Calling a Private Investigator?
When you call a Colorado or Denver Private Investigator you don’t know what to expect. What is their experience? Are they good at your type of case? Well it just isn’t that simple. We receive 100’s of calls a month and every case is interesting and different but there are some commonalities between cases. Cases tend to fall into about 10-12 different categories.
So this past year as we finalized our case files, we look at the specific types of cases and categorized them. It helps us with training to let inexperienced investigators see how a case flows from beginning to end AND lets us make sure that we see the same high quality service case after case.
So while nearly every case is different (in details) and we typically focus on Family Law (which is very broad including marriage, divorce, infidelity, child custody, etc), attorney legal support, corporate cases, workers compensation, background investigations and fraud. Here is what we found are a sampling of the Top 10 types of cases we saw in 2019.
Top Ten Case Categories
1. Craziness – found a listening device in your coat hanger? Call us! Want to talk for 25 minutes straight about nothing (BTW you have been on mute since minute #2), go for it. Is the entire neighborhood out to get you, and you have video?! Our specialty. I am not joking. These are serious calls and we treat every potential client equally but sometimes there is no viable solution.
2. Infidelity – married, separated, already divorced, getting divorced, long since broke up. Maybe feeling scorned? People like to know what is going on, why something ended and if they were correct about their partner cheating. Probably the bulk of our calls. A subset of this is when people start dating and a their new flame starts asking for money. If you met somebody through an online dating website and they ask for money…RUN AWAY!
3. Asset Searches – these typically boil down to whether or not somebody has any assets worth taking. Personal injury attorneys are brazen, they don’t spend money on asset searches, they send the defendant a form to fill out listing their assets and trust they are being truthful! If somebody owes you money, and they are dishonest about it, they probably owe other people money. Asset searches should always be done ahead of a small claims or large civil suit.
4. Locates – missing persons, old flames, find biological parents – find biological kids. We do hear from a lot of parents who have lost their adult children in Colorado. The draw is either good social services, drugs or both. Since they are invariably on the street doing drugs I lean towards drugs but that is just based upon my anecdotal evidence. The shelters won’t help you but we can find your kids if you give us the resources, we have to walk the street to find your loved one and we are highly proficient with surveillance.
5. Not her money – interestingly enough the new spouse is always just there to take the inheritance. Mom or Dad couldn’t have loved her or him. Sometimes dad (or mom) has been married for some time and they always change the will at the last moment. We have investigated elder abuse, undue influence and other similar cases. Occasionally we find foul play but that isn’t always the case.
6. Employee Fraud – whether calling in sick to go shopping, getting fired and working under the table, or stealing. A busy year for FPI with these types of cases. Usually employees assume that nothing will happen to them, and it usually doesn’t. If you hire a private investigator to sit outside an employee’s house because that person is always sick on Friday and Monday, you might be surprised.
7. Corporate Investigations – supporting a billion dollar legal case or a mere $5 million dollar tortious interference case. An interesting series of cases with some heart pounding moments. Just a little surveillance and due-diligence can save your clients millions, ask us how we know. While we have saved clients millions (at least twice this year) most have spent untold thousands on attorneys. Call us first to see if we can help.
8. Process Serving – it is always rewarding to serve somebody a document they have been avoiding. We get called when a regular process server has failed. Catching somebody who intentionally avoids service takes time, we have that time.
9. Stalkers – we get calls from stalkers and occasionally the person who is being stalked. Normally we listen to a potential stalker, gather information and then call the person they want to stalk! Then we call the local PD. Happy ending and hopefully the stalker goes away…for a long time.
10. Child Custody – parents do use the kids to continue to inflict emotional pain on the former partner. I know there are plenty of parents that parent vs punish but the calls we get are for help. Worst of all, it affects the kids. Some parents just don’t “adult” very well. These are the most troubling cases, parents drinking and driving, doing drugs, selling drugs, living with sex offenders. Providing the proof needed to help a child is perhaps the most rewarding type of case. However, we wish we never had to get involved.
Other types of cases
These are typical cases for a Colorado private investigator but we handle a lot of different types. Need to move out but have a violent roommate – civil assist. Got a college kid who wants to be independent but you aren’t sure – activity check. Need DNA to work on a criminal case – not as easy as it sounds but we have done it. Flatirons Private Investigations is looking forward to helping a new group of happy clients in 2020.
