Locked In with Ian Bick - I’m A Private Detective — Here’s How I Catch Cheaters & Liars | Dr. Brian Kelly Pt. 2

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Dr. Brian Kelly returns to Locked In with Ian Bick for Part 2 — and this time, he’s taking us deep inside the world of private investigation. After leaving his career in corrections, Dr. Kelly became a private detective, working everything from cheating spouse cases to fraud investigations and criminal surveillance. In this exclusive interview, he shares real stories from the job, exposes how social media has changed modern detective work, and reveals the shocking lengths people go to hide their secrets. #PrivateDetective #CheatingSpouses #LockedInWithIanBick #PrivateInvestigator #TrueCrimePodcast #InfidelityStories #SurveillanceSecrets #detectivestoriesinhindi Watch Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSHiYbjI6GI Thank you to PELIPOST & DAWS for sponsoring this episode: Pelipost: Go to https://www.pelipost.com/ and use code LOCKEDIN at checkout to get your first 4x6 photo for FREE. DAWS: Go to http://www.daws.org/ to donate, adopt or send items from their wishlist. Connect with Dr Brian Kelly: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbriankellycfe/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ny_detective.professor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/12KQCHt4tve/?mibextid=wwXIfr Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Private Investigator Stories — Dark Cases & Hidden Truths 05:04 How to Become a Private Investigator (Qualifications, Licensing, Training) 14:00 Surveillance Secrets — Modern PI Tech, Tracking & Tools 19:40 Infidelity Investigations — Cheating Spouses, Phones & Digital Trails 27:00 Fraud Cases — His First Major PI Job & What Really Happens 37:00 How Police View Private Investigators + Dating App Scam Cases 43:30 Catfishing Investigations — Real PI Stories & Shocking Reveals 50:30 Digital Privacy, Intuition & Gathering Information Legally 57:00 Family & Child Custody Investigations — Real Case Breakdowns 01:06:30 PI Ethics — Boundaries, Illegal Requests & What PIs Can’t Do 01:16:00 Different Types of Private Investigators (Broker, Fixer, Hybrid) 01:23:30 Most Unforgettable PI Cases — Regrets, Lessons & Mistakes 01:33:30 Toughest Cases — Attempted Murder, Violence & Human Behavior 01:42:00 What PI Work Reveals About People (Behind the Scenes) 01:55:00 Final Thoughts, Advice & Closing Remarks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Why do you think private detectives have such a bad rep with cops? A lot of it comes from overseas, where people are pretending to be people. They are not. What do you think it's the number one case people bring to you? You have deviant, you have criminal, and then you have pure evil. Sometimes these people, they are a combination of it all, and they have no bones about it. Dr. Brian Kelly spent years working inside prisons, but what he saw as a private detective after leaving corrections might shock you, from catching cheaters to exposing fraud,

he's seen the dark side of what people try to hide, and today he's revealing all of it. Dr. Brian Kelly, welcome to locked in round two. Round two. Thank you so much for bringing me back. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for coming on again and introducing us to your friend out there who we're having on the show tomorrow. Yeah, he's a, he's a tall glass of water and he's a trip. He's a legend in his field. He's, you're going to like him. And you guys met on TikTok. We did. We did. Two private investigators in a weird, weird kind of space. And we hit it off and we do some social media stuff together. He's a good guy. That's so funny. We actually, we actually do a little work together. We share cases, you know, when things go down his way and things come up my way. But we help each other out a little bit, too. And he brought us a moonshine.

Yeah, he did. He brought you moonshine from the literal Appalachian Mountains. So, yeah. I got a whiff of that. I had jerked back. Yeah, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't fare well with it. It's like paint thinner. So for people that don't know, and we'll have the first episode linked in the description,

of this. The first episode we did was all throughout your correctional officer journey in New Jersey when we ended with you leaving the correctional officer. Retiring. And this episode is about your private investigative work. We haven't had a PI on a while. It's definitely been, I don't think I've interviewed one since I got back from Mr. Beast. So it's been a while since we've had one out, but the audience always loves the PI interviews. Yeah, I definitely recall you having several PI's on here. That's for sure. No New York PI's though, right? I don't know. I know I had Philly.

Yes. Connecticut. Yep, I had Philly, Connecticut. Vegas, maybe. I don't know if he was a PI. I don't know. But yeah, people love him because if people love like the cheating stories and all of that. That happens.

That car wash clip. Do you think that's true? That's how you know if a man's cheating if he brings his car of the car wash. That clip did millions of views. Look, I know, listen, I know guys who and women who are just, perpetual car washers, you know, like a lot of Italian friends of mine, they're just, that's them. But based on what he said, it could be definitely indicative of that type of behavior.

Is it, and I don't even think, what's the gentleman's name? Ray Rano. I don't think Ray meant, you know, every, obviously, every infidelity case involves a car I get what he's saying, though. Like, it could be a major red flag based on a lot of his experiences and things like that. I don't get my car wash that much. Your wife has nothing to worry about. And she yells at me for that.

So that would be, I guess it's case by case, but it makes some sense. But then again, what type of car is it, right? what type of car, what time of day, and what else you're doing. There's a lot of patternistic stuff, right? Human behavior stuff. Tell us about how you got in the private detective work. Yeah. As I was ending, right, my law enforcement career, knowing that I had one vertical ready

in play with teaching criminal justice at colleges and whatnot. I knew I wanted to definitely do that and coming out of law enforcement, we're Yes. I mean, look at some of the clips. I was not super enchanted with the whole, right, career. And I said to myself, well, if I'm going to reinvent myself for chapter two, if you will, teaching is going to be a part of it. But I wanted to do something in business, but where I didn't have to necessarily report to somebody. And then I said to myself, well, what else, not only interests me, but what else am I good at that could be? turned into a business and I said well what's the one or two things that I could take from law enforcement that I enjoyed and really boiled down to the investigative part interviewing people using using databases within the scope of my employment where in the private sector investigations is huge so I said okay I qualify in my home state at the time which is still where I have an office, New Jersey, and then later on in New York, to be a private investigator.

So I said, okay, I'm going to do it and I'm going to go into business for myself and I'm going to call the shots. And it's been a journey since. But that's essentially just what do I want to do, right, as a career other than teaching full time. And that's what it was. How hard is it to become a private investigator legally? Because I'm sure there's a lot of Fugisies out there, too, that are offering services. Well, here's the thing. And yes, you're correct. I, even before my time, I think 70s, 80s, and part of the 90s, it was like a free-for-all

where, especially in the New York City metropolitan area and California, especially, like two hotbeds on each coast. It was a free-for-all when it came. I'm a private investigator. Like, first of all, every retired court. cop in those two states probably had business cards made up that I'm a private investigator now. As licensing started getting tougher, and I think now in the United States, there's only five states. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure.

I know Colorado is one of them, and I think one of the Dakotas and maybe even like down south somewhere, there's about five states where you don't need a license, which is not a good deal. And even when I got licensed around 2010, originally in New Jersey, at that time, it was like, if I recall correctly, about half of the United States at that time, which was only, what, 15 years ago, didn't require a license. So what does that tell you? There was problems, man. And they had to harness it by getting a lot of licensing requirements stricter.

So once that occurred and everybody and their mother wasn't able to say anymore, I'm a PI or, hey, I want to be a PI and I'm going to be a PI, right? Once everything started getting more structured, formalized and lawful, like literally, laws came into play. And in most states, the state police and the Department of State and each States maintains all that. And with that said, some states more rigorous than others, but most require. are no joke. Some New York requires an exam. They don't care how qualified you are. You got to pass their exam first.

They didn't care that I was licensed in New Jersey previously. There was no reciprocity. Oh, you're a Jersey PI? Cool. Okay. Pick a date. For the exam, you guys still got to take the exam. I know people who failed the exam five times.

I didn't fail it. Thank God. I was able to just carry over business, you know, become a New York PI as well. But, hey, there's people who in New Jersey, I even know some retire cops who generally wanted to be a PI, but they still vet you. I mean, one guy was in that I know a long time ago. He had such debt in arrears. They wouldn't license them.

On paper, he qualified. But when they vet you, right, they're vetting financials. They're vetting everything. And once again, some states are more rigorous than others. but that's my experience. A lot of states got tougher with qualifications. You don't have to be a retired cop. And frankly, a lot of retired cops don't make good PIs.

But you have to have qualifying experience, right? A certain amount of hours in certain states, certain amount of years in certain states. And once again, exam, no exam depends on the state. But you have to be able to pass a background. checked, a background check that you either previously passed right somewhere else or you can't do the work for people on people if you can't pass a background, right? So there's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it. What kind of questions are on that? On that exam? Yeah. Oh, gosh. Well, for instance, in New York, they tend to gravitate curriculum content from the security world into the PI exam. So

they could ask you about laws regarding owning an agency, business related questions, investigative related questions. Some can have to do with interview and you like questions that, hey, you're a private investigator. You know, posing questions where the way you answer it, you can't answer it as if you have officer arrest powers. So some people will think, oh, yeah, I was a cop, I got to arrest. No, dude, you're a civilian now. You're a private investigator. You can't arrest people, right? So, like, it could be legal-based questions. Then all of a sudden, they'll start throwing in security questions, right? Like, what kind of sprinkler system should be in this commercial bit? It's like, and then you have very specialized questions about, um, technism. From what I understand the exams got tougher, like technology-based questions, um, interview, interrogation questions. It's very investigative style that would differ from a lot of other industries.

And once again, that's just New York. That's my only experience. I didn't have to take the exam. There is no exam in Jersey. Now, you mentioned you didn't think that retired cops or ex-cops have made good PIs. Why do you think that is? Not all of them do. And I'm speaking from experience in different times when I sought out guys I worked with to help me.

I think people from certain industries, including law enforcement, it's case by case, but I think some people are set in their ways where, hey, let's say somebody retired as a patrolman. Say they were on patrol and they never left patrol. But let's say they weren't saving the world, if you will. That's a saying, right? They weren't that active on patrol. They wrote some tickets. They arrested people when necessary. help people when necessary other than that they're just like a body to be honest in the private sector

you got to produce right and there's a business sense there's a motivation behind i got to find i got a i got a i took intel right from an attorney a client a business that i'm working for i have to produce so there is a certain level i'll just put it this way there's a certain level i'll just put it this way there's a certain level of energy that you have to have and a certain level of knowledge. Some people don't want to evolve, right? The old guard of PI in full transparency is a bunch of white-haired guys that were cops and they had a certain way they did business and they didn't, they just don't want to evolve when it comes to certain things that essentially the PI world has become. It has become a lot more technological.

You're going to have a 65-year-old guy who may be a sharp interviewer, an investigative mind, but he can't even send an email. He has no idea what social media is, right? So the game changed. And I even myself, um, started when I was 35. I'm 51 now, but I had to evolve. I had to go back and get different designations to help me get certain cases,

for what I desire to work within a certain niche. And when it comes to technology, I had to evolve tremendously. So I think it's like a new wave of investigators and just... You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

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It's a different world, though. It's got to be a lot easier, though, with social media to do some of these private detective cases because everyone puts stuff out there. Yeah. Human behavior combined with social media has helped tremendously. We're not going to pretend it doesn't. What also has helped is the world of technology, right? You always had classified databases. You always had the opportunity to use what's called open source intelligence, right, which would be publicly accessible, right?

publicly accessible internet-based websites, the surface web, right, and the deep web. But on the surface web, you could obtain certain information the same way I can, right? Well, yeah, it's free, it's accessible. That's open source. And like I said, classified databases have always existed, too. like I operate certain classified databases that are law enforcement issued essentially. But here's the thing. The open source and the closed source have evolved because, first of all, open source is batching from a cloud or a multitude of clouds.

It's pulling from everywhere. Now that it can pull from social media and scrape the metadata, yeah, I can access certain things that people probably thought, could never be accessible legally where in certain parts of eras you probably needed a warrant for it or communications data warrant well no now there are certain sites just free and accessible that allow you to attain metadata that you can never attain before and forget what you can do with technology and then the classified databases that have so much more power now because they're owned and operated by big companies that essentially come from the world of like the trans unions, the experience, the banking, the intelligence world, right?

These are the same people who are owning groups that are owning and operated classified databases that vet me for me to use and all private investigators to use. So where's that information coming from? I mean, information is everything. and there's so much that has evolved. Give us an example of how what you're talking about applies to a case, like where you've used it in a case. I think my husband isn't coming home from work directly when he's, you know, I got it on

life three, say, I got it on Life 360 that he's at work, but I, based on the phone bill and based on this and based on my intuition, okay. Well, one thing we can do, even before, because I don't just jump in a car, whatever, cup of coffee and start tailing people. I used to from 2010 to 2015, that was pretty much a lot of it. I may run some printouts and say, okay, those addresses aren't right. These ones are updated. So let's just say the first five years of my career, I would cross-reference with a client or somebody gave me as information to do whatever, make sure everything that I had was verifiable enough, so I wasn't wasting time, but it was better information. So you get

better information from better databases, right, than with what Google would tell you, or what this attorney had on record. But guess what? That address is three years old, bro. The guy moved nine times since then. But he always documented where he moved to, and he always put things in his name, which a lot of people still do. And his phone number changed a bunch of times. You gave me an old phone number. So sometimes these databases were always updated. So you had the jump on that when it came to information. But what really changed the game, in my opinion, is other technologies that run parallel, right, with the information broken, which would be, for instance, the lady who thinks her husband is going here, going here, doing this, doing that.

Okay. Since about 2012, I've been using one particular software that usually accompanies one of the classified databases, but you couldn't access it unless you had to classify it. Hence, it's close source. A lot of insurance companies use it. And that company, right, the design of that particular software, it has one mission. You know what it is? If Brian and Ian are in their car, because their license plate tag comes back to them, right? The computer in the car that's connected to satellites is telling the license plate readers where you are. So between license plate readers that are out and about and other surveillance systems that are just out there that people don't want to believe that it is a surveillance state. China is just not the be-all and end-all.

It's here in every city and every state. First thing I'll say to a client, an attorney, a business, because once again, it could be their employees, but just say this infidelity thing. Okay, give me your husband's name, social security number. I'm going to run them. Do me a favor before anything. Just give me his plate.

Just give me his plate. Or give me his VIN number. Give me his registration. Oh, really? Why? I just, well, before I even follow them, if I have to do mobile surveillance, which I'm legally licensed to do, let me just give me his plate. I got a system that I'll show you. You'll get the report. And that has proven to be, you know, incredible value. It'll put people in a certain year span at certain locations that a lot of times will, what the heck were you doing there, man?

And that helps me out a ton. Now, in most of those cases where, say, in that case where the woman suspects someone, is it normally the husband or is cheating and is lying? When you say normally, is it most of the time a certain gender? No, not even that. It could be reversed. It's, you know, when someone calls you, is their intuition normally pans out that they were right? A lot, a lot.

A lot. But this is also because clients don't always tell you everything. they might have the phone bill in front of them and they already did some of their own homework and some of their homework could be oh these are some really strange numbers i'm going to pay $40 into ben verified which i wouldn't advise for anybody to do but it's just bad information most of the time those big companies that do information broken it's not up-to-date information and people need to know that but a lot of times clients have some answers that they don't disclose and sometimes they do.

And one time, you know, a lot of times it is intuition and women have great intuition. Women have better intuition than men. Men are more proof guys. Once they reach a certain point emotionally, psychologically, then they'll gather a little more proof but need more peace of mind and know they, just like women, they can't finish the job in totality without getting in trouble doing it or not having the capability. So I believe, regardless of gender, I would say 70% of the time when intuition for either gender kicks in, 70% of the time there are major red flags, yeah. Speaking of information, you know, you have 9 million sites where you could go search someone's criminal history or any of that, but they make you pay by the time they actually reveal the information.

Yeah. What do you think about those sites? Are they legitimate? No. No. Well, I mean, some are legitimate where a lot of them are just FOIA-ing Freedom of Information Act reports and then putting those information off police reports into metadata. Now, here's another thing. People don't get this. Did you ever vote in any election? I've actually never voted in my life. Really? Well, because think about it, by the time I turned 18, I was under-investing. That's true. Got indicted at 19. I just, I guess you're an outlaw. I'm an outlaw.

You're an outlaw. I'm an outlier. Okay. So wrong question. Okay. I'll use myself. Since I turned 18, I made sure I never, it was just a personal thing. I never missed a voting opportunity. Okay. And some people are the same way. And some people don't give a shit. Oh, the minute I started voting, my life and anybody's life changes. because everything starts becoming more public when you do things like that. Furthermore, if anybody has ever owned property, in particular, a mortgage and you pay taxes, your life has become so much more non-private and has become so much more public. So it's things like that that changed the game that people aren't aware of. I mean, you even look at my case.

If you background checked me on one of these sites, what's going to come up is, like, those arrests. Okay. Like from local police or whatever from those. The original? Yeah, like not even federal chargers because those aren't necessarily always listed. Sure. But state charges, those are what's going to come up first. And it'll say, like, is he registered to vote?

And it'll give an address based on, you know, it's easy to find. Where you were living at the time. Yeah, it's easy to find an address. I think it would be harder to find a current address. Sorry again. No, you're good. I think it would be harder to find a. a current address. It is. It is because they're not updating their information. It's a, it's a,

it's a guy who owns a company that has the time to fill out a bunch of freedom of information requests, right, in a certain jurisdiction. And he has interns working for him that aren't updating the information and they don't have the capabilities to update the information. So people are getting duped into paying for not up to date information. It was probably up to date at one time. Most of the time, it's not current. You can do, most people can do better on their own. For instance, like I said, if people have voted, if people own property, if people have donated to political campaigns, their life has changed and they don't even realize it because when that stuff goes public. And then now,

when people use their phone number and emails, especially Google, Google, and you start a social media account, it's a wrap. It's a wrap. You're out there, man. You're out, you are out there. There is no more Ian and Brian behind closed doors. You are the world now. What about these sites that list how much money you make? Those are completely wrong. I mean, I've seen sites like these celebrity sites or whatever that less mean making like celebrity net worth? Yeah, that says I'm worth $10 million. You personally. Yeah, which is not true at all. No, I'm not maybe are that's like it's crazy maybe are irs no okay yeah more like negative um what do what are they well well first of all that's just propaganda right because that's also part of

investigating too like what's reputation stuff and propaganda what's real what isn't so there's always going to be information broken that's fictitious that's the scary part and now would a i come and forget it and what we could talk about that as much as you you want regarding how that intercedes in investigations. But people are always, look, people are always going to say real things and false things. So now that with the power of the internet, there's just so much more of it, right? And then forget anonymity. You don't have to say who the owner of a website is that says Ian makes $10 million. Now here's the thing. I have worked for public sector governments while in law enforcement and public colleges, right, in my other life.

That's government. So outside of the feds, local county and state, that's publicly accessible, right? So there's public stuff, but I know what you mean. When it comes to, well, where's that coming from? They're scraping data from other websites and almost trying to. to do like a predictive analysis. So like let's say, so you're, you're telling me some site said you're worth 10 million, right? Now that could be just somebody just throwing it up there basing it off of, oh, it is like they don't even know how to calculate certain things.

Or let's say they look at your views or your subscribers and let's, oh, there's, did you ever see those YouTube calculators? Oh, where it says how much money someone's making on YouTube? Yeah, based on views and all that. Yeah, those are completely off. Right, but they're probably using things like that. If they're not just coming up with a number, right, to get views, because every time somebody clicks on Ian and it says $10 million, they're getting paid, right? Especially if they're running ads. So it's one or the other.

You're just out there pushing fake stuff or you're calculating it in a way that is just not true anyway. So information is going to come from anywhere. Now, the other false information is, listen, when you don't update information, like these other Ben Verifies and all these other things, when you don't update information, but at one time it was a true source from a Freedom of Information Act report, that's still full. Now you're still pushing. The fact that you're not updating it, you're pushing false information. So it's both. It's false either way. Tell us about your first really, really juicy case you ever worked.

Or like, Juicy how. In the sense where you really had to use detective skills and, and it was something that was maybe outside your realm or you've never done before. You ready? My first case ever. It was a little outside my reach. And even now would be considered pretty big.

And this is what it was. Little corrections tie in, too. a former warden of one of the jails I worked in, was working corporate security somewhere. He runs into this guy. And this guy, who became my client, goes up to the first person in an aura of desperation that he sees in the scope of authoritative,

you know, like an authoritative position. So he walks up to my ex-warden who's in a suit. Just working, the guy's working corporate security, right? Like literally, stationary security. He's not a PI. He's an ex-warden, but he's just standing there in a black suit. And this guy, and I'll tell you why he was in such a state, goes up to my old boss and goes, hey, are you an investigator like from Planet Zeptar?

And he starts telling him how he was victimized. My old warden cuts him off and he just goes, look, it sounds like you need an investigator, and you may need an attorney too, but I got a guy. And my old warden was nice enough to probably have received a business card that I sent them or a text because when I first got licensed, you know, as motivated as I still am to do what I do each day, I let everybody know, like, hey, dude, this is what I'm doing now. Scratch my back. I'll scratch yours.

You get somebody who needs an investigator. Let me know. Within a two-week period of getting licensed, this guy who approached my old wardens calling me, his name was Frank. And he tells me he got built out of $50,000. Okay. Let's meet. We meet.

He's telling me he meets some guy, Muhammad, that was at a, some type of business event. And this guy, Muhammad must have saw a dumb dumb coming because that's what happened. He convinced my client into giving him $50,000 for 0.000

1 shares of, get this, and business entity that had no shares. Like if you said to me right now, hey, I want to invest in you. I would say, okay, thank you. But I don't have an S-Corp or a C-Corp.

I don't have shares and I'm not publicly traded. I'm an entity, but you know as well as me. If you're going to invest in something, you know what you should know what you're investing in. And certainly you're not going to invest in an entity that doesn't have, right, that type of financial share structure. my client wasn't sharp in that sense at all. So he gives a guy he barely knows without any vetting, $50,000. I wouldn't do that with $50. Some people do this all the time because they think they're going to get rich

or they want to be part of something. So some guy, Muhammad, makes out. And he says he's also part of a group and there's other people affiliated. my client realizes after about a month that he got screwed he was made a fool of so he was trying to get his money back so I said okay what do we have here long story short the players panned out the players were real there was a real Muhammad I met Muhammad prior to meeting Muhammad, I saw, I found, based on some of my background in white collar and anti-fraud, I recovered evidence that the money was certainly taken to a bank in Edison, New Jersey,

and guess what, unbeknownst to my client, that money was wired to Tel Aviv Israel. Tel Aviv Israel. Now, this is a Palestinian man, wiring money to Israel. Something's not there. Something's off. Furthermore, this guy, Muhammad, is in bed. with some other guy that is overseas that I found out who he was. And they were doing this to so many people. So my client, Frank, was one of a thousand people they were doing this to.

So I knew I wasn't going to Tel Aviv Israel to request $50,000 back. But what can you do? Right? Well, first and foremost, I told my client, confront them one last time professionally, see if he get the money back because he knows this is no longer a business scenario. The guy was still lying to him and this and that. I gave the guy proof to show him it wasn't. So we have the guy, Muhammad, on video, basically smirking saying, all right, you got me. So before I met Muhammad, I went to a friend of mine at the Secret Service. and I received a crash course and good to see you, Brian.

But 50,000, you better come to me with 500,000. We don't look at things. All due respect. We don't look at 50. And I quickly understood that. And I said, well, could you cross-reference this with some other things? Maybe there's more victims where this 50 plus this 50 plus this. He's like, I, I.

Maybe. It didn't go anywhere. And I get it. You know, I get it. This is a small P and a, right, pod that extends across the country and overseas. So then I said, okay, some time goes on. I said, Frank, look, if you're not going to lawyer up, right, and try to get this guy legally, I can talk to him, pretend that I want to invest with him. We could change gears again. You told the guy already. that you know he got conned, that he conned you. But let's reverse it. Let's make them think you're even more glib than you were, all due respect, because you made a mistake, right?

Yeah, I made a big mistake. I was very careless, to say to least. I met Muhammad. I went into a role-playing version of a business deal, but I let him know by the end of the business deal, who I was and what was what. there's certain people that'll flinch and there's certain people that won't flinch he didn't flinch he didn't give a shit he didn't disrespect me but he didn't care because this went up a chain

that far exceeded anything i could i realized also then after doing some additional due diligence based on his reaction and other things this is uh this is something that was a foreign like basically the equivalent to a foreign terror organization. You know what I mean? Just they had not nonprofit set up that were just funding different things. And I even went back to the feds and brought them some stuff. I made some money. I worked my ass off.

And it was a great learning experience. But in the end, sometimes you are just, especially if you don't have a lawyer and which you didn't. And you're not going to get cooperation from people that could really. right i had i had some reach even for my first case a little not the not the same as i do now and not the same capabilities that i do now and i did everything i possibly could for the guy but that that just really also showed me this could be daunting so that was my first case it worked a lot of hours uh made made a couple bucks learned a lot but i also learned you know there's only so much i can do

when you're not in collaboration legally with attorneys and there's not other victims in that type of niche. What are the benefits of a client in that situation hiring you instead of just going straight to the police, saving the money? I mean, he's already out 50 grand. Well, I, I, I, I escorted. Well, yeah, you're right. But I escorted him. We did get a police report. And the police assigned the case to a detective. I think the detective in that case was more relieved that I was helping the guy so he wouldn't have to do. So I'm thinking this detective is going to help me. So sometimes it's a pissing match, right, between private detectives and police, right? Because sometimes you oppose each other. In this case, we weren't opposing each other.

We technically were on the same side. And they ran the guy to see if there were any other. And from what they found this, you know, they couldn't tie him to anything. They couldn't even find the wire I found that went to Tel Aviv. And it really, you know, I didn't subpoena. And I didn't have subpoena powers. I was able to just find it and through, you know, banking and interviewing. So had he not hired me, not that it went extremely far or made any huge difference, unfortunately, I think the best thing he could have done at the time was hire an attorney and myself at the time. I think then it would have been a little different, but he chose not to. Why do you think private detectives have such a bad,

up with cops um i think a lot of cops i think it could i think it hits a couple different verticals i think cops often perceive private investigators especially the ones that never were cops as like want like a wannabe like oh look at this because there are a lot of private investigators who have no law enforcement experience as discussed which to a cop it's like uh who are you Who are you? Barnaby Jones over here? What are you? Colombo? And you never were a cop, right? And also, it's, I think it's like a capability thing. Like, what are you going to do? Like, literally, it's like a perception thing. Now, let's just say, I do talk to a cop and I say, hey, I do the whole play on personalities. Hey, brother, I used to be on the job. I'm retired. I'm PI now. Can I get your insight on something? Can I get a little of assist? Because I've had to deal with cops.

But I do think a, I think there is a preexisting perception, right, of a lack of qualified personnel or a perception of that's just some dork with an ID card that says private investigators. Like some cops aren't even educated in the genre that, no, you actually have to. there's real qualifications to get a PI license. I just think if they don't know the person and they know that the background may not jive exactly like a lot of PIs who do have law enforcement, I think some of the PIs who get the most bad rap are ones that may have, at least from cops, they've never been a cop and that's how they perceive it as, oh, this guy was never a cop. You don't have to be a cop for us.

Some private investors can run circles around certain cops, especially some detectives, vice versa. There's some detectives that are unbelievable, right, in law enforcement that want nothing to do with that when they retire. Yet they would be so valuable if so. So it kind of like works a lot of ways, but I think that is some of the perception based up. Do you have any experience with dating app type cases? Because I'm seeing so many documentaries about, you know, just like the crazy dating app stores. I mean, you saw the Tindler Swindler there. There's a few more.

Yeah, if you're talking catfishing and or, obviously a lot of it probably started with the whole, which still continues to this day, catfishing, like the anonymity, right? Especially a lot of it comes from overseas where people are pretending to be people. They are not. And what is their main goal? Their main goal is to socially engineer the person to explain. them financially and then exploit them on a much higher level to execute a plan to see if we can exploit you financially. If we could get 400 out of you, maybe we could get 4,000, right? And maybe we could get 40,000. And guess what? You gave me 400,000. Maybe I could get you,

right, because I'm pretending to be in love with you from a dating app, but you still never met me. some people have committed crimes that they really don't even realize they're committing in the name of emotional attachment and love where some people that are getting socially engineered from dating apps they're taking suitcases with tons of narcotics and trying to get them through an airport because they're in love with the person that's asked them to do it but sometimes they don't even know what's in the suitcase it has gotten to that level now has it gotten to the level that has ruin people, people's lives emotionally as well, where people fall in love with people that they just never met. Like how I, I couldn't imagine meeting somebody and then talking on the phone,

perhaps, even, you know, some people don't even reach that point and they'll talk to somebody through a dating app DM for years. Could you imagine not even hearing a human voice? and then after hearing a human voice, never meeting up? Could you imagine never meeting a person? And then if you finally did, if there was any normalcy to the just the fictitious situation that was already at hand, how do you get played to the point where I know some people, men and women, that let's say role playing, they think they're talking to Ian, but then when it comes time to meet them, Jeff Pike's there, but they're still in love with the person they thought and they'll still

continue the conversation because they're so socially engineered. That's the problem. It's like being addicted to an algorithm. The algorithm takes you to this level and then the psychological process took over. They're compromised. I spent three years locked up and I could tell you mail call was sacred. When you're inside, a photo isn't just a person. picture, it's a reminder that there's still a world out there waiting for you. The holidays are

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up on their wall and they're going to look at it every single day. Pelopost.com keeping families connected, one photo at a time. I feel like there are red flags on these accounts. As a guy when I was on the dating, you know, apps and whatever, there's things you look for, their pictures, and then you look at their Instagram. Like when was the last picture posted? Well, yeah. Mutuals.

Like there's so many elements. Well, here's the other thing. Here's the other lack of education. I follow you on social media. You take a picture. You post it. That's your job, right? I could take that picture free of charge without using a classified database.

Plug the picture. Right? Into a site. I know where you took the picture. I know when. I know what day, with time, and exactly where you took the picture and what device. If people even knew that you could take that picture that is talking to you, right, that's about to ruin your life in some cases, right? Like we just discussed, because you're talking about people with bad intentions.

You could take that picture, put it in free software that's available to the public. And guess what? that picture was taken at an internet cafe in Nigeria by an 11-year-old, bro. If people are more educated to learn this, they may not fall in love after two days and get built out of their life savings or years of emotional distress. So what are some warning signs to look for when you match with someone? Well, I think, first of all, how do people not pick up on language, and grammar issues, even if you have an interest in foreign-born men or women, you can't tell

when it's a, well, people, I'm just, many people can't tell that it's a bot or somebody that doesn't speak the language. But they're saying they're an American sergeant major in the army, but they're talking without vowels and certain cons they're not talking the American grammar, but they're saying they're a war hero from SEAL Team 6. They're stealing military pictures saying they're in love with you, but they're talking like they're from planet Zeptar. And some people just are like, oh, so what does that tell you?

Well, we got some real trauma. There's people with trauma. will ignore or not pick up on that. So human behavior is a big deal, right? And some people just will ignore it. You can't ignore anything, man. So you have those things. Pictures like you said. When was that picture taken? And here's the thing. All right. What do you think when you see an account? Because you've seen people's accounts. If you see an account with one picture and it looks like it's from 1980. You think that's a real person behind that account? No. And also if they post it, if they have pictures from years ago, there's a chance they don't look that same way that they did years

ago. Don't even get me started there. I can tell you something. I've been catfish before at a date. Well, so have I. And you had to see my reaction when they showed up, brother. So, because I wouldn't pull punches. This is obviously before I got married. I just feel like you have to have like recent photos if you're going to be on a dating app, not pictures from you from 10 years ago. No, well, that's, that's always been, right? A huge red flag. The pictures have to be within a year time.

Like, I think a year is okay, but it should be within a, you know, now. Why can't, what's going on? You can't show a picture of you now, man, right? Or ma'am, right? What do you show? Well, that just shows you. There's a lot of insecurity there. But then they got, do you know what, to show up?

And they're 500 pounds heavier. Like, what are you doing? Well, no disrespect, but like, what are you doing? Where do you think that's going to go? You think you're going to, you think the emotional attachment is going to outfox the physical? It's not. So, but what does that also tell you, Ian? People in general are deceptive.

Listen, everybody has a little bit of deviance in them, okay? But deviance is in criminality. And deviance doesn't mean deception, right? You've rubbed shoulders with people in certain environments where you would never want to be with them in that environment ever again because of how truly deviant. Like you have deviant, you have criminal, and then you have pure evil, right? Sometimes these people, right, behind those apps and other types of apps, they are a combination of it all. And they have no bones about it. They don't care because you think they're working alone?

They're not. Most of these people, aside from these MTV catfish individuals that they catch on camera and it's like mind blowing, right? Because we still have that too. Kind of just kind of like the hacker. The individual hacker from the 80s and 90s, they're usually not working alone. These are organized groups and dating apps. The romance scams are often tied into, you know, high-end trafficking. Do you have a story from one of those? Has anyone ever called you with the dating app issue? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some divorcese and widows in which, luckily, and once again, it's a small percentage, but I recall a woman who was a divorcee, believe she was talking to a man, middle-aged man from Denmark.

So this guy, decent-looking guy that looks Scandinavian, right, was in Denmark. And his thing was, I'm going to come meet you in New Jersey. And I'm going to do it. So he said he was going to do this like three times. First of all, I take all the information, right, that exists. Listen, you can't hold anything back. Give it all to me. I'll analyze it.

It'll help me develop a plan of action here. Meanwhile, I'm running images. I'm looking at text language. I'm realizing where a lot of times it's an American, but they're overseas. This guy saying is overseas, he's not. Fast forward, it's one of her. neighbors. It's one of her neighbors. Literally, four houses down. But wouldn't you know, the neighbor, his main goal was part stalky. He wanted to see the lady get dressed up and go

out on dates and follow her on dates that the guy wasn't showing up to. Completely bizarre. First of all, Denmark? Right? Say you're from Bayonne. And you're, because it was in Bergen County across the GW Ridge, say you're from Bayonne and do it weekly and see how dumb she is. It keeps showing up. Denmark, you got to say, I got to fly in. So he was saying like every month he was going to fly in, arrange a whole thing, showed her fake airline tickets, right? He was good at that stuff. And then he started trying to advance it.

We're trying to get money out of her. I think she gave like a small bit of money from what I recall a couple hundred bucks and she didn't have the money to give even if, you know, he was about to, you know, ask for more because that's a main goal, financials. Because that's just so you know, that's always the main goal. Financials, right, to exploit financially and then execute usually at a higher level. So this guy was on her block, bro. that was on her block and I was able to trace it back to him how did she react when you told her she was she could not believe it she didn't want to believe me and then she but the guy you know he's a kind of creepy dude so what do you guys do turn him into the police or do i yeah i i i i

turn it over to her and i offered look we can do this you cannot you know force a horse to drink, as they say, right? Lead them to water. And I said, yeah, this guy needs to be, you know, but I can't do anything without the client. And, yeah, I, you know what it comes down to, too, a lot of times. Oh, I just want peace of mind. You've been married to this guy 20 years, different scenario, right? I just, I just need to know.

Okay. Peace of mind, that's all you, okay. Sometimes that's all people. I've heard that 9,76 times. I want peace of mind. Whether it's infidelity, fraud. Well, fraud usually it's beyond peace of mind, especially if you're working for a business or an attorney.

But peace of mind, that word comes up a lot, that phrase and, you know, closure. Okay. Well, sometimes you just want to know. You're going to pay me that much money and ask me to work this amount of hours and that's all you want? you don't want to at least seek retribution and restitution. Okay. Some do. Some do.

I think if it's like if you know the person's cheating but you can't prove it, I mean, you're not going to get restitution from that, but you want to know. Well, it depends on what state in a divorce case. No, not even marriage. Oh, you're not even marriage. It's like a girlfriend or a boyfriend situation, long term engagement, that type of thing. But most PIs, I believe. and obviously I'm basing on a lot of my experience, I think most PIs, when they do inherit cases

where inquiries like that exist, it's usually at least engaged and or married. You know what I mean? You don't get a lot of boyfriend, girlfriend, infidelity inquiries. Well, you know what it probably is too? Because girls are so freaking good at using Instagram to uncover stuff. Like me and Matt will be talking and then about like who's dating who or what? whatever, looking at something, or did these two break up? And my girlfriend will be like, hold on, let me check. And she goes through their Instagram. See who they unfriended. Yeah, looks at all of that.

And they're able to decipher it to the tape. They are very good at that. Extremely good investigators. And women are very good at cheating. You're much better at cheating than men. But men are just, yeah. But men, it's funny, men will go to such lengths to cheat. Get sloppy at some point, but go to a lot more lengths than women will. But women just are just, better at it. It's interesting. What do you think it's the number one case people bring to you that they want to hire you for? At all your cases you get over the years, what has a majority? I think it's tied between entities hiring me to uncover possible fraud and if it is a much

bigger picture than just this employee running parallel with family matters in which which the divorce is often already taken place. So a lot of cases in which cases could go back to court for custody issues. And I'm talking like some cases you're like, I can't even believe this is happening. Like you're, you, certain people are seek or have custody and this is how they behave, right? This episode is brought to you by Tidy Cats Here to level up your litter game With their new Performance Plus lineup

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Yeah, give us a story. So partial custody is often the children live with the mother most of the time. And they see, say, a father, Tuesday, Thursday, and a piece of the weekend, right? You've heard of that type of scenario. Yeah, split custody. Right. But mostly sleeping, you know, full, you know, with. the mother, but it's still considered split, like you said. So I have seen, and the biggest one was

early on in my career where the client was the mother of the children who the children were young. The client was the mother and the grandmother. So the wife and her mom, right? Divorce, they were divorced probably at least a year or two. The children were. still young. The father, according to them, they perceived him to have a drug problem. So if that was the case, they wanted to make sure that he did not have custody and any visitation would be completely controlled, monitored, and what else is he doing? And he would cry the blues to his attorney and then his attorney to the judge that this he was paying too much in child support. But in a case like that, you have guys that are going to cry to blues based on their salary

and try to, you know, sometimes even hide money they make, right? And that's just because that's just how they tick. Well, this guy and their theory was pretty accurate, which you don't always see too. their theory was, well, he's also complaining about the money because he spends so much money on drugs. That's what we think. We think he's on drugs. We think he's on drugs. And we think he's on drugs while he's supervising the kids.

And that's when I'm sitting there and I'm listening to this. And I wasn't even a father at the time. And I am now. But I don't like that. I look, some cases you get emotionally invested in, I would say over 90% emotion is channeled, right? No emotion. I am a robot.

I am an investigator. I am working for a client, but I have to leave emotion out. But we're human, man. When you hear certain things, you're like, wait, the guy's high when he's with the kids. And, you know, of course they show you what he pays in child support and this and that. You try not to get, because you got an attorney, you try not to get too involved in that. You just try to provide evidence in the field for them and through computers, through technology. Oh, no, no.

He's making this and he's also working here. And he's also, so he's lying. But you got to have your attorney bring that to the court. So the plan of action was when he has custody of the kids, right? is he high? And is he also high because a lot of his salary goes to drugs? Well, with this particular case, pretty early on in my PI career, too, both turned out to be yes and yes. And what I did was, once the client gave me all the data that I needed, right, from when he has the kids, where he takes them, he was very, you know, people are.

patternistic. Where he's coming from, is he coming from work? Is he coming from home? Where does he take him? And what does he do with him when he has him? It's all behavior, right? So she said, he comes from work. He works in the Bronx. He's a teacher. And he picks them up. He comes and gets them. we notice he's this, he's that describing what they see in him. Okay, where's he go? He goes to a park, a half a mile from the house, and he just brings him to the park for two hours and brings him home. And I said, how about on the weekends when he has at least one sleepover? Oh, he just brings him to his apartment and they sit there.

So she's describing a guy that is kind of like, what, a slug? Sounds like you're a slug. When you're with your time, maybe you value it, but that's it. Okay. You think he has a drug problem. You tell me where he works. Let's start there. So before I go into the field, I use vehicle sightings, right?

Like I described before. He works, worked in the Bronx. I had his car 11 times. Now this is 2012, but I still remember, 11 times at a certain corner that when you do the research is a hot spot for buying drugs. So I take that. I put it into action. Eventually, I see him buy drugs. the most significant moment of that case was knowing he was going to pick up his kids at 3.30,

but I had to be at a certain location before he departed, sorry, for when he departed work with a high probability that he was going to buy drugs, because she would say, I believe he's coming to us high. So he was getting high, twice a week minimum, right? Probably every day, but twice a week that he was supervising the kids. So I said to myself, I think I need some help here. So I hired an ex-criminal justice student that was about to become a cop to help me out a little bit. literally drive and observe, not behind them.

I was the one behind the guy, right? I needed an extra pair of eyes. This is 13 years ago. So my extra pair of eyes told me, because I was on a live feed saying, okay, I'm behind them. I'm just following them. We're going to follow them to a certain area.

We did. it was clear that he purchased, that it was a hand-to-hand transaction, he stayed in a car. So I'm behind him. After a couple minutes, we're on a road, red light, red light, red light.

I said, pull up alongside him. I'm going to stay behind him. Two lanes, guy goes, my guy says to me, yo, he's got tinfoil, and it looks like something's in it. okay, thank you, good observation. I call the client in real time and say, look, you got two options here.

We can get this guy pulled over. You know, he bought some drugs. He's on his way. She's trying to get her attorney, right? How do you stop a guy from picking up kids if he just bought drugs, but at the same time, he didn't ingest drugs yet? We're monitoring him. So I said, you know what?

I had this idea. Let's see what's what. I tell my friend to fall back. I get in front of him. Now the guy's behind me. I'm surveilling him reverse. As I'm looking at him in a rearview mirror, as we're going through or approaching a green, then turning yellow light,

I slam on the brakes. He rear ends me. And the product flies at him. He's covered in product of what he bought. I said, I can't believe this just happened. Right. So when you get rearended, it's their fault, right? I get out of the car because now it's a motor vehicle accident.

He's cleaning up and this and that. And I said, oh, what's up, man? I look at my car, there's no damage. All the product that he purchased, there was none to ingest. Literally, I don't know how much it was, but there was none to ingest. He's like, are you going to call the cops? I said, well, it's a motor vehicle accident. What do we do?

I said, you know what? There's no damage. This is all on film. There's no damage, man. You okay? You're okay? Yeah, yeah. He's going, yeah, I'm okay, I'm okay.

His heart rate was probably, right? I didn't call the cops. At the time, you didn't have to report everything right down and there. Now you have to call for a motor vehicle accident. And even if I did call the cops, I wouldn't have had to tell them I'm a PI and what I did. But I did what I did. I let the client know. And I said, okay, he's en route to you.

She's like, well, I'm not letting my kids go. And I said, well, you better get your attorney on the horn. The attorney was able to get a within like a 30 minute thing, an injunction for that day, that week. Then his attorney got involved. Flash forward again, the following week, based on where I was coming from, I was still monitoring him. But I didn't get him in an area where I saw him purchase anything. and she was very nervous. So I got enough time, right, off a GW Bridge coming from New Jersey because I had to do something in Jersey the following week.

To follow them, now the kids are already in the car. I pick them up on the road. Do you know? He's driving like, A. Okay. He gets him to the park. They're playing. This guy had enough wherewithal to get them to. the park. Now, I didn't know if he ingested

anything, nor did she. He's at the park with the kids. I'm about 75 yards away watching him on a video camera. This guy passes out on the grass in the park and he's looking at the sky. He nodded out.

And you know what I'm talking about. He nodded out. Well, the youngest son was probably like three. I have then found myself sprinting 75 yards where at the time I had in sprint in years. The kid is standing on a wall that oversaw an eight-foot drop into a like creek. So the kid's about the guy's high.

I don't even know if the guy was alive. Praise God. Right before I got there to another lady with kids. right got the kid's attention and then i scooped the kid up when i got down there then i called the cops in real time and i said yo i'm a p i that guy i believe you know is under the influence i have seen him under the influence before and luckily for her um her attorney was able to you know take it where that guy had some problems after that lost lost some custody and hopefully got some help and don't know where it is now but that was uh that was a that was

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the description of this episode to donate. Let's give these animals the second chances they deserve because sometimes saving them ends up saving us too. Is there ever a case that you won't take on? like what are your morals in regards to what you're not going to accept versus what you will accept? Yes. There have been instances where if somebody asked me to do something that's illegal, I'm not going to do it. For instance, if somebody had almost definitive proof that something was occurring, let's say infidelity. And they wanted me to put a GPS tracker on a car. They didn't want me to follow somebody.

They wanted me to put a tracker on a car. Okay, I'll give you an easy example. I will say, whose car is it? And he'll go, what do you mean? I just told you whose car it was. It's his car. I'm sorry, it's her car. I know you told me it's her car.

Who owns it? She does. and I would say, okay, you don't own her car. You're not on the lien. No, no, she owns it. I own my car. She owes hers. Owns hers. I go, you probably have separate phone bills, too, don't you? Yeah. I can't put a tracker on her car, bro. Why? She owns it. If you owned it, I could. That went to the Supreme Court. Okay. So, right. away. You tell me, you asked me to put a tracker on a car and you don't own it. I'm like, that's like an easy example. Another one could be more contemporary, for instance. I got access to my husband's phone. I know the password. Oh yeah? Good for you. But I don't know how, I don't know how to get the deleted messages and I don't know how to do this and I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I do. Yeah. But whose phone is it? Like I said, it's my husband's who pays the bill. My husband.

Who set the password? My husband. Yeah, I'm not going to jail. You know what I'm saying? So there's lines. There's boundaries. There's legal boundaries. Yes. And there's obviously ethical boundaries. But those are legal boundaries. Both of those examples, GPS tracker, access to phone. That's something they could just do on their own, though. Why even hot? hire you. I mean, you could sell an air tag in someone's car. Yeah, you could. What do you think about air tags? What do I think about them? I think, I think the iPhone is going to notify you when the air tag is there. Oh, it does, right? Because even like with AirPods, like when I'm going in the car and I keep my AirPods in the car, it notifies me. Yeah, all these people. Here's the air tag. If there's a random air tag in my

neck of the woods, I get a notification. That's true. I didn't think of that. Right. I guess I don't have people planning air tags on me. Well, let them because guess what? You're going to know. Because show me a real good situation where you're not going to know. Here's the other thing. A lot of times when there are trackers on people's cars, people just slap them on, they slap them in the wrong place, and they're doing it illegally. I have equipment that also detects things in people's houses for countermeasures, counter sweeps. And I'm not talking like the Amazon stuff. I got trained a long time ago and I have some higher end equipment that I use when

need be. But if somebody thinks they're getting tracked, it's either their phone or there is something on the car. And a lot of times they're just USB battery operated. It'll last for 40 hours tops and it can be app monitored. And half the time, they're putting it in places. First of all, just say a husband put it on his wife's car. He doesn't pay to lien on that anymore.

So you're doing, he's doing something illegally. You asked me to find it, no problem. That's different. They're doing something illegally. So if somebody's doing something illegal and we can easily pinpoint that and we go about it illegal way, fine. But I'm not going to crack a phone if it's not yours. I'm not throwing a tracker on a car.

You want to pay me, pay, you're better, I would say, you're better off paying me to follow him. Now in certain states, you go down North Carolina, I don't know what it is down there. Nobody follows anybody. Nobody follows anybody. I follow everybody around the five boroughs, New Jersey, like, sometimes it's like for a long time.

It was like my life is following people and I got pretty darn good at it. And I still do conduct surveillance. balance legally as a PI for a multitude of reasons. But you're much more legally safe in doing so, right? Contractually, where you turn that evidence over, here's what I found. Here's what I didn't find because it's my job to prove or disprove. But I'm not going to do anything right to question my ethics or illegally. Like, when I run a report from a classified database, I don't give the report to the client. That reports for an investigator. Can I take data off the report and provide it to you? Yeah, of course. Yeah. But there's a fine line between so many different things, right? You can't, you know how like police can get charged with like entrapment?

there's a fine line gray area with that too you know i'm not gonna if there's like say there's a case of infidelity i don't like hire women to hit on men now could you yeah sure but like is that what you're looking for or are you looking for a specific person what is also illegal are you you were you basically were asking if clients ask it right yeah Yeah. And then some PIs, and there's different types of PIs. I'd like to elaborate on that later, too, how I kind of categorize them as such. But certain types of PIs will go about certain situations in a way where they're like, they'll use a female investigator to purposely compromise somebody when that may not even be, right, the central focal point of what's going on. But that's how you. you went about discrediting them when we were looking for something else here but that's we found this well you found it because you can ready to buy a car a home or just want to take control of your money your fico score matters and 90% of top lenders use it to make decisions check your

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where that that's how you went about it. Wow. Is that ingenuity or is that just, I don't know. But I think the plan of action has to match, right, the definitive objective. But sometimes the clients do ask you, right, to go beyond the scope of what you can do legally. And you can't bite on that or else it's a rap. and a lot of times simultaneously you have to manage expectations too i am not merlin the wizard uh i am not look at look at remember david copperfield that illusionist yeah you're you're a

fugazi bro uh you got to be an investigator right but we can't pretend things happened and as much as some people want them to right happen and get that peace of mind because some people do need real evidence, it ain't there sometimes. So what do you mean by different types of PIs? Once again, you could interview 100 PIs. 99 might agree with me. This is how I perceive the P.I. I perceive the P.I. world as being three.

Now, I don't care what, Jen, there's a lot of women PIs. Is. There's men PIs. I perceive the world of PIs as this. Number one, an information broker. What do I mean by that? I mean a guy who will sit in a comfortable leather chair all day long with a monitor, a computer, a monitor that's just basically a computer monitor. And they will have access to, you know, the classified databases, right, that I spoke of.

they'll have two, three, four, six different accounts with six different classified databases. And they don't get off their ass into the field to do anything other than run classified database information on people, right, that are requested from clients and or guess who, that type of PI, the information broker? who do you think, ask them, pays them for the most information? Other PIs. Other PIs who may not have classified databases or not as many as they need or, you know, whatever the situation, they'll call certain people and pay certain people that are licensed to do it to just sell information. Literally, information brokers.

That's it. Boom. This is more old school number two, but it exists. You ever hear the term fixer? Yeah. Okay. I mean, we see that on a lot of TV shows, too. Yes, you do. Trevor, your question.

Who was the biggest PI fixer on TV in the last 15 years? You're a TV guy? Some. It was a series on, I'll give you a hint, HBO. Really good show. He was a PI. Then he lost his license. became a full-time fixer.

Oh, it wasn't each, you mean Breaking Bad? Uh-uh. Oh, but he was a fixer in Breaking Bad. Who? What's his name? Oh, the Souls guy? Yeah. Right.

And Mike, right? He was a fixer too. Who? Mike, uh, that guy was a PI. Didn't he lose his license or he was a PI? Or he was a cop. He was a ex-cop. He was a retired cop.

And then became a fixer. Yeah. No, that's a great example, too. And also that guy, Bosch. Um, I read the book. But Bosch was a cop, right? He was a cop and then became a PI. Okay.

And he worked with his brother, was a Lincoln lawyer. Okay. Right. Do you remember Ray Donovan, leave Shriver? Oh, yeah. I never watched it, but I heard that's a great one. Oh, I got to watch that show. Oh, man.

We've been looking for a new show to watch. Please, please watch that. We just watched, it's all her fault, all her fault on Peacock. It's so good. I saw you put that on. Yeah, that post went viral. It's got like 3,000 likes. But what?

It's so good. It's like a limited series on Peacock and eight episodes. She's not a PI or nothing, right? No, no, no. But it involves a cop, a detective in it. The guy that he's in a lot of stuff, he's really good. Cool. He's, I think he's in, no, that's Mark Ruffalo, I'm thinking about.

But he's in a lot of stuff. He's really, it's a really good show. Watch Ray Donovan, too. Okay. If you're, you know, because there's so many moving parts. Yeah. And so many backstories, it's cool. But he becomes, like, now that's, he becomes a Hollywood fixer who was a, who went out from Boston.

went out to California, became a PI, worked for a couple lawyers, one main lawyer, but then because of his zest for fixing things for a lot of money, he got jammed up, lost his PI license, then he just went full-time fixer. There are still fixers, right? That will, let's take a legal fixer. What's a legal fixer? a lot of times they will be a bodyguard that carries a weapon legally that does more security work, right, and a little bit of reconnaissance for their clients, in particular, probably higher profile clients, that often crosses the threshold in which you should probably should, right? as a PI, I don't have a license to intimidate people.

I don't have the authority to, I have the authority to surveil people, but confrontation is not part of the whole scheme. Fixers, they, they don't care. They'll cross the line. I'll tell you who defrauded you, where it went. I have capabilities and experience that will even back, right, my first case and it was a pretty big one, found where money went to Tel Aviv Israel out of my friend's dumb pocket because he's a dumb, not my friend, my client, right?

But simultaneously, these guys, right, will say, and let's say it wasn't Tel Aviv Israel, say it was Albany, New York, they'll say to the guy. they'll say it to the client. Give me $5,000. I'll go up there. I'll go up there and I'll make sure he regrets giving you or a little hint to it. You want me to go pay him a visit? I don't tell.

Can you imagine in 2025 saying, hey, Ian, you want me to pay him a visit, right? Those are like those fixers. They don't have a lot of boundaries. Right? And do many of them have a lot to lose? Yeah, sure. But people are people that there's, right? So those are my perceptions of two of the categories.

And this is probably the one that could be argued to most. And people could say, oh, there's five. I viewed a last one as like, I guess, a calmer way to say it would be like a hybrid. I kind of like to call it. And this couldn't really be used in a court of law or in most books. but I have no problem kind of like using it conversationally or even during a seminar or something. I like to say the third is a skilled guy that goes into the field that knows his way around technology and can interview people, has access to a lot of tools and tricks outside technology.

and once again, advanced technologies. I call it a boogeyman. I call it a legal boogieman. I really do because you are skilled, right, from behind closed doors because I'm confident in my abilities. I am just as skilled in the field, or I should say this, I am just as skilled behind a desk in my home office as I am in the field. and sometimes when you combine them both, that's what people really need, man, you know?

So that's how I look at it and that's, I said to myself, hey, I could be an information broker, sure. I could be a fixer, sure. Not only are you limited in the first realm and selling yourself short, right? Number two is just going to get you in the hot water, right? I could still find clients that I wanted to bodyguard for from a legal security capacity if that's what I wanted to do. But number two is crossing that threshold. That's beyond bodyguarding.

It's beyond private investigative work. But number three is kind of where I'm the most comfortable. I think where most good PIs that are ethically sound. And I think the last component, like I said, said is putting in the time and experience to get other training and other experience to make yourself more valuable, especially on the tech end. And being able to bill hours, right? There's certain people that could bill certain hours because they're just on the road. They'll do surveillance 24 hours a day. But give them a computer to make their job easier.

some some of them can't even relate to that because they don't know their way around scraping metadata they don't know their way around hey do a background check on this guy what do you think a background check is you think it's just putting somebody's name and address in there you're taking every bit of their personal identifiable information you're taking 15 reports and make it into one because you're running people so many different ways and you may not find anything if you're If you enter Tom Billingsley at 128 Rollinson Street, date of birth this, I might find more. Do you know some people won't even know? Let me run the cell phone alone and see what happens.

I might find more running a cell phone than running in somebody's social security number because that cell phone report might tell me the likely associates that somebody has, literally a category on on a report that says likely associates which out of that list might be the person that you are doing illegal work for might be the person you're cheating on your wife with right so it's knowing how to navigate right in and out of different situations but really it's navigating your capabilities what's one case you've worked that you're never going to forget about hmm an attempted murder case.

My only attempted murder case. And before did you, when you asked a certain question around, did I, did I also hear you say, did you use the term, I'm just trying to where you said, did you ever regret taking a case or something like that? Did you say that? Just about the, I don't think we talked about regret. Okay. We just talked about what your morals were.

Okay. cases you wouldn't take Right, right. Well This is a case you regret taking? Here's a memory. You said memorable case, right? Yeah.

Here's a memorable case that I regret taking. Okay. So we'll do, we'll do what we'll collaborate on this, right? I get a call from a kid I was a cop with. He was a cop still. He knew I became a PI. He goes, a, uh, this guy from my church. Um, his son got jammed up. Okay. He needs a PI. So he says he's got an attorney. Okay.

Here's his number. He wants to talk to you. Great. Thank you. Well, I quickly learned that his son, who was 19 at the time, he was about eight years ago, nine years ago, son was 19. he was just like a kind of weird kid weird in a sense that he had a few friends he he he went to like a two-year college but he would he would maybe weird's not a proper word he would work on electronics work on his car but all night long he'd be talking to this girl who he fell in love with that he met through a group of friends. But he was weird when I met him. He just seemed a little off.

So what happened to him was, and once again, he got arrested and charged in New Jersey with attempted murder. So what this kid did was fall in love with a girl who was a lesbian. Happens. he knew she was a lesbian, professed his love to the girl, to the point after just say a year, right, of professing hanging out with this girl and your group of friends, you know, just say three times a week.

But knowing every time you hung out and every time you looked at her, I'm in love with her, but I know I'll never have her because She doesn't even like men. And she made it very clear. She made it very clear. So what would a logical person do at that point? Walk away. At the minimum, at, you can even remain friends.

But not pursue it. Yeah. What are you doing, man? The message is clear, right? Some people just don't get it. Some grown men and women don't get it. This is a 19-year-old, right? who should know better.

You know how he went about at the highest of levels professing his love? Do you want to hear it? He thought this was going to sway her. He picks her up, 1130, 12, 30 in the morning. 11.30 at night, 12, 30 in the morning. They go for a ride. Hey, I can't sleep. You want to go for a ride?

I want to hang out. She goes, okay. I think they went to a diner first. That was probably the selling point. they drive to like a pond or lake suburban area a little more rural they walk they park they walk down and they're it's pitch black and they're staring at a lake she looks at them like what the what are we what are we doing here the kids like shaking she's like are you right he takes out of an unloaded revolver of some sort that his grandfather gave him from like the revolutionary war

and puts it to her head and says something along the lines of like I don't know what movie he saw but I can I almost think when I read the report originally I'm like is this from a movie he goes if I can't have you now puts the gun to her head and she's like crap in her pants she like couldn't even run if I can't have you this is his words if I can't have you nobody can and then the revolve the revolver part what do I forget I'm sorry law enforcement world gods of guns I'm sorry I forget what it's called the revolver part falls out and the gun falls apart. And he's like,

and she runs to the car. She goes, take me to have home. He's like, oh, okay. She gets home. She tells her mom and uncle or whoever, you know, like a bunch of relatives. 5 a.m., a couple hours later, SWAT teams, state police,

They raid him. His family doesn't know what the hell's going on. They lock him up. They write up the report. Spends a couple days, gets bailed out. County jail. Father retains a big attorney. Their biggest thing was,

the state police have cell phone evidence. It's part of discovery. They have their narrative. We have ours. so my main job after interviewing him and evaluating analyzing some things the attorney gave me whatever was to analyze all texts images emails and just every bit of the digital forensics that i have you know extracted data from the phone but it was already extracted so it was my job as an investigator in defense of him to create essentially, right, an expert narrative to combat what

they say. Not that he did. He did what he did. He admitted to doing what he did. But to create a narrative based on things that if you looked at it, right, what does this look like? What does this look like, right? Is this being, this is what was said, but is this what it really means? And I found the whole process of being on his legal team, nothing less than nauseating. I'll tell you why. Because, and, you know, I'll just say, I could say this now. I found the kid. Remember, I used the term weird before. Look, there's weird people, dude. somebody, a bunch of your listeners might be like, well, this fucking guy is weird. Okay.

Maybe I am. But you know what I sense from this kid? I did sense from him from the time I met him. I met his father first. His father, uh, you know what? Let me just retract a second. His father was a weirdo. You've met weirdos, right?

Yeah, of course. His father was a weirdo. You know what this kid was? A super weirdo. Maybe. He was evil, bro. this kid oozed a little evilness to me. And I met some bad men and women, right?

I've interviewed hundreds of gang members. I've supervised them. I worked the street. I've done investigations. I've seen the worst in a lot of people. That was just from law enforcement. In the private sector, I've seen some horribly grimy stuff, some of which we've already discussed today.

When I talk to this kid and went from the time I met him, and thank God I only had to talk to him a couple times, and then having to deal with his father. And I get, look, I get a defense attorney is just going to do their job. I didn't have a problem with the attorney. The attorney is very well-known, good attorney. This kid was just from the point of, being retained to handing in my final report, right? They didn't even call me to testify.

I think the attorney knew that I was just like, I mean, I would have just testified to my report. But I think even, you know, I have no problem saying it. I think based on my perception of him and would I, you know, what I perceived of him, even it could even if it was now. And I'm a lot better investigator now than I was then. But I'm, I'm, I think my feeling wouldn't have changed. I think if that gun was a better gun and he could have got his hands on some bullets, right? I think he would have took care of her. I think he wasn't built for that. So that's why he grabbed the gun that fell apart after five seconds, probably because he was shaking so much, but guns aren't.

supposed to do that anyway. Let's say she never reported him another time he would have unalived her. So what happened to the kid? He went to state prison. He got convicted. He got convicted. Took a long time the process and then he... Bonjour, compadre.

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Oh, to go home. Yeah, but why would she do that? Well, that was a part of how they wanted me. Right. As a defense to say she wasn't. Right. As a component of, well, was she really in fear? She got back in the car with him because she probably could have beat his ass, like literally.

Or I would have just ran or I would have stole the car if the keys were available, but I would. Right. I'm not hopping back in the car. Right. Somebody puts a real gun. This fell apart, but somebody puts a real gun to your head. Yeah. What you're getting back in a car?

Yeah. Very weird, right? So that was a big, that was a big component of, well, she got back in a car with her. They, they, the attorney, that, he was big with that. What's one case that you want to work that you haven't worked, like a type of case? I got him stumped. No, you know, no, you know what it is? I took, it took a minute.

I did some, I did some, uh, reconnaissance for a, which was actually a, um, a surveillance detail with guys I do business with for a high profile client. Guy flew in from another state and he's a journalist and he had to do an expose in Queens, New York. And while I was doing, I was the investigator, everybody else was more protection. ahead of time I got paid to do some fields of because these are journalists that are going into the heart of a pretty bad area to the tune of the area that they were filming in over a couple day period was the highest human trafficking area in New York in New York, Roosevelt Avenue, highest counterfeiting area of illegal documents.

So when you hear that or when anybody hears that, but that is not like small potatoes, those are organized. That's high-end organization, right? So we're coming into, right, this journalist is doing this expose. It's going to be on all over the world. you need to know the environment you're going to be in, right? So we down to the routes we're taking, right? Literally on a street. What routes are we walking?

What routes are we driving? We've got to protect this guy. We got to do some due diligence first. While I was out there doing due diligence by myself, I saw some stuff, right? Not to say the paper's never reported on this. Right. It's not like I am the PI who discovered all of this, but I saw so much human trafficking and so much fraud. And I had already investigate. I have, this was only two years ago. I investigate fraud of all kinds all the time. And it makes my job very interesting. I love investigating fraud.

but this is a well-oiled machine, right, conducted by foreign terror organizations. Simultaneously, the most human trafficking on record, but to see it for yourself is like beyond comprehension, and most of it is conducted by non-traditional organized crime factions from other countries. and I think I would barring some assistance

because you would need some like to be a part of some stuff that could really put a dent in either one of those but specifically put a real dent in a lot of the human trafficking, at least from a case study perspective, at least if I was, because that's some

unforgiving stuff. You got so much human trafficking going on, even in the United States, most of which that is prosecuted is prosecuted for other types of crimes. Only a small percentage of those cases are prosecuted under federal human trafficking laws. It's always like a notch down and things like that. And we know who a lot of the players are. I think that it's dangerous work.

But there's so much of it, man. And it's not just about in that case, oh, let's get them because they're from this nation. And it could be Americans doing it on Super Bowl weekend. To put a dent in something like that. That would be pretty, dare I say, fulfilling. Yeah, it's a business. I get paid to do what I do.

And I'm not out here to do pro bono work. But, and I don't do pro bono work and never will. But that's some serious stuff, man. I mean, what's going on out there? And I got to say, there is opportunity for that because right now certain federal agencies are so inundated with their mission. I don't know if you know this. Certain federal agencies are seeking people that aren't feds that may have my credentials

and background and people like me to do a lot. lot of the intel they need online and some probably a little bit out there in the field to help them. So these are jobs you can bid on now to assist certain three-letter federal agencies. And look, I could have been a Fed. I'm not a Fed. And nor do I, I'm fine in the private sector, man. Do you ever wish you did go that route, though? To be like with. like the FBI or something. Anyone, any type of agency after you left corrections? No. Like an investigator? Well, I did. I was a federal contractor. So I was a federal, I worked for a private, two private companies where the work I did was for the feds.

So I did background checks for six years for the feds. But I wasn't like, no, no, right. I wasn't a fed. Yeah. No, not, not even that. It's like not really actiony, right? No, no, on the front lines. No, except the guy that I had to report that had visibly questionable pornography on his computer when I went and did his address check. That had a security clearance. Oh, you were doing actual physical address checks? Combined with background checks that would. Now, these are people who were going for or going for renewal of active top secret security clearances. I got vetted for three years to get my security clearance.

Now I'm doing background checks on them because they're trying to keep their job to keep their job they needed their security clearance. The only doozy I ever saw doing that, right, because it was pretty boring work. There was no action, like you said, was during one random type of, I had to interview them because you had to interview, right, people to get certain things. And what do you do in the interview of people? Is the goal to an interview, a confession? No, the goal to an interview is to corroborate the facts from somebody as to what's here, right, on a data sheet.

Yeah, I saw some stuff on an open laptop that was Interpol, I think, got involved. Put it that way because it was from another country and it wasn't nice, nice. so that had to be reported. What do you think being a PI for all these years has taught you about people? When I was already jaded, good people can switch to being bad and not doing the right thing very easily. And trauma comes in a lot of different fashions. Yeah, so let's take a divorce case. A guy could be visibly a great dad or a mom could be a great mom.

But are you really a great mom or dad if you say, F you to your ex, and you're not going to pay her money to put food on a table to feed your kid? Or not give her enough money to send your kid to the school that they've been going to for the last six years or all of a sudden they've got to go to a school in a dangerous area now? you're going to deprive your own children, right? You see a lot of stuff like that. And then I think from a deception perspective, I think what I already saw in people being deceptive, including but not limited to people with no criminal records, some of which were cops that I investigated while I was in law enforcement

or as a civilian investigator before I retired, depending on the agency. one of the many agencies, right, that I worked for that we discussed the last time. In the private sector, everything seems so much grimyer because it seems so much more intimate because you're dealing directly with usually a client themselves that are hiring you or a business that's losing millions based on behavior. Seeing people just not give a shit about defrauding hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies, from, to the family situations, right?

Just doing, you got a drug problem, get help. And you know you got a drug problem. You're still going to pick your kids up just to spite your wife, right? I mean, I mean, there's levels to evil. And that's a strong word. From my neck of the woods, you could go to hell for a lot of different reasons, bro. and I think I've seen as a PI a lot more of that than when I was in law enforcement, that's for sure. Well, Brian, I appreciate you coming on the show today.

I appreciate it, man. Yeah, another good interview from you. You're two for two now. I appreciate it. It was a good opportunity, and I want to congratulate you for additional headway, and you've made in your career. I mean that. You're doing great, and I appreciate being in this situation. Of course.

Yeah, we appreciate your support. Yeah, ma'am. Awesome. Thank you.