Locked In with Ian Bick - Private Detective Reveals The #1 Place Where Couples Meet To Cheat On Their Spouse | Ray Ranno

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Connecticut Private Detective Ray Ranno sits down with Ian to give listeners the inside scoop on what it's really like to be a private detective and shares all of the entertaining stories that come with the job. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Ray Ranno: www.ctprivatedetective.com Https://www.tiktok.com/@ctprivatedetective.com Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:19 - Getting Started as a Private Detective 00:08:09 - The Excitement of Being a Private Detective 00:11:56 - Surveillance on a Stake Out 00:15:41 - Proper Conduct for Police Officers 00:19:37 - Discovering a Plot 00:23:27 - Trial Agitations and Fanny Willis Trial Conversation 00:27:17 - Investigating a Workers Comp Claim Fraud 00:31:07 - Surveillance and Funny Moments in the Field 00:34:56 - The Difficulty of Remaining Objective 00:38:55 - Tools of the Trade: Surveillance Techniques 00:42:49 - Running into Clients 00:46:36 - Bug Sweeping in Marital Situations 00:50:26 - Detecting Listening Devices and Cameras 00:54:22 - Needed Changes in the Criminal Justice System 00:58:11 - The Challenges of Budget and Quality Investigations 01:02:01 - Relationship Advice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I had a gentleman came from Africa, but he calls me, he says, I got a, my wife came here to America with my two kids. I want to serve her papers to bring her to court for child custody. And I want to take her to court and I want to bring my kids back to Africa. I met with him. He was a professional suit guy. I mean, well-spoken guy. He said he was some kind of professional career he had in Africa. I forget what it was.

But it seemed legit. No problem. So I tracked her down. Two weeks later, he calls me up. He wanted to follow her again. okay why he says he goes well i just want to find out if she's working you know where the kids are going to school that type of thing so i did i went out there before she left i got a weird vibe before she even left the house so i'm sitting on surveillance for like three hours let's say

i just said you know what this guy he's already in court with her everything should be fine i don't even know why i'm here it's kind of not really worth doing this case so i call him up he said i'm done two weeks later on one of my dues feeds he was arrested for hiring a hitman Welcome back to the Locked In podcast. On today's episode, I have a Connecticut private detective here with me today. Ray Rano is here to not only give a different perspective of the criminal justice system on our show, but share entertaining and exciting stories from his career as a private detective. And I want to give a big thanks to all those who leave a comment on our YouTube podcast episodes

or a review on our episodes on Spotify and Apple. It really does help us tremendously get the show. show out there to more people. And if you haven't yet, please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple or just hit that subscribe button on YouTube. And remember, you could stay up to date on all the exciting things we have coming to the Lockton podcast by following me on my Instagram at Ian underscore Bick or signing up for our mailing list at Ian Bick.com. Now sit back, relax, and get ready to lock in with Ray Rano. Investigator Rano, welcome to Lockton. Thank you to Patrick Anino for connecting us.

Oh, thanks for having me. How are you doing? And you are our second investigator on the show in a couple weeks span, which is cool because we've gone like over a year now without one. Yeah, and we've all got a lot of stories. Yeah, definitely. We have some great questions for you. I'm exciting ones.

Patrick told me that you do some investigative work relating to like people that want to spy on like a wife or a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Infidelity, yeah. It's about 40% of my business. Wow. And that's really exciting. and we see all that on TV and all that, which we'll get into. Sure.

And you were just telling me that you had followed my story 10 or so years ago. Yeah, I was interested because it was definitely a unique story, a very ambitious young man who, you know, did what he did and, you know, made it until he didn't. But I was following it. And then when I was approached about the show, I didn't put two and two together immediately, but it didn't take long with just going online, doing a little background. They said, oh, I already know this guy, man. I feel like I already know you, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Do you ever do, like, federal casework at all? Not much. No, not much. I don't deal a lot with police departments either. I get referred by a lot of police departments, but remember, they're on one side of the law, the prosecution side, and I'm usually on the criminal defense side. So we usually butt heads somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, I asked because I had a private investigator on my case, kind of working alongside with my criminal defense attorney. So how did you get into this kind of line of work? Well, honestly, back in 92. That's how long I go back. Before I was born. Before you were born, yeah. I had just gotten out of school, and I was thinking about becoming a police officer.

But in 92, I don't know if you know it because of your age, but the Rodney King riots in California were going on. It's basically where police officers pulled this black gentleman out of a truck, and they started to have a confrontation in the streets, and it blew up. And right after that, just like today, media is making every policeman bad. So I said, oh, that's a lot of scrutiny. I don't want that. So I said, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to, you know, chill and see if I can do something else. I was watching a movie, Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, the last Boy Scout.

Bruce Willis was a private detective, kind of a run-down one, but pretty cool role. I said, oh, you know what, when I just go private? So back then we didn't have Internet email and all that. So basically I created a resume using my, because I worked at a retail store as the manager, and I did security. And I used to be able to chase people down and tackle them in the parking lot. Can't do that anymore. But I used my security experience there on a resume and just sent it, faxed it, mailed it to every private detective in the yellow pages. That's how far back it goes.

Nobody would touch me. You need experience to be hired, but you can't be hired without experience, that type of thing. So I just kept bugging everybody. Finally, an older gentleman, Ed Day, he's no longer with us, unfortunately. He says, I'm sick and tired of hearing from you. Come down. I'll bring you in. I'll train you.

So I got in with him for about six months. He never paid me. but I was able to learn and then create an actual resume with some experience to get into a large surveillance company here where they did all insurance fraud claims. And from there, never looked back. Did you have family in law enforcement at all? Nope, not at all. So it was just a personal interest of yours? It's just a demeanor.

I just have that demeanor. I'll even make a joke in a serious face and people will believe what I'm saying. And I said, no, I'm kidding with you. They're like, oh, my God, you scared me. So I just always had that demeanor. So I always fit into it. not that growing up I was fitting the role because I was a bit of a troublemaker myself, you know, but you start to grow up a little bit and then you said, okay, what am I going to do with my life?

And police officer fit at the time until that Rodney King incident. And then I just went private. And once I got in, I'm pretty much a licensed stalker. It's a great job. I mean, I'm in the woods. I got killy suits on. I'm putting cameras everywhere. I'm chasing people.

I love it. It's great. Do you ever look back now and say you wish you took a different route and got into law enforcement and a different angle of it? Well, maybe for the pension, that would be nice and some of the benefits. But for the job itself, no, because honestly, I have all respect for police officers. You know, they're dealing hands-on with the criminal element. At any minute you can get killed, shot, staff, whatever it may be.

As a private detective, I'm more in the shadows. If you see me doing my job, then I'm not doing my job, right? So I'm kind of like clandestine. I'm in the car on surveillance. The only time you're going to see me is if I'm working a criminal defense case. I've got one going on now. So I have to find witnesses to contradict the police report. So I'm knocking on doors.

I'm banging on doors. And it's some of the worst neighborhoods because a lot of these crimes, drugs, stabbing, shootings, they're all happening in these areas. So I'm banging on doors in the middle of the day, sometimes after work in the dark. That's the only time that my job really gets too sticky. But police officers, day in and day out, they're dealing with a pretty tough job. So I'll take my cushy surveillance job where I can just lift my camera. I'm good.

Now, before we dive into this, I want you to plug your TikTok because you were talking about gilly suits and stuff. and your TikTok has funny, entertaining kind of point of view on it. So, you know, let the people know where they could find you. Yeah, I actually got to get credit to my wife because I was during the pandemic there when we were pretty first sitting around board, closed down. My wife said, you should do TikTok because of your job is interesting. So I said, okay, I'm all right. So I started making them.

TikTok didn't like me much at first. They banned like four of my accounts. I don't know why because their guidelines are ridiculous. But finally, I got the groove where I kind of like toned it down just a little bit. and I started telling the stories. The TikTok itself is CTPrivate Detective.com. You could even go to CT Private Detective. Either way, you'll find me.

But as soon as I started doing it and get into a rhythm, it really started to build up for me. And really now, my domestic side of investigations, I don't have to advertise anymore. TikTok brings most of those clientele in. Isn't that amazing with TikTok? And it's so cool to see professions and professionals use social media in an entertainment way,

which translates into business for them. I never had the response to that I'm getting on TikTok that I ever from Facebook, Instagram, just didn't do it for me. It's going out to, mostly it's going out to people that you already are friends with, you know, unless you're doing the paid ads, again, paid advertisement. But TikTok, if you put the right hashtags, if you put everything right in there, it spreads. And you get one good video and you're good. And you're being your authentic self.

Yeah, just telling stories. I mean, just saying what I do for a living. And it has the certain element of excitement. It has a certain element of a lot of toys, a lot of stuff. a lot of spy stuff, so it seems to click well. What was it like working your first case? Wow, my first case going way back on my own or my first case ever. On your, I would say on your own, maybe.

Not the insurance aspect of it, like your first real private detective. Yeah, so this is something else. So I had gotten out of my apprenticeship, five years in Connecticut, you have to work full-time before you're going to be approved for licensing. So once I did that, a partner I was with at that surveillance company I talked about, we got together. opened a company, and we started doing a lot of insurance fraud cases. Back then, it was very easy to get on insurance lists. We were doing great. But it came to the point where I was like, you know what, I'm babysitting now. I'm driving around making sure my surveillance guys aren't sleeping in the car and writing a report, as opposed to me actually investigating. I didn't like that. So I

talked to my partner. I went my own way. I opened my own, and that was in 2001. Now, this business that I'm in myself, my first phone call. Phone rings. It's a gentleman who owns a brothel in Connecticut, right? I said, oh, this is interesting. He's like, yeah, one of the girls that work here, I'm dating. You know, I've been dating her for a few years, even though she's a working girl. She disappeared. She took off. I want to know what happened to her. I said, okay, all right, let's check this out. So I drove down to his location. I met with him in his vestibule of his place, and he gave me a pretty decent retainer to go track her down. So I started working for him. It took me about maybe five days. I tracked her to Florida. He wanted to follow her, see what she was up to.

I said, okay, let me call one of my guys down in Florida who's licensed because I can't go back and forth. I got, you know, things to do. I hired him, I contracted him, he followed her around. Then she disappeared again. I had to track her down again, right? Into New Jersey, I found her. So again, I flew my guy up from Florida because he was slow, and I paid him to follow her around. And we both tagged him.

We went back and forth and we were doing it. And she wasn't doing anything all that crazy, but my client was very incessant. My client was like, come down here. You've got to come down here. So like every three days I was beating him at the brothel in the front. vestibule, not in the actual business, and talking to him, updating him, showing video clips, showing them this and that. I'd say probably about six months into doing this, right?

On top of other cases, I get pulled in by the state police organized crime division because they've been conducting an investigation for a RICO act on him. And my car's been out there every couple of days, so they got my plate on film. They got me to show me all these pictures. Three of them for three hours were just reaming me at this police department. And then finally I said, look, here's the. report. I showed him one of my reports with my client's authorization. I'm just following a girl, man. You know, leave me alone. It's all it is. So at that point, of course, I disclosed to my client.

They were investigating him, so he started to try to wrap up his business. But that was my first case on my own. Wow. So do you normally travel across state lines a lot? I do. If I'm tailing someone, I'll follow him. I followed somebody over to Florida before. I mean, it's everywhere. Just driving? Just driving. Yeah. Every time they pull into a gas station, so do I. Wow. You just stay, you know, in a highway situation, it's a little easier. as long as you can maintain visual on the car. That's the problem is you'll have a black certain type of vehicle. And if you stop paying attention for one second, the same type of vehicle,

next thing you know you're following the wrong car with the wrong license plate. But if you pay attention, you can actually follow them all the way down. You just have to mimic their movements if you're going that long. How many cases can you take on at one time? It all depends on the types of cases.

If it's something that's going to occupy a good portion of my week, then I won't be able to take as many. But if it's something that's piecework, like the criminal defense case. I have to locate a witness, go knock on this door, then I'm done for now. I can shoot over to surveillance and spend seven hours, eight hours over there.

So I can get a lot of things done that way. But I've had up to 40 open cases at one time. How long does it take to close the average case? Well, depends on whether I get the result or my client runs out of money. Okay. Which one normally happens first? The result.

The result. I mean, usually I can, when I'm interviewing clients up front, I can usually determine what type of budget they're on. You know, so if somebody's like, I don't care what I have to spend for this, then I'm able to do the investigation and follow every lead, right, as opposed to someone who comes in and if I say, well, let's say a $1,000 retainer,

oh, man, that's, I already, okay, let me prioritize this case because I'm not going to get very far. So if I'm going to utilize this person's money and that's all they have, I've got to try to get something immediately as opposed to trying to, you know, do a more broad investigation. Yeah, so walk us through a stakeout. What's that like when you get tasked with something, you have to go on a stakeout for seven or eight hours like that? Well, it's either super exciting or super boring, right?

So I'll do a pre-investigation on every case first. Make sure I verify vehicles. Make sure the person lives at the address that the client is providing. Do a little bit of social media background to see if they have any upcoming plans. Like somebody will put on Facebook, going to the game this weekend. Well, I know I'm going to schedule that day, right? So I try to prepare myself ahead of time. But once I start the actual surveillance, I arrive at the location.

I scout out the area to see either, do I have a direct view of the residence where I can blend in with other cars parked on the street. Do I, if it's a very difficult, like I say, a cul-de-sac, do I set up on the cul-de-sac? I'm probably going to get the cops called on me, even though I notify them ahead of time I'm in the area. Still trouble. So I'll see, look at the map and determine what's the most likely means of aggress,

the way that the client or the claimant or the subject will leave. And then I'll set up a surveillance on that side street, so they'll pass by me. But once I get situated, then it's a matter of, are they leaving or are they sitting home all day? If they leave, awesome. I'm chasing them around. to supermarkets to this place to that place. I'm just tailing all day long.

It's great. If they don't leave, let's say they're on a workers' comp injury and they actually are injured because we're just there to find out if they are or not. I can be sitting there eight hours my car all day and do nothing. That's like, oh, man. That's got to be boring. Yeah. Well, it used to be.

Now it's Netflix. You know, what kinds of shit I can do? You know, to keep myself occupied. And you're taking photos and videos and whatnot. Yeah, I'll take street sign photos, a house. You know, I'll drive by and get some video of the house cars in the driveway, some identifying information from, you know, so I can present to my client. Because you've got to make every video and every report has to be more of a story,

right? You have to have a beginning, middle, and an end. So it's not just about taking one picture of the guy lifting something he's not supposed to. It's the car's in the driveway, the house. What does he have in his yard? Does he have a lawnmower sitting out there, a push one? He's not supposed to be pushing. You find things that may contribute to the investigation while you're out there. So we identify everything at first. And then every day when I go back, because it's usually not one day of surveillance. Three, four, five could be. Every day might be something. different. There might be a different car in the driveway. You have to figure out whose car that is. Is that somebody visiting or did the claimant or subject buy a new car? So there's a lot entailed in it. But once

you get settled in, then it's a matter of, do they leave? Yes. Or do they not? Have you ever had like a really nosy neighbor like we've seen the movies ruin a stakeout for you? Yeah. And that's not really the neighbor's fault. It's the police department sometimes. Because if I'm sitting outside any neighborhood, USA, it doesn't matter. There's a guy sitting out for four hours. hours on the car. Any reasonable person is either going to approach me or see what I'm doing or they're going to call the police because they're afraid to approach me. Okay. So if they call the police, I call in ahead of time. So I'm going to be at 1, 2, 3 Main Street is the house I'm watching. I'm sitting down at 1,29 Main Street, four houses down, let's say. I call the police.

I say, I'm a private detective. I'm licensed. Here's my license number. Here's my vehicle information, cell phone. I'm going to be sitting right here. How long are you going to be there? I don't know. Maybe 2 o'clock is when I'm done. Now, they know that. So if the person calls from and they say, hey, this is a suspicious guy outside. He's sitting out there all day. The police should say, and most of the time do, well, we know he's there. He's okay. Don't disclose what I'm doing, but just say that. But sometimes they just are bored or whatever it may be, and they'll show up two cars, lights on, sirens, and they just blow the day. We're almost halfway through the year, and a lot of people are running on empty without fully realizing it. Grow therapy helps you find care that's covered by insurance before burnout becomes the baseline. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as two days. And as something comes up,

you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0, depending on their plan. Visit growth therapy.com slash book now to get started. That's growth therapy.com slash book now. Growtherapy.com slash book now. availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Dillman, man.

Have you ever been taken into custody? No. Never, okay. Never have. That does happen, though, right? It does if you don't follow the laws, right? So I can easily trespass to get something. I can easily, you know, on a night surveillance,

I can easily start shooting video of the person inside of their house through their windows. If I get caught, I'll be arrested because that's violating their privacy, right? I can't report that. I just can't shoot it, right? So if you start breaking the laws, then you're going to have some problems. There's no doubt about it. If you're lying to the police, you know, because as a private detective with our license, if they ask us something, we have to disclose it other than client information.

You know, if you start playing games with them, they could take in for something, I'm sure. But if you follow the rules and just do your job the proper way, you're going to throw a worry about. How do police officers look at private detectives? Well, it depends. Like I said, I get a lot of them that refer me because, you know, they deal in the criminal. A lot of times people are asking them about civil, so they'll refer who they think is a good investigator. I've been around so long. Most of them know me.

The police on the street doing their job, I think the majority of them are good. I do. I know a lot of them. They're great. Nobody's there out. They're targeting people. Nobody's trying to make trouble for anybody.

They're just doing the job. They want to go home, safe. But then you get bad ones in every group, right? So you'll have one or two out of a department that maybe are playing games or maybe they are prejudice or maybe they're whatever the reason. You're going to get that. And unfortunately, that spoils it for everybody because the media, again, back to the Rodney King Day, will take that and they'll run with it.

They'll spin it so they can sensationalize it to make more ratings. And that just makes everybody's public opinion, oh, police are bad, police are bad. When in reality, I don't think so. What are some outrageous requests you've gotten calls in for to work a case? Well, I had, and I recently did a TikTok about this, is not really outrageous, but the situation itself is outrageous. So I had a gentleman came from Africa. He was from Kenya.

he comes over and he was staying in a hotel in Putnam, Connecticut, on the northeast side. Now, this is very common, all right, because in Connecticut, in order to serve somebody papers for anything, you have to verify the address first. Now, back in the day, just sent mail to the house. It didn't matter. So now you have to verify an address. So he calls me, he says, I got to, my wife came here to America with my two kids. I want to serve her papers to bring her to court for child custody.

And I want to take her to court, and I want to bring my kids back to Africa. I said, okay, well, I'll meet with you. We'll sit down and we'll figure out what we can do. I met with him. He was a professional suit guy. I mean, well-spoken guy. He said he was some kind of professional career he had in Africa. I forget what it was.

But it seemed legit. No problem. So I tracked her down. She had a court date. She went to court. He wanted me to follow her after court to find out where her actual address was because I tracked her to the town. I knew she was there, but we didn't have a physical address.

So after court, when she comes out and she was with him and court, She comes out with one of the marshals from the court as an escort and some other female who I later determined was a domestic abuse advisor, right? So I called them. I said, hey, do you have a protective order or a restraining order or something going on here? Because I've asked you before when I first talked to him. No, no, no, no. We just had it out in court today. We both agreed not to move forward with a restraining order. Okay.

He sent me the paper, legit from the court. All right, so now I can follow her, right? So I follow her back to the address that she is. She's at. I call them up. I give them the address. Everything's good. I said, all right, I'm done.

Okay, we're good. About two weeks later, he calls me up. He wanted to follow her again. Okay, why? He goes, well, I just want to find out if she's working, you know, where the kids are going to school, that type of thing. So I did. I went out there.

Before she left, I got a weird vibe. Before she even left the house, so I'm sitting on surveillance for like three hours, let's say. I just said, you know what? This guy, he's already in court with her. Everything should be fine. I don't even know why I'm here. It's kind of not really worth doing this case.

So I call him up. I said, I'm done. I don't really need to be here. Well, I'm about to close the case out at this point. No problem. Two weeks later, on one of my dues feeds, he was arrested for hiring a hitman to kill her. Holy cow. So what happened was he got here, and he didn't have a car, obviously.

He's from Africa. He was using Uber drivers. The Uber driver, he was asking every time he got in the car, do you know someone I can hire to kill my wife? And the Uber driver was like, no. So the Uber driver, one of them went to the police, the state police, and told the story. State Police posed as the hitman. they actually met together, and he paid them a deposit to kill his wife. So would they just reach out to him saying, hey, we're hitmen?

Well, no, the Uber driver got back in touch with him, and said, I found somebody. But it was the state police. That is so wild. Being disguised as a hitman. And they collected, I think, a $400 deposit from him. And he was supposed to pay $4,000 or something when the job was done, which was ridiculous to begin with. But I guess if you translate U.S. money into Kenyan money, I don't know, maybe that makes a difference. But he's in jail.

How did that make you feel that you were kind of a part of the stakeout and whatnot and giving him information? I was happy that it never happened because then I would be like, oh, man, I contributed to that, not intentionally. But you know, and you never know, because remember my clientele is from politicians to celebrities to, you know, influential people right down to criminals. I mean, there's a wide range of people that I work with. So I try to weed most of that out during my initial consultation and interview with them. And I'm pretty good at it. This guy just happened to get through because he really was, you know, he really seemed like a decent person, like a professional, well-spoken. And when I found that, I was like, wow, unbelievable.

So I put that on TikTok and that one blew up nice. Yeah, I bet. I got called in by the state police from the TikTok. Oh, they called you in? I had to give a statement. Oh, wow. Yeah. So is it really like the movies where someone will hire you to get, like, say, dirt on someone, you show up at that person's house with the folder and the photos and you're like, here you go.

everything and, you know, drop whatever you have against this person or whatnot. No, that would be blackmail and extortion, so you can't do that. Do you think that people use your information for that? Yeah, they could. They could. But I also warned them when I give it to them. Because a lot of times a husband will hire me. I'll catch the wife cheating.

He'll want to send a package to the other spouse. Right? I said, well, I'll give you a generic report. I don't have a problem with that. But just understand that if you do that and it's construed by that person as extortion, blackmail, or anything else, they're going to go to the police. And you might get in trouble for that, you know. So they got to be real careful with it.

Do you have to testify at like divorce hearings when you give someone information? And then they submit it to the court for like proof of, say, like cheating or whatnot and for a settlement with prenups and all that? Yeah. With video attached to my reports, most times no. I don't have to testify in domestic cases because the other party's not arguing that this guy was kissing the female because we see it, right? Insurance is different. I testify a lot on insurance fraud cases. because the opposing party that's representing the claimant, as opposed to me representing the insurance company,

they want to just pick it apart. In a cross-examination, I'm sure you've been through it, right? I testified at my own trial. Yeah, so you know how it is. That's the cross-examination is the worst part of going to court because they want to know, what kind of camera do you use? How long you've been doing it? What time did you wake up in the morning? When did you have a breakfast, anything?

So they'll run you through the ring or just trying to find anything to trip you up so that your evidence can be excluded from the case. So those I do and those, they're the worst part of the job, testifying. Yeah. But in the domestic side, no, never. That's why criminal defense attorneys don't want their client to testify, not because of what their client will say with them. It's what the prosecution is going to ask them and how they react. Like the Sam Bankin-free trial, he blew up his own testimony,

getting agitated and combatant and stuff, and you've got to remain cool, calm and collected. And I think that might be true too for Fannie. Fannie Willis trial. Oh, yeah. The evidentiary hearing. Yeah. That might be true for her too.

She came up there with guns out, man. And she's a prosecutor, too. I wonder how that's going to play out. I don't know. My whole thing on that, not to get off top of it, but she's the DA, right? So if you're paying someone back cash because you think it might be a conflict, you would intentionally leave a paper trail, right? If I'm paying someone back and I know that it could be scrutinized later in some kind of legal hearing,

I'm going to make sure that I do a money order, something. But she just used cash and just, it's too vague. It seems strange to me. Yeah, the whole thing's a little suspicious, just the whole everything and that they had a romantic thing together. They should have disclosed something. I just, I don't know. Yeah, a lot of mistakes there. So what's your typical case you would say nowadays that someone calls you for?

Well, I mean, like I said, it varies. I do a lot of different things. I do asset searches for a lot of people. I do criminal defense, chop custody, the infidelity, the insurance fraud. Cohabitation cases have been up. You know, somebody has divorces and they have to pay alimony to the wife. And the wife a year later starts living with this guy, but not telling anybody. And the guy's contributing to household costs, of course.

my client wants to get his alimony reduced, so I have to prove that they're living together and that a reasonable person would infer that he's probably picking up some of the tab to get his alimony reduced. So that's a lot of surveillance. That's a lot of garbage picking, if you will. I do a lot of that these days.

Digging through the physical garbage? Yeah, somebody will put their, if I'm looking for something on somebody, that's the best way to get is they put their garbage on the curb at 3 o'clock in the morning. I go out there and grab it. I go through it. I'll grab three, four bags at a time.

That's how they caught the Idaho murder. That's right. You'd be surprised when people throw away. Wow. So how much access do you have to court systems, any type of law enforcement system as a PI? Well, depending on the circumstances like motor vehicle stuff, I have access to it for certain parameters, for certain legal reasons. Somebody can't just call me, hey, I got a license plate. Can you tell me who? I can't do that. But for an insurance case, I need to know who's in the house, things like that. I can run those. We used to not be able to. It was difficult. But now it's a little more loosened. but it's very strict.

You're audited, right? So criminal records, obviously it's not a big deal. I do a lot of FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act requests, because even if I look up somebody's criminal conviction history, I'm not going to know about all the incident reports, domestic calls, you know, anything that involves that person. So when I request from a police department, everything, 911 recordings, body cam footage, I request everything that they have on a particular person.

They got a four days to respond. They received it, and then they got to come back with a list of this is what, we have. What do you want? I want it all. I might use you. I want it all. I want my whole criminal can you get fed stuff or no. I get fed stuff, sure. I want my mugshot to put it on a t-shirt. I think that would be so funny. You get it to do a FOIA request for it. It's public information. You just don't have access to it without FOIA though. Yeah. Now, so do you have more systems than the average person? Like I couldn't look up something on my own. No, a lot of people call me, a potential clients will call me up and say, I'm trying to find somebody or find information.

I use like Intellis or one of those online things. So it's all. historical information. It's all garbage. The databases that we use, you have to literally provide them with your detective license and, you know, identification and your address, your business location, everything. And then we have access to records, yeah. It's not everything in the world, but it's definitely a lot better. The problem is sometimes you get into a database that you're using and you're paying for, and they just start getting outdated. So you jump ship, you go to the next one, and they're a little more updated, and you kind of keep doing that over and over every year so you kind of switch over because, you know, a lot of people get stagnant and they just

like, eh, and then the next one wants to get more clientele in, so they start updating their stuff. But we have pretty good information. I can literally find people pretty easily. And if it's not just directly through the address that's provided on the pullout I do, there's everything from every house you've ever owned, all your criminal convictions, all your relatives, all their relatives. I mean, addresses, own homeownership, taxes, not taxes, but property taxes.

I have a stack of 70, 80 pages of information that I can go through to try to narrow out and figure out where you are. How accurate are those online ones? Like, you know when you search someone's name and it's like pay 30 bucks or whatnot to get all this information? Sometimes it gives you a home address, but I'm assuming that comes from like where you're registered to vote. Yeah, well, that or property ownership sometimes. So if the person you're looking for is not really difficult to find because they have a house somewhere, it may work. But if there's someone who, if you run that and you can't find them, that's it. You're not going to dig into that they're staying at their cousin Judy's house on the couch.

You know, they're not going to find that, well, he moves every two months. So they only have this one and they miss the most two newest ones addresses. It's not going to do anything like that. So it's going to maybe one out of a ten shot when you use that, you'll get the right information. But most of the time, it's like said, it's all historic information. It's never really up to date. Has your job gotten easier since social media has evolved? Social media, a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, because we have databases, specific databases that will give me everybody's social media. I mean, they'll give me everything that they can grab if you're on dating sites, if you're on adult sites. Yeah, now they'll give me just the link. And sometimes like an old username and a predated password that's no longer good, information they've come across. So I'll get a lot of information.

But again, if you sip through, you can find a lot of information. But that'll be like 200 pages of different things that you have on the internet. So that does help. And again, a lot of times if somebody doesn't have a closed Facebook, a private one, or, you know, Instagram or even a TikTok, a lot of people love to share. Like I said, oh, I'm going to the football game this weekend, you know, and that's perfect for me. Because now I don't have to sit out there for 10 hours and wait for the guy to leave the house. I just go that morning and know he's going to a game. You know, I even pre-buy the tickets so I can get in.

I mean, it's simple. Are you ever shocked by what some people post and write on social media? Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. I mean, you should know better. I mean, if you have a workers' comp claim, for example, you know, total disability, I can't lift anything, and then you go to a weightlifting competition with your buddy and you put it on Facebook. Come on. I don't even have to do surveillance.

Just print out that video or, you know, duplicate the video and give it to my client. It's over. But people do that. They do. I don't understand. I mean, people don't think. What's one case that will never leave your mind that just like maybe horrified you or surprised you? I had, this is going back a bit when I was still partner with my guy there.

We had an insurance, workers' comp insurance claim fraud case, and it was down in the southern part of the state. So it was, and we did a lot of work for colleges back then as well because some colleges have their own police departments on campus, things like that. So we would actually file police officers that worked for the colleges because they were still under the payroll of the college technically in some way. So human resource director would call us up, give us the case. He's been on workers' comp for a year, got into an auto accident with his police vehicle. He's claiming this, this and this, but we don't. and buy it. I want to see what he's up to. Okay. So we get this one, gentleman, who's a police officer, he is on total disability, can't even answer the phones at the police office at the police department

because, you know, he's so much in pain, he can't sit for eight hours a day. Okay. We start surveillance. Within two or three days, I think, we follow him to a location where it's a, they're building, houses, okay? The, it's a gravel driveway, goes way back into the woods, can't see anything. But we followed him there. We'll say, I don't know what he's doing here. we have to figure it out. So we start doing Google Ariel, see what's going on. The property that he's on happens to line up with the state forest. Okay, perfect. So what do we do? We drive around the other side of the state forest. We put on our gilly suits, which, if people don't know, gilly suit is basically an entire suit, headwrapped, boots, everything that's got grass and leaves

and everything. So you blend in with the surrounding atmosphere. And we had about a mile hike from where we got into the state forest to the backyard of this property. We get to the backyard. We get down, we got a little tripods out with cameras. We see him back there. He's with an older gentleman, who we later determine was his relative, and they're building the house. They're the contractors for their own house they're building. We were put on that case for three months while the entire house was built. He got in a lot of trouble for that. Insurance fraud, arrested, everything. Wow.

Yeah. Funniest part about that case, my partner had to testify, right? Now, a lot of times during that case, when we were running the cameras, we get bored, we get hungry, whatever. We set up the camera, just leave it running, and we would walk way, go eat, you know, have some food, whatever, come back. Unknowing to my partner, when we turned over the video, because we duplicated it all to give to the clients, this gentleman, who was the claimant happened to walk up to the woods where the camera was, pulled out his little dingy there and started taking a fist in the woods. Didn't see the camera, though.

No, didn't see the camera. But everybody in the courtroom saw it when he played it. It was on tape. It was playing in the courtroom. My partner was like, oh, my God, I can't believe that's on there. You guys didn't look at the tip. There's no, it's hours and hours of video. We don't dub it.

We don't edit it. So, you know, it's just from start to finish. We put a header on the front of it. And then at the end, we put a tail on it. But the video stays unedited. Oh, because if it's edited, it's probably legal issue. It's a problem in court. Yeah, right.

Because if you get cross-examined out, well, why is there a break here? Why is it, you know, so you don't want to edit it. So it just ran. And with so many hours that I just let it duplicate onto a DVD and didn't even look at it. Just let it run. So I didn't even know it was there. That's funny. Are there ever cases where you're working at and half,

halfway through, you're like, I got to go to the police or I got to pass this on? No, I don't think so. I never really had a problem with that. I would have passed on the one from Africa if I knew at the time, but no, I never really had a problem. I never had to rat out any of my clients for anything like that. If anything, I would have had to talk with them first. You know what I mean?

I'm not really one to run to the police. Their business is their business. If they're about to criminal murder or something, that's a little different, I mean, obviously. So most people have good intentions when they hire you? I don't know. That's the problem. I try to weed them out with my interviews with them, but sometimes they just slip through the cracks. I mean, and don't forget, too, I do a lot of criminal defense work, right?

So everybody in jail is innocent. You know that? Right. So they're all going to tell me they're innocent, but are they? Some of them, probably not, right? But I don't ask the direct question because I don't want the direct answer because I don't want to know. I just want to defend you, right? So I'll go through and I'll start doing a case for someone.

And the worst ones for me, let's put it this way, the ones that keep me up at night, okay? I do a lot of cases for criminal defense where someone's accused of an essay, right? That's how you want to say it here. No, you could say the whole thing. Okay, so they're accused of a sexual assault on a minor, all right? And the attorney calls me up, says, I got a new case, I need you to come in, we sit down, we go through the police reports and everything else. And I'm like, okay, another one of these. Now, I'm not going to ask the guy, did he do it or not, right?

Because I don't want to know. But I have to go up the assumption that he's innocent because I'm going to prove that. Or I'm going to at least create a reasonable doubt, so no pun intended, he gets off. right? But my biggest fear is that, okay, so I got this gentleman, I work hard, I create reasonable doubt, or I find that the police improperly did something technique-wise, you know, and he gets off. If he goes out and does it again, that's on me, right? It may be not really, but it would feel like it's on me. It's never happened that I know of. But that's the only thing that really bothers me in this line of work is that if I actually get one of those

guy's off who actually is guilty and doesn't it. At Hyundai of Glendale, Lisa New, 2026 Hyundai Tucson SC Front Wheel Drive for 269 a month plus tax for 36 months with owners' assurance in America's best warranty. 10-year, 100,000 miles. Stop by Hyundai of Glendale today or Hyundaiofglendale.net. 36-month lease, 4,49 to its signing. Tax title license and dock fees extra, plus government fees and taxes.

7,500 miles per year, expires 6126. Who available at this payment? PH 71529, PH71465. Looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway. Fiji Airways sale is on now. Fly nonstop round trip to Fiji from just 748. Or enjoy a sunny Fiji stopover on your way to Australia

with round trip fairs starting from 839. As a one world alliance member and American Airlines Advantage program partner, your miles go further across the South Pacific. Book now at Fiji Airways.com or contact your local travel agent. Conditions apply. Again, I feel partially resublishment.

responsible for that. It feels like a no-win situation, too, because if you were to not disclose that information that, you know, could let him free, then you feel morally wrong at that. Like, there's no winning in that scenario, too. You mean if during my investigation, I prove he's guilty? Is that what you mean? No, I mean, like, if you withheld the information that he was innocent because you knew he was guilty.

Oh, yeah, no, I would never. Yeah, something like that. I can never do that. My job is really not to care, right? My job is to take the case. My job is defense, created defense, get the evidence, and win. That's my job. You know, it's hard not to get personally involved sometimes, but you have to put that out.

You can't. Otherwise, I would never work for any criminal defense attorneys because what would be the point? Because do I know if he's guilty? He's not guilty? I don't know. So you can't really go by that. Same one in the chairman's front. You know, what if the guy's really injured?

I'm out there videotaping him. He's really, he just had surgery three months ago on his back, let's say. So he's really injured. But I get him lifting his long. or for whatever reason to fix the blade. Maybe that's a one-off, but I still got it on tape. One way or the other, I'm not a judge. I don't decide.

I get my evidence. I give it to you. You bring it to court, and then the judge and the jury decide. Yeah, you have one of those professions where you have to leave your feelings at the door. You can't mix the two of them together. Yeah. And back when I first started on my own, the infidelity cases used to get to me a little bit because I'd videotape some guy's wife, you know, with a man in a car after a bar in the

parking lot, and I'd get the entire thing pretty much on tape. and then I bring him in and I say, okay, here's the show him the video and he'd start crying in front of me. Growing me and crying, it's like, damn,

I feel bad, you know? But after a while, you start to build that wall. And now it's like, that's what you hired me for. I got you what you wanted. Here it is.

Are you ever, when you're on those kind of cases, are you ever looking at the people like that are about to do and say, oh, don't do that, don't do that,

like to yourself. Like, don't cheat, and then when you realize they cheat, you're like, oh, shit. Yeah, I mean,

And not so much like that, but similar. Like, uh-oh, here we go. No. Is it going to happen? That kind of thing, yeah. And it's not going to lie. When you were to, I'm going to, as a private detective, I'm an objective third party, right? I'm not supposed to care.

I'm just supposed to go out, do my time, get my evidence, whatever's in front of me, and present it. But there are times where, like, if I'm on a workers comp case, I don't want the guy to do something wrong. That's not my job. But I'm so bored sometimes in the car that when he starts doing something wrong, I'm like, yeah. You know, like, oh, video, good video I can get from it. But it's not so much that I'm happy he's doing it. It's just that I'm happy I'm doing something. You know, I'm actually creating something that seems worthy of what my clients are paying me for.

Because if you pay me for eight hour days of sitting out there, I sit out there for three days, he never leaves the house. I give you the bill. You can be like, I'm paying for this, right? Even though I didn't do anything wrong, the guy didn't leave. So it's always better to get something that your client at least be happy that they spent the money on. In most of your cases, do the individuals go to trial? Or do they plead out when they see the evidence maybe you present? The insurance fraud cases?

No, the criminal defense cases. It depends. I mean, a lot of them, the system is, well, I know you had an attorney on recently. I saw it. The system is bad. There's no doubt about it. I mean, sometimes the best I can hope for is, let's say I got a client who's up for a 10-year rep, right? And the person who accused him has a history of their own, like a pretty rough history.

that's more easy for me to find witnesses to say that they lied. Oh, I got two guys that say that she lied on a police report, right? That's beautiful because now the prosecutor doesn't want to go and say, oh, we're relying on this police report because, you know, it's all he said, she said in certain cases. But we already know we have history and we have evidence that she lied to police on these two different reports. So the prosecutor is going to say, okay, well, instead of 10 years, I'll give you three because I don't want to take it to court. Now, innocent or not, he might still be stuck with that because three years is better than 10. and if he fights anymore, you may get to 10.

So that's kind of like where it's weird. So sometimes our evidence doesn't necessarily get somebody off completely, but it'll get at least reduced to something that they're willing to take, if you want to say that. Have you ever seen someone take a plea deal and you know that they're innocent, but they don't want the pressure of going to trial and trying to prove it? I don't know if I've ever seen someone take it that way. Because I don't know, a lot of times I don't know if they're – I mean, it's very rare that I'm going to –

it's not like Matlock, the television show, right, where he yells out in court and the person on the stand admits it, oh, yeah, I did it. You know, it's never like that. It's always a fine line. We have to create more confusion than we do innocence, right? It's hard to prove a negative.

So it's hard to prove my client didn't do something as opposed to the prosecution proving he did do something. Proving someone didn't do something is impossible unless they have, you know, an alibi or something. But the police usually find that ahead of time if they do their job properly. But I did have one gentleman who was, it was more of a, well, it was a criminal case

because he was accused again of a sexual assault with his own child, right? And it turned into a very big mess because he was a prominent person. He was accused, and I knew he was definitely innocent. I don't, she didn't say I knew. In myself, I knew he was innocent because I could just tell who he was. He had nothing to do with kids at all. He didn't want anything to do with his own kids. I mean, honestly, he was so busy working.

He just didn't care. But this person wanted his money. He wanted to divorce him, wanted his money, so she made up the allegation. And we investigated, we investigated, we investigated. I got a ton of statements to say he's such a good guy, character reference statements, a ton of stuff where he was going to win. I mean, he was literally going to win the case and the charges were going to be dropped. And because this person, we also proved by reviewing and scrutinizing the police reports, proved that she lied to the police in the reports multiple times about him. So they were actually going to arrest her.

So what did she do? She left the kid with him and she took off to another country. Oh, wow. Not extra-aditable. So, and he's fine, though. He's got the kid. He's a happy man. He paid all his fees and legal fees.

And we won. We won the hell out of that case. But did he win because we proved he was innocent? No. But we proved she was guilty. Yeah. Sometimes that's kind of the same thing. It's enough.

It's enough sometimes, yeah. What are some tools of the trade as an investigator? I know you said gilly suit sometimes and cameras. What are some other knick-knacks and whatnot? I'm big because I go in a lot. So if you're following someone on surveillance, let's say an infidelity case, and the wife hires me, I'm following the husband, the husband, I follow him around, let's say gas station, car wash, always car wash, of course, where you pick up the girl, right?

And then he meets her at a bar. Wait, why car wash? Well, if a guy's going to pick up his sweetie there on the side, you want to clean car. So it's always a car wash. Really? So if somebody goes to the car wash, I'm like, oh, what's next? Definitely, all the time. It's amazing how they do that.

Women not so much. Women don't care so much, because they usually jump in the guy's car. You know what I mean? It's never, men always want to drive. It's very rare that I find a guy jump into a female's car. It just doesn't happen that often.

And how close are they picking up the person to the house? Well, it depends. Sometimes on the same street. I've had people cheating on the same street. But most times it's just, you know, within the town or the next town over, things like that.

And it's usually work related. Most of the time it's work related. Somebody they work with, things like that. So I'll go to the bar. Let's say he picks her up at a house. I'll videotape her getting in his car. They go to some bar somewhere. I'll actually go in the bar.

So now I need tools there. I can't just walk in on my iPhone and, you know, start shooting video. So I'll actually walk in with all these little chip cameras we call them. I used to call them back in the day. Now they're more DVR type cameras. So I have a key fob, right? The key fob has a pinhole lens. It's got a little SD card in it.

I turn it on, put my keys on it, and I just go right and put it on the bar, sit there, have a beer, and let the camera do all the work. I have a coffee cup. So if I go into a coffee location or a supermarket, where I need to be, I just take the lid off, turn it on, put the cap on. And it looks like I'm walking around with a coffee. meantime I'm videotaping everything. Now, Connecticut's kind of a small state when you think of the bigger picture.

Does anyone ever run into you that you've maybe exposed or worked a case against and kind of blew your cover or anything? Clients. I run into clients all the time. And the biggest problem is I don't ever say hi. Right. So I'll look at them. They'll look at me.

And if they say hi, then I'm comfortable. Otherwise, I'll ignore them because I don't know who they're with. I don't know if they told them to what of their story. But there's a lot of times where I'll catch a spouse cheating. some let's say the wife will hire me I'll catch the husband cheating I give them the report after that they don't call me back and say I divorced them they don't tell me so a lot of times they won't divorce they'll stay with them to fight it out to get through it and then I'll see them a year later together somewhere after I just juice this guy with some chick you know and I'm like oh no like oh I hope they

didn't talk about me you know I hope she didn't show him my report and he looked me up and so but nobody I've ever followed recognized me but my clients they recognize me out all the time that's funny Do you ever see that show that was on HBO? The girl, she runs, she has like this house and she has like a partnership with some production company where they expose child predators. They're like private investigators themselves. I don't know if they're licensed or not, but they work hand in hand with the police and they did some episodes in Connecticut. I've seen a lot of videos on TikTok, but I've never seen the show. I forgot the name of it.

I got to find it, but it was really interesting how they have like this whole house in operation. They're using social media to piece. everything together. Yeah. Just like seeing where people are at. You can put someone's whole life together. You can. By their movements.

Like I know because my job is social media. So if someone looked at all the stuff I post, they could kind of piece together my routine and what I eat and this and that. Well, we can create a nice dossier on you for sure. Well, yeah. You got all the criminal records. No, I got everything, yeah. So I can put it together a nice report on anybody.

Again, just from lifestyle, just from everything. I mean, I could follow them around to a grocery store and tell all the favorite food, is this. They pick out this, you know, just the smallest things. And again, the garbage, forget about it. You know how many receipts I find in there? People that just throw away their receipts because everything's electronic on bank statements. Now, nobody keeps their receipts anymore. So I'll pull it out and it'll be a bag full of garbage of paperwork and bills they paid that they just tossed and everything's in there. Now, what's a legality from someone, anyone, touching someone's garbage? Is that safe? As long as it's on the street, out for delivery, it's public, public information.

What if it's kind of near their garage? You can't trespass. Okay. Yeah, I can't trespass. It has to be out on the. the street. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Do you ever have any, like, dog encounters or anything when you're on a stakeout? Dog, no, my dog is sometimes with me.

Oh, yeah. He's part of the crew. Yeah, I take my little Dalmatian with me. Oh, you have a Dalmatian? Yeah, daddy. Yeah, daddy. Gets white hair everywhere, unfortunately. But, yeah, she's a cute.

She's small, too. So she calls with me sometimes on surveillance. The only problem is everyone sometimes just start barking and give away my position. So I'm like, oh, shut up, you know. But no, the dogs on properties, like if I'm one. watching a property. Not so much. I mean, sometimes when I'm knocking on doors, I'll have to deal with that. I'm always looking for beware of the dog signs, you know, because I'm not going to enter somebody's fence to go knock on the door if they have that. And if I do, I'm cautious, you know, I mean,

I'm always ready with, you know, whatever I'm carrying just in case because you can't trust animals, who knows. But no, not too bad. Not surveillance, things like that. I'm usually far enough away from somebody's house, even if the house I'm sitting in front of has a dog barking, it doesn't affect me. Are you connected with other private investigators in Connecticut? Is there like a group? Yeah, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Florida, everywhere. Yeah. Do you guys have like meetings or conferences? Not meetings.

We more just feed off one each other. Like if I got a case, like that case I had with the brothel. I found her in Florida. I called my guy in Florida. Gave it to him, you know, instead of me flying down there. Because we do fly out. I mean, I fly on a lot of times on cases as well. But it's good to have investigators in other areas that you can rely on because you never know when you're going to need that.

Are there ever any cases you turn down where you're like, Like, no, I'm not touching that. Yeah, there are a few. I do a lot of bug sweeping, okay, which is basically finding electronics in people's homes or cars. And that happens a lot in marital situations where they've separated and the husband wants to know if the wife is dating or if they either one of them put something in there because they want to hear them talking to their attorney or whatever the case is. So they'll put some listening or camera device in the house. So I do a lot of sweeps. I'll go through with all the electronics that I have and we'll sweep everything.

So if there's any signals coming out and we'll make them change all their passwords on everything they have around. outers, everything. And in that case, I'm sorry, what was the question on that? On cases you turned down. Oh, okay. So I get a lot of those. And before I take those, I really, really stringently interview the people because a lot of people will, and I don't want to be rude about it, but they're a little off, right?

So they're kind of like aluminum foil-wearing type people where you know right away that, like, you know, oh, I think somebody implanted. a bug in my eye. Come on, nobody did that. You know what I mean? So those people will call me, and they'll be willing to spend the money, but I just, I feel like I'm taking advantage of them and it's not right, right? So in order for me to bug sweep your house, you've got to give me a legitimate reason why, and who do you think is doing it? And what do they have to gain? I always ask everyone, what's the end game? Are they looking for money? Are they looking for information, or just to get their rocks off? Because I got to have a reason. You know, if you tell me

that the federal government is after me because I, you know, I clip my toenail too short, that's not going to work for me. I'm going to turn you down. What if you find a bug that a federal agency or law enforcement planted? Well, I tell my clients for bug sweeping every time there's two options. Okay, if I find something in your home,

I can either remove it, but then you can't do anything with it. You can say whatever you want, you can give it to your ex-husband or whoever, and you can't involve police anymore because we destroy the chain of custody. So if I find something in someone's house, I will photograph it, videotape it,

create a report, and tell them to go to police department, department with the report because then the police department will investigate because a lot of times they think a lot of people are crazy too and they won't touch it but if you give them a report from a PI that says I found it here's the photograph here's where it is nobody's touched it they can go out remove it and it doesn't disturb the chain of custody so they can actually investigate it runs serial numbers or whatever's identifying on that that unit that was found that happens what are some unique and creative bugs that technology is created nowadays everything is Wi-Fi you know the problem with the problem with electronic right now. It's not like the movies where you put the little thing under somebody's lapel, right? I mean, it's not working. Every electronic has, you know, like say a camera, you have to have the lens, you have to have power, and you have to have a transmitter, right, in order for it to put a signal on. That makes something from this small get big. I mean, it's not tiny anymore. There's too much going on to fit it all in. So I tell people, I said, in order for a camera to be in here and see you, the lens has to be exposed.

It can't be behind a wall. It's not behind sheetrock, right? Unless it's behind sheetrock and the lens is exposed, but I'll be able to find that with my equipment. You know, a lot of people think, oh, it's inside the insulation inside. First of all, they're not able to see you. Even if it's a listening device, well, they're going to hear a muffled sound, right? They're not going to hear anything. So everything has to be exposed.

If it's exposed, I can find it. They do have a lot of small ones where the unit itself that has the power, that has the battery, that has the electronics, motherboard, if you will, is, you know, a decent size. but then the mic, the lens itself for the camera or for the microphone itself could be a very small tube. That's a lot easier high. If you have drop ceiling somewhere, you can put that up there and just pop a pinhole in it and slide it through and you'll never going to see it. The only way to detect it is to find the signal, right? But, I mean, most, a lot of times I find more than I find listening devices or cameras because they're coming, well, I'm sure everybody knows at this point,

clocks, radios, all kinds of things that they hit cameras inside. those are pretty simple to find because they're plug and play. You know, if you were living with someone and they all of a sudden a new clock shows up in your bedroom, you're going to know, hey, why is this clock here? You know what I mean? You're going to figure it out. The more intricate stuff is more rare because you have to have people with expertise to put that in. You know, so if you're married to a police officer, maybe, or an FBI agent, you know,

they might be able to put some pretty interesting stuff in your home. But 99 out of 100 times, it's something that you can buy from Google. that's very easy to find. Or you just, like, I had one guy one time, was tracking someone and I had to do a sweep on their car because she's like, he knows where I am everywhere. He's got a GPS tracker. He didn't.

He bought an iPhone. He put the location services on. He slid it in the back of the seat. He just, just the phone. And now there's air tags. Yeah, air tags. But the cool thing about air tags is it'll tell you when one's in range on you. Now.

Now. It didn't before. It didn't before. I had a lot of clients. Because I rent tracking devices for my clients, right? to legally put on cars. Connecticut has certain parameters you have to follow in order to do it. But when the invention of those, first was the, it wasn't the air tag.

It was another one, the key, something, I forget what it was. It was an old one. I don't know. It was a small one. People were using that instead of paying me. They were just buy one of those things. And they were working, okay. They're not real time.

You have to ping them to find locations. So you don't get an idea where the person has been all day, right? You ping it now. He's at the grocery store. You ping it an hour later. He's home. You missed what happened in between. if you actually saw somebody or went somewhere.

The air tag came out and that became the biggest thing ever. And it didn't have any tracking thing like it does, now warnings. And they got in trouble for that Apple. So they had to change the way that the software worked on it. So now it will automatically notify you that there's an air tag near you, if you have an iPhone. And if you have an Android, you can download an app that does the same thing. It'll tell you.

But if you start to drive around, it's going to notify you over and over. It's following you, AirTech following you, AirTech following. It's going to show you the route. of yourself where that attack has followed you so you know. I've had three different people that called me up that could have been potential clients if they were smarter, but instead they did that first. And then they call me and say, hey, my wife, I put one of these in my wife's car and I'm looking at it right now.

She's at the police department. What do I do? I said, go to jail. It's nothing I can do for you, right? You broke the law. You can't put that in there. You cannot do that. So they got arrested.

They all got arrested. And now everything will track you. Your car, your phone, your watch. Like literally anything. It doesn't pay to be a criminal nowadays. It's hard. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to get away with anything, especially because if it's a legal matter,

police have access to everything. You know, they can get a warrant to get into it. I don't know about cell phones because I don't think the FBI is still broke into the cell phones. They still can't get the... Yeah, how true is that with the passwords? Because I was reading that they can't...

I was an idiot. And when they arrested me, they were like, what's your password? And I tossed that up to them. Yeah. So stupid. But then I was reading articles is that Apple was going to the lawsuit with them,

with the federal government about disclosing that? Yeah. I wonder how accurate that is. I don't know what the outcome was. They've kept it hush. I haven't seen any stories on it. But I'm assuming that they probably figure out of the way of circumvent it at this point. And if they haven't, they're fools.

Because, I mean, that's basically everybody's life is on their phone. I mean, you want anything on someone, it's there. It's not on your home computer anymore. Nobody barely uses that. Pay bills, maybe. Not even. But your cell phone is with you. everywhere. It's geotracking. It's its locations. It's texts. And it puts dates on the phone. It literally

pieces together everything. Yeah. The metadata is amazing. They just pull everything on that. It's amazing. If I ever got in trouble, the first thing I'll do is throw it in the river. Yeah. Oh, you can't bring your phone with you too. Yeah, exactly. What do you think are the biggest changes needed in the criminal justice system from your point of view and what you've seen? I know, like you had spoken with someone else, the bail system is definitely tough because, you know, you have people that, influential people get in trouble, they can put up the bail or bond. You have people that aren't, they can't. So that's kind of an unfair thing.

But I also don't like what they're doing in New York City where cash bond just get out, nothing, you know, because that just tells criminals to just do whatever you want. You're just going to get out in three hours anyway. So that's something they really got to sit down and they got to put some laws together to try to even it out. You got to make it fair. Or they got to make it a little bit easier with the bail bond company for people to get what they need.

you know, 10%, okay, if you make 100 grand a year, you got to pay 10%. 100 grand a year or more, you pay 10%. If you're indigent, maybe you only got to pay 5% or 2% or something like that. You know, you've got to figure something out. I'm sure the bail bond companies wouldn't be happy with that, though. But that's the biggest problem. I mean, once you get in the system, a lot of people, like even sometimes people call me and they'll say, I have an attorney, I have a criminal charge.

I want to get an investigator. I said, okay, well, I mean, go through your attorney. You can call me. You know, I can work through them. Well, no, I gave them a retainer, but they need that. I need to hire you on my own. I said, okay, this is going to be the retainer for me to do the work. I can't afford it.

So if you can't afford me, you're not going to get me, right? So a lot of people who are accused have attorneys, either public defenders or private, if they can scrap up the money for that, but they don't have an investigator. And my analogy with all my criminal clients is that attorneys are great, right? They've learned the system. They went to school. They know how to be in the system to fight for a client. Either way.

But an attorney, in my analogy, is the gun in court. I'm the ammunition, right? So if I don't get them ammunition for that gun, they're just firing blanks. What are they going to argue if they don't have any evidence to back them up? If they don't have any contradictory things to present to the court or to the jury, that's what we do. Like, I'll go out and I'll take a police report and I'll scrutinize the hell out of it to find any inconsistencies. and then even if they talk to witnesses, everybody who takes a statement or interview someone

does it with a slant on their vision, right? So if I represent the defense, I'm interviewing someone with questions that I want them to answer that helped my defensive side. Same with the prosecution. They're doing the same thing on the other side. So when you read an interview from a police officer

and it says this, this, this, this, and this, that doesn't necessarily mean that's what all that the person has said to them. So I'll go out and re-interview all of them. And I'll find out, well, you said this too? Well, wait a minute. This is what the police officers say. I didn't say that. You know, so there's a lot of inconsistencies. So you need someone like me to go out and knock on doors and find new witnesses and find contradictory things so that when the attorney does go to court, they have something to present. Yeah. I mean, you know, in the federal system, their public defenders aspect and the CGA aspect of it, they pay for that. Like in my case, my private investigator was paid for under that. And also the feds kind of have a fair bail system where you're not putting up money. It's a due check. the boxes, are you a danger?

And are you a flight risk? And maybe that should be implemented in the state system. It's true. A lot of, I've never, I've never, I've signed up a couple times in the court system to be an investigator. But then when it comes to negotiating rates, they're always so low. Yeah, it is very low. So, you know, it's like, all right, well, I would like to help, but, you know, I'm not going to, you know, put aside my bills to help somebody else. This is what I charge.

I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't do it, you know. So if you are getting investigators, you know, I don't know what kind of investigators, good, maybe not. I don't know. But you're getting someone who needs that work as opposed to someone who wants to do the work. You know, for someone to take such a low rate, that means that they probably don't have much on their caseload.

That means that they're just taking whatever they can get and they'll take whatever pay they can get. That doesn't mean they're bad. It just means that they're obviously not in demand. Yeah. You know what I mean? So they may get an investigator, but that investigator may not have the budget through the state. say, oh, I'll give you a $1, $200 budget at $35, $40 an hour, whatever does they want to pay. Okay, that's great.

But really, in order for me to track down every witness, knock on every door, make sure I get them home instead of just driving back and forth in his empty house, it's going to cost $5 grand. You know, I've got to go back and forth and back and forth. And then I've got to talk to them, interview them. If they have something good to say, sit down, put an affidavit together for two hours, convince them to sign it. You know what I mean? I'm out there for a long time.

I'm not going to be able to fit that into your little budget. So what's going to happen? It's just not going to get the quality investigation that you need, unfortunately. How do you balance work and home? Because I feel like your job is like you're always active. Because I have an awesome wife. When I met her, and I met her 400 years ago, we've been together. Oh, you're that old.

Wow. Exactly. No, you've been together for quite a while, though. When I met her, she was actually working at DCF at the time. She was a DCF worker, tough job. And I was a private detective, and she didn't believe me at first because she didn't really know. It was back then when we were still private, right? Now everybody knows who we are.

She bet me that way. So my schedule was always, you know, three in the morning, I got to run. Six in the morning I'm gone. Five in the morning, I'm gone. And then when I'm home, I'm there, I'm present. You know what I mean? But then when I got to go, I got to go. And it just, it's, she knows that from me from the day I met her.

So when I tell her, oh, I just got a call, I got to go. She's like, okay, you know, it's not a big deal. There's no arguments. There's never a fight about it. And she's in real estate. So it's kind of the same thing with her. She'll be running around all kinds of places. But if I had become a private detective after five years being married,

that might be a problem because now all of a sudden I go from a nine to five. I'm home every night for dinner to, oh, sorry, I can't be. The next three weeks, I'm gone every night from, you know, six at night until three in the morning. Nobody's going to put up with that. But if you, it's like a turtle in hot water, you know, slowly. You put them in cold water and you turn it up, turtles and realize it because slowly it boils. Same thing. I met her when I did that and I already had this weird schedule, so she's already been, she's used to it.

Yeah, you kind of know what you sign up for when you get involved. And then when I am home, I have a daughter. I spend a lot of time with my daughter. You know, I help her study for school. We do this. We do that. I mean, I spend a lot of quality time with her. So everybody's happy.

What's one thing you want people to know about your line of work and maybe a misconception you want to clear up? Misconception? I don't know. But I get a lot of people that say, oh, they give them a card. And they say, oh, thank God, I'll never need you. Keep the card. Because it's not just about criminal activity or cheating. You may need to find somebody.

You may need information. You may need something. It's hard to explain exactly what we do. I mean, I get requests that even I didn't think would ever come to me. And then we just figure out how to get it done, right? Because everything is about information. Whether it's surveillance, I get information on tape, video, or it's, you know, digging through garbage.

I get information that way. Or it's computers. That's what we do. We find information. So you never know when you're going to need us. So to automatically just say, I never need you. Not true.

I guarantee you in two years, half my Facebook friends have called me for stuff. I mean, it's crazy, you know? You never thought they would need me. But next thing you know, I get some odd requests for something.

Yeah, you never know when you're sitting on the other end of the chair and something could happen. It's, you know, life's crazy in that respect. Yeah, you're right. But Ray,

thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really fun conversation. Thanks for having me. Yeah, a pleasure talking you. And I'm glad I got a private investigator now. You got a few. I got a few, yeah. Well, he does more federal work. Yeah, Mark who came on. I heard him talk about arson and everything. But if I ever, you know,

have a cheating spouse or something, you know, when I got married one day. Well, not just that. Remember, you never know. Exactly. Well, thank you, man. We'll put the links to your TikTok, whatever else you want, website in the, in the bio this episode. And we'll get you the clips. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.