 30 plus years of experience

3) Male Investigator (Caucasian- 40-50 years old)- 15 plus years of experience

4) Female Investigator (40-50 years old)

5) Male Investigator (Hispanic- 40-50 years old)- 20 plus years of experience

In addition to the people involved, our team also utilized several commercial databases to run name searches, reverse cell phone searches and advanced Internet searches.

At the close of the case, the client was happy with the results and probably didn’t even realize how many people were involved to get them what they were looking for.

Before you hire a single investigator based on their age, ethnicity or location think about this example. Most of the time, it’s better to work with a team of investigators that can adapt to the case as things change and they will very quickly.