Happy Monday!

I took a short break from blogging last week because I had a lot of things to get done. We have been attempting to adjust to a new schedule, a friend of ours got married and we ratted out a former friend for messing around with her married boss. A phone call was made to the wife who had no clue her husband had been messing around with his secretary for over a year.

Lets just say, I cant stand people who have no regard for other peoples lives. Especially if the other person has children with her husband. To sit and listen to this woman sob over the phone because she had no clue whatsoever was crushing. She informed me that they just celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary, their sex life was normal and everything seemed "fine." It is a long story and maybe one day soon I will elaborate on it more.

Anyways, Thanksgiving is upon us and I was reminded last week of a missing person case that we did last year around this time. It was a pro bono case because the person that needed our help was a friend of the family. Our client was looking for his brother, who he had not heard from in several years. Apparently, they had a falling out due to alcohol and every year around this time our client would get depressed because he wanted to talk to his brother.

We started looking into things and we found an address but no phone number. When this happens we will sometimes go to the address to see if we can speak to the person directly. We were excited to think that our friend could possibly be spending the holidays with his brother. My husband jumped in the car and told me he would call me with any updates. I waited impatiently to hear from him because I couldn't wait to call our friend to let him know that his brother had been found.

My husband calls me less than an hour later and I could not wait to hear what was going on. That was until he informed me that our missing person died less than 3 weeks ago. My husband went to the apartment and was met by the roommate who informed him that they had found him face down on his bed and it was suspected that he had drank himself to death. Talk about a huge letdown. His roommate told my husband that he would sit and drink with this man and he would always get really upset and start talking about how he missed his brother. Well little did he know his brother who lived 25 miles away was doing the same thing.

I hated having to make the call to inform our friend that his brother had passed away. What we expected to be a great holiday reunion turned out to be a depressing Thanksgiving and Christmas.

OK I am better now......

Phewwww, sorry about the bitch fest below. LOL I am normally not one to complain much. Ya see, I am the sort that tends to let everything brew up inside and then BLAMO! I figured I would blow up on my blog instead of taking it out on a family member or some homeless guy on the street.

So anyways, I took a break this weekend and dealt with more important things like laundry, shopping, toilets that needed to be cleaned etc. You know the domestic crap that everyone hates doing. So today is Monday and I vow to keep my cool and remain professional for the whole week lol! Today should be a quiet day even though it is Monday. I dont anticipate any major malfunctions but I could be completely wrong.

The holidays are coming and this is usually our slow season. People do not have the extra money to hire us because of the extra expenses they face. Plus, I think people would rather wait unitl after the holidays to find out for sure if their spouse is cheating. Our phone starts blowing up around the new year because people start wanting to make changes in their lives. Alot of those changes include kicking a cheating dirtbag to the curb. Typically around this time of year we get a lot of calls from people looking for lost family etc. Tommorrow, I will tell you a heartbreaking story about a lost family member case we did last year.

My God what a week

I have had a headache for 2 days and I want to pull my fricking hair out. I kind of feel like Eminem right now. Hi my name is, Hi my name is, Hi my name is. You have no idea how many time I wanted to tell people to F off today! I am really sick of repeating myself to people. Just open your damn ears and hear me when I tell you what I need!! I know it is complicated. Shit I sometimes have a hard time making sense of shit. I am no dummy. In fact, I am pretty confident in what I do. Heres the thing... If I call you on an international issue and you specialize in international investigations please know WTF you are talking about. I need shit NOW!

I have a case I am working on right now for a celeb that is currently on tour. Yes we get to deal with some pretty cool people sometimes. Jealous? Please don't be because celebs are a pain in the ass. Yea you heard me right.. Sometime we get perks and that is always nice but sometime we get hosed with a huge man unit!! Kill me Now please!!
That is all I have to say right now...

P.S. By the way, while i am pissed off...if you are going to drop on my blog via Entrecard stop making it impossible to drop on you. I love my droppers but it pisses me off when I have to search around your blog for a card. I'm not trying to be a dick but I thought while I was pissed off I would lay that out there too. Take care of yourself bitches, I could be watching your ass and you don't even know it.

How to obtain your FBI file

OK, as promised I am giving you the information you need to request a copy of your own FBI file. Below you will find a letter that you can copy and paste into a word document. Print it out, fill in the blanks and mail it off to the address you see there below. When mailing your request DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY! The FBI only charges a fee if your file is over 100 pages long. And if that is discovered you will be sent a bill for $30. There is no need to send any money when sending a request. Also please be sure to include a copy of your drivers license or State issued ID.

My street address: ___________________________________

My city, state, and zip: _________________________________

November 12, 2008

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Records/Information Dissemination Section
170 Marcel Drive
Winchester, VA 22602-4843

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT / PRIVACY ACT REQUEST

Dear Sir or Madam:

This is a request for records under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act. Please process this request under both statutes to release the maximum number of records.

I request copies of all files, correspondence, or other records concerning myself. To assist you with this search I am providing the following information about myself:

My full name: ________________________

Other names used: ________________________

My date of birth: ________________________

My place of birth: ________________________

My Social Security number: _________________

I am enclosing a copy of my driver's license or other state-issued photo ID.

Please search both your automated indices and the older general (manual) indices.

This is an individual request for research and study purposes, and I agree that I will pay up to $30 for fees, if necessary. Please notify me in advance if fees are expected to exceed that amount. If the file is likely to result in more than 250 pages, I would appreciate receiving a digital copy of the file on a CD-ROM rather than in paper form.

If you have any questions, please call me at ____________________.

Under penalty of perjury, I hereby declare that I am the person named above and I understand that any falsification of this statement is punishable under the provisions of Title 18, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 1001 by a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment of not more than five years, or both; and that requesting or obtaining any record(s) under false pretenses is punishable under the provisions of Title 5, U.S.C., Section 552a(i)(3) as a misdemeanor and by a fine of not more than $5,000.

Sincerely,

Do you have an FBI file?

If you have ever asked or wondered Do I have an FBI file? The answer to your question is yes.

If you are an adult citizen of the United States, or if, after 1996, you have ever applied for credit, you have an FBI File. At that time the FBI spent millions with ChoicePoint Inc. to buy information on virtually all adults living in the United States with any credit or public record history. ChoicePoint, formerly a part of credit-reporting company Equifax, is a database compiler selling personal information for a profit.

Using your Social Security number as the key identifier, ChoicePoint compiles dossiers on citizens from credit reports, and from public records such as court files, property tax documents, business incorporation filings, and professional license applications. ChoicePoint aggregates this up-to-date information and sells it to the FBI. Following below is a list of the other most common areas of collection:

Everyone arrested and booked into custody of law enforcement - a police record
Government employees
Immigrants who have become U. S. citizens
All those with Green Cards
Foreign nationals visiting the United States
Every person involved in counter-intelligence
Suspected organized crime members
Members of recognized 'hate groups'
Elected/Serving Politicians
Professionals fingerprinted for their profession, example: stock brokers; realtors
Close associates of the above listed categories of people.

Tommorrow I will explain how you can obtain your own FBI file.

Potential Stalkers?

We have been receiving an increase in calls AGAIN from potential stalkers. It could also be the state of Michigan checking up on us to make sure we are not abusing our privileges. It is always a different person that calls and they claim they have a "judgment" against an individual and need to locate them so they can collect the money that is owed to them. When questioned about whether they have an attorney that we can submit the findings to, they always say "no". When told that they need to supply us with proof of such a judgment, they beat around the bush and claim they "haven't actually filed" yet. Then they ask "Well when you find their info cant you just give it to me?"

Yea, if we wanted to lose our license and never be able to work in this field again. But, we do this type of work because we love it and well it feeds our kids and keeps a roof over our heads. Some people get down right rude when we tell them no we do not just give them a person's contact information. I never intend to offend anyone when I tell them no. But we have to protect people and you never know what a persons intentions are.
If a person is looking for a long lost love or classmate we usually tell people that we can locate them and then we will contact them on their behalf. That way if a person does not want to be contacted by the person searching for them they have the choice. Most people will be OK with this because they understand there are privacy issues etc.
So my advice to stalkers out there: Don't try to hire a private investigator to assist you in your dirty work. Most legitimate, law abiding P.I.'s will not just give you a persons information. If they say that they can or will then they you are dealing with a person who needs to loose their license.

Sneaky Tip Friday

Today we are talking trash. No, not the kind of trash that spews from peoples mouths. Were talking about garbage. Did you know that some of us sneaky private investigators will snag someone's garbage the night before trash pickup to see what kind of info we can find out about them?

I know your thinking OMG HOW GROSS!! Well yea, at times it can be rather gross, but there are times that we have to do it. Don't worry rubber gloves are always a necessaity!! When we have exhausted all efforts during an investigation the final step is usually a garbage pull. P.I.'s are not the only ones that utilize this little tactic. A lot of agencies from the IRS, police and FBI will often do this too. Im not trying to make you paranoid but it is true.

Why? Well your garbage will probably tell us more information about you than you even think. Likes and dislikes in food, cosmetics you use, medications you may be taking, personal correspondences, bank statements, who's names are on utility bills, where you shop at etc...

For every person who thinks this technique will not work, I challenge you to go through your own trash for a one week period. Write down everything that you can conclude about your household. Are you now considering burning your trash?

Digital Copiers Security Risk?

I ran across this tidbit of information this morning while browsing around some of my Private Investigation groups. I thought you might find it to be interesting.

By Robert Scott, P.I.

Photocopiers can now be added to the list of items leaking personal data, according to the Sharp copier company. The company recently released a security advisory warning that the hard drives on many photocopiers are storing scanned documents -- long after actual copies have been made.

Does this mean that a person who stops by the corner copy shop to copy his income tax form is at risk of his personal information being compromised? Or that anyone with access to the company office machine after hours can do some unauthorized intelligence gathering?

This story was widely circulated on Internet news sites and elsewhere recently. I wanted to learn if this was really true or just an Internet myth, so I made a trip to my local copy shop. There were two basic types of copiers. A Xerox Docucolor and a Canon ImageRunner. I couldn't get anything out of the Xerox. On the Canon, after exploring the various menus and sub menus I found my way to a "recall" option where the last three items printed were still available! I picked one and it started printing out 60 copies of an actress's resume! Apparently, that's who had been on the machine before me! So, is there a security flaw on some digital copy machines? Apparently so!

Robert Scott is a Los Angeles-based private investigator and author of "The Investigator's Little Black Book."
© 2008 Crime Time Publishing Co., Inc. Originally published at www.CrimeTime.com.

Collecting Child Support

We get a lot of calls these days from people needing help with collecting child support. We personally cannot do much with these types of cases except find out where the non paying parent is employed. Once we get that info it is up to the individual seeking support to do the rest of the legwork.

In most cases, once the court determines an amount the process goes fairly smooth. But when a parent goes missing or doesn't want to pay, all states have child support enforcement offices that will help. Often times they will help track down the parent and order them to pay. There are many ways to get the other parent to pay.

These include:

• Withholding income
• Withholding unemployment benefits
• Withholding disability benefits
• Taking money from bank accounts
• Taking money from taxes
• Taking vehicles or other property

If the other parent is not paying the required support here is a link that will direct you to your particular states child support support office. The Office Of Child Support Enforcement

I hope this will help either you or someone you know.

Sneaky Tip Saturday???

I was so excited about Halloween yesterday that I forgot to post a sneaky tip Friday post. Sorry about that. So, I am making it up today with sneaky tip Saturday. This sneaky tip is for someone who suspects their spouse to be cheating. So here it goes.

Unbelievably some cheaters are brave enough to have their rendezvous right in the bedroom. You may suspect something is going on because the bed was not made exactly the way it was left in the morning. I have a simple, sneaky, effective way to prove that somebody has been in your bed.

First, make the bed. Find a piece of thread about 10 inches long that closely matches the color of the sheet on the bed. Thread a needle. Locate a spot on the side of the mattress toward the head of the bed. Then within about ¼ inch send it back thru both. Cut the thread so that only a couple inches of each end is left hanging inside. Repeat this on the other side. If you check the thread when you come home you will know that the bed was used. Remember, this proves only that it was used. It may have very legitimately been for a nap. You will need to do some further investigation to find out more.