FAQ
Q: How do private citizens or businesses use private investigators (PI)?
A: For instance, a person might have obtained a judgment against another, and in an attempt to collect, they want to know if the person has any assets. That’s where the PI comes in. He can locate assets such as real property, monetary funds, vehicles, businesses and so on. A good PI will also run a background, to check for other judgments against the judgment debtor, as well as state and federal liens, which in most cases would take precedence. An asset search on a pre-litigated matter lets a person know whether it’s worthwhile to hire a lawyer to pursue collection. In other cases, individuals may want the PI to watch a possibly cheating spouse, or determine if the ex spouse who says they cannot pay the child support might actually be working. Perhaps a business will hire a PI to conduct surveillance to see if employees are engaging in theft or activities other than their job duties.
Q: How do Insurance Companies / Insurance Defense Atty usually need PI?
A: Insurance companies usually need PI services to validate certain insurance claims. These claims ranges from Worker’s Compensation, Disability to Personal Injuries. If red flags are detected at the outset making the Adjusters suspicious of the veracity of the claim, PI’s are requested to conduct surveillance investigations on these Claimants to verify the validity of these claims. Professional surveillance investigation saves the Insurance companies a lot of funds by averting the award of large amounts of money to fraudulent claims. This also ensures the award of the insurance benefits to the Claimant’s who were actually injured and entitled to the benefit. PI services does not only help the Insurance companies and genuine Claimants but also helps the bona fide businesses by keeping their insurance premiums down and reasonable. DeVry Investigations specializes on Insurance Defense/Worker's comp/subrosa Investigations and offers a very affordable but high quality PI services. Please go to our Contact page or Request for Investigation page for your investigative needs.
Q: What’s the most amusing surveillance work you have done for an Insurance company lately?
A: We conducted a surveillance investigation on a guy who had a suspicious worker's comp claim with alleged serious back injury. When this guy attended his medical appointment he was heavily limping and using crutches for support. After his medical, we followed him to a Westfield Mall where he shopped walking around no longer wearing crutches and now walking and moving normally without a limp. After walking around the mall for about 2 hours, we later followed him to an indoor gym where he played basketball with his friends. We later heard from our Insurance company client that based on our surveillance and report/findings, this guy was eventually indicted for filing a fraudulent insurance claim - a criminal case (felony) under the California Insurance Code.
Q: How do attorneys typically use private investigators?
A: Family Law attorneys request assignments for custody cases, to determine if a parent is abusing alcohol or drugs while that parent has custody of the children. They ask for “skip tracing investigations” to hunt-down people trying to avoid the court’s jurisdiction. Workers Compensation and other insurance lawyers use a PI to obtain evidence on potentially fraudulent claims. Lawyers and private citizens use us to serve process (such as subpoenas, and restraining orders) on people who’ll do extreme things to avoid being served, like hiding in the back seats of friends’ cars or disguising themselves so the server can’t recognize them. It can get pretty comical what people do to evade. We usually get them in the end, though.
Q: What should people look for in hiring a private investigator?
A: Make sure
the PI is licensed to operate in the state where he’ll be working. For example in
California, the quick way to verify the PI license is to go to Bureau of Security
and Investigation (BSIS) official website: www.BSIS.ca.gov. Make sure the PI knows the rules or the law
in regards to the investigation they would be conducting. For example, you
cannot put a GPS tracker on a vehicle without the authorization of the
vehicle’s registered owner; otherwise, you and the PI could both be in trouble.
Finally, this job is all about experience — no classroom can teach everything
that a good PI needs to know about, say, asset location. Not many people or
attorneys know how to locate assets, but I’ve learned how in on-the-job
training over many years. Also make sure that the PI you are hiring have some solid experience on the job that you want him to do. Having a PI license does not necessarily mean that he is experience in every aspect of PI work. Though we are experienced on a wide array of investigative works, DeVry specializes on worker's comp surveillance/subrosa investigations.
A: I had a man in his 70s come to me who’d met a lady and wanted to marry her. The problem was he’d been quite a partier back in the 1960s. He told me, “I think I married a girl back then but I can’t remember!” So I did some record searching and sure enough, he was still married, but I went a step further and interestingly enough, the girl he’d married had already been married three times! He got it resolved with an annulment, and was able to marry his new fiancée — he was so happy.
