The Jordan Harbinger Show - 166: Kevin Barrows | Think Like an FBI Interrogator

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

Kevin Barrows is a former FBI special agent who now conducts traditional corporate fraud investigations, reputation risk and due diligence efforts, and supervises computer forensic and computer crime assignments for Renaissance Associates. What We Discuss with Kevin Barrows: Why conducting a successful interview is an art that requires establishing credibility, understanding motivation, employing psychology, assessing body language, and listening. Why approaching a witness at an inconvenient time, in the wrong place, or in the wrong way can ruin an interview before it gets started. How to quickly identify the motivation of the person being interviewed. How to make the truth the only option for the person being interviewed. How to create and execute a game plan to get to that truth -- whether it's with our spouse, our kids, or our colleagues and employees. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. I recently took a few courses from expert interrogators and became fascinated with the idea that there are some people who are so good with questions that we as a society rely on their skills to solve crimes, prevent catastrophes, and get to the truth in a lot of very important, often life or death situations. Today on the show, former FBI investigator Kevin Barrows is teaching us the fundamentals of interrogation. He's now a fraud investigator who focuses on large-scale money laundering and internal investigations for major financial institutions and white-collar crime. And what he's teaching us today applies as much to those investigations as it does to parenting or managing a business. Today we'll learn why conducting a successful interview is an art. It requires establishing credibility, understanding motivation. It employs psychology, assesses body language, listening skills.

The goal is to make the truth the only option for the interviewee. And we'll learn how to create and execute a game plan to get to that truth, whether it's with our kids, our colleagues, and employees, or even our spouse. If you want to know how I managed to book all these interesting people for the show and manage relationships with hundreds or thousands of people, I use systems and I use tiny habits. And I'm teaching you those systems and tiny habits in our six-minute networking course, which is free.

It replaces level one if you were in that. It's updated. I got some new stuff in there. and it's on a new server, a new site. That's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. All right, here's Kevin Barrows. Thanks for coming on on the show, by the way. I've really appreciated the prep, really in-depth, which I love.

And one thing that I love about what I've been seeing here is that conducting a successful interview is an art. I think a lot of people look at interrogation interviewing is, one, two separate things. And two, okay, there's a formula where if your foot's bouncing, you're lying. Right. And none of this stuff is as simple as it seems. 100%.

You know, I don't ever talk in terms of interrogation. I mean, that's kind of an old school detective, you know, white hot light. It's an interview. And the question is simply, you know, how do you approach that process? And it is a process. There is an art to it. Everybody's got a different style, different technique. But the key to the whole thing, really, is setting it up properly.

And a lot of people just don't particularly give much attention to, you know, setting up the interview. We'll get to that because I want to hear about how you set this up. Because before anything else, the right approach seems to be the key. But there's a lot of establishing credibility, understanding the motivation behind it. Of course, there's the body language and the listening part that most people like to zoom in on and ignore everything else. I like the idea that the only option for the interviewee then becomes the truth. It's almost like you're trying to channel them in a direction, not yank them in a direction. Very, very true. And that is something I hadn't thought. of before. The other idea here that I would love to get into later in the show is talking to kids to get them to tell you the truth seems to be very similar to getting someone to admit that they're embezzling from their own company. No question. And kids are very smart. You know, and they're, they're prepared and you have to be good. Yeah, be good. That was surprising. Because you think, oh, kids just going to go, did you really do it, Timmy, and they're going to go, fine, but that's not

really the case. It is not the case. I mean, everyone, kids, people, they will give you as much as they think you know. That's the bottom one. As much as they think you know. Correct. Okay. All right, let's start from the beginning. The right approach is the key. No surprise here, but time, place, and manner. Yes. What role are these playing here? It really begins with giving yourself the best opportunity to be successful in the interview. There's no guarantees, of course, but the best opportunity. And time, place and matter is simply thinking of those things that other people don't think of, like, when is the right time to go speak with this person? How should I approach this person? How are they going to be most receptive? I'll give me an example. If it's a businessman, you may say, look, I can go see them at the office. I can try to see them in the morning before the office, but they're going to say, likely, well, I have to get to work. So that might not be the best time.

So now you consider, well, maybe at night, well, if they have kids and a wife, they might eat, you don't want to do it at 6 o'clock. Maybe we go and sit outside the office call and say, hey, as a courtesy, we're not going to come into your place of business. Why don't you come out and talk with us? So people are receptive, hey, you've done a courtesy for me. I'm going to come downstairs now and talk to you because you've done the right thing by me. So when you see an FBI arrest or something like that, and they're making a big deal out of it, it's like a show where there's 12 officers and they're all heavily armed and they walk into the guy's office in the middle of the Monday rush, that's also

deliberate, right? That's like, we want everyone to see that we're doing our job. here? No question. There's times, and there's times when that might be necessary. You know, if there's any element of danger, any concern for safety, that's always going to be the case. But yes, at times, you know, and again, it really depends on the situation, but at times that's warranted. You want to show force, right? You want to make this person and these people with whom they work, no, hey, we're coming in force for everybody at some point, right? Right. Like here, we're taking out your boss. Right. And he doesn't stand a chance. So what chance to you, Mr. Mailroom, who's seen all the evidence, you're going to talk.

Absolutely true. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I thought it was more like for the news cameras. I'm sure there's an element of that, too. I'm sure there's something. Yeah, so approaching somebody at an appropriate time can probably go a long way. I would imagine, even if I'm guilty as sin, I don't want to be handcuffed in front of my kids. I don't want to look like a jerk in front of my employees. And so there's an element of reciprocity at play here. Absolutely, 100%. I mean, you go into it and with an open mind, typically, this protocol is to handcuff somebody always for safety.

But if it's called for in a situation, you think it's going to give you some leverage or an opportunity to speak with this person down the road, then you extend them to courtesy. Perhaps don't handcuff in front of his family or friends. So you always handcuff them, but maybe you don't do it right then and there. You say, like, we'll do it before we get in the car. Right. Or just when we get in the car. So we don't, you know, in front of your neighbors, you don't have that display.

Yeah. That's because you see that on TV. Right. Is this really necessary? And they're like, oh, come on. It's, it's Mr. Harper. It's fine. You don't have to cuff them. It's the governor or something like that. Yeah. It's really usually, they usually handcuffed. But there are situations where somebody will ask, and you get that sense that, hey, if you don't handcuff me, you do this, you know, courtesy for them, they're going to extend you a courtesy. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, the thought that's probably unspoken is, so if this happens again, and I'm not cooperative this time, then they're going to make a big deal out of cuffing me in front of everybody next time to teach, me a lesson. So maybe I'll be, maybe I'll play ball here. Yeah, it's a one-time opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I think there's probably something to that obviously, in your opinion, is there a way to just ruin the interview before you get started by sort of mistreating somebody or playing the wrong note? 100%. I mean, you really can, it doesn't even have to be a big gath, a big mistake. But I think that if

you say a few wrong words, you don't establish some degree of credibility. right away, person naturally on the other side says, well, you're not worthy of me telling you the truth. I mean, I think there's that process. I'm saying it's always conscious, but you say, I'm being disrespected here. You don't know anything about me. So why should I talk to you? And you got to come up with this game plan. How do you come up with the right approach? How do you know Jordan doesn't want to be handcuffed? Well, that might be common sense, but this guy doesn't want to be handcuffed in front of his friends or this person needs to be treated in a certain way. How do you, how do you create the game plan going into it? You obviously

have to know something about them beforehand. Yes. I mean, you don't, some of those things you learn when you begin to speak with somebody. A lot of that, you kind of make an evaluation or determination within the first couple of minutes. Some things can be set up in advance. Like, I, you know, like to learn as much information through public record, social media about a person, try to get a vibe for who they are. And then from there, I say, well, this might be the best time to approach this person, right? It's a calculated risk. I know they have kids or I know they don't. I know he's got active social life. He's going to be out late on Friday. nights. It's not go Saturday morning, right? Because they're going to be, you know, humover.

So those kinds of things, atmospherically, timing, you can sort of determine in advance based upon their lifestyle, you know, to the best you can determine that. And then it's a matter of setting up, you know, how do I want to approach this person? The approach is incredibly important. If I sit down with you and I, and I am accusatory right away, what happens? Well, you're going to get defensive right away. That's the way it is in life with people. So how do I approach you? How do I introduce myself? What are you going to be the most receptive to? That's something that you sort of have to make a judgment call on, but you want to set that in advance as best you can. Huh. Okay. Yeah. So, of course, we don't want to be like, we know you took the money.

Like, you've been embezzling for 20 freaking years. Right. So obviously we want to avoid that kind of thing. Of course. Which is funny because, of course, you see that on TV too. Like, oh, I'm going to turn my chair around and whatever kind of like cop show BS. Knowing the person gives you that advantage or knowing a little bit about the person. Do you research them, or is this something you come up with based on previous arrests? What if the person is a corporate executive and there's no record on this guy? Well, you research them. Public record searching, social media, gather, it's always important to gather as much information as you can.

And I think, you know, as much as it's important to gather information about a particular case or subject matter or the crime that they may or may not have committed, it's as important to get sort of a background and a kind of a psychological profile, the best that you can on the person. Who is this person? What makes them tick from the outside? Then you have to make a lot of sort of judgments and calls on the fly. What are you looking for from social media, for example? If you're looking at my Instagram or my Twitter feed to see what kind of person I am, what indicators are you looking for? Well, it could be anything. Who are you fan of? What sports teams do you like? That's something I'm going to kind of connect with you about. You're a huge football fan. We're going to talk about the Super Bowl before and those kinds of things or, you know, or your team, you know, what kind of a family man are you? Where do you

vacation? I see that, oh, I see that you were, you know, in the Grand Canyon last year. I was there two years ago, you know, talk about the, those are the kinds of things that helped me connect to you. You're using that to develop rapport. You're not necessarily looking to see, oh, well, Jordan takes a lot pictures of himself, so he's probably, probably a narcissist. Both. Oh, you're looking at that, too. 100%. Good. Yeah. I always worry, I always think about that. I'm like, I don't want to take a selfie. I got all these other people. They look ridiculous doing that. No, but those things do tell you something about the person, right? It's not, it's certainly nothing that's dispositive, but it tells you something about the person. Every piece of

information you can get before you go and sit down with someone is going to be very important. You mentioned that interviewees are often looking at you or me to determine whether or not I'm worth being honest with or worth telling the truth. That's an interesting point I want to dissect. How do people make those decisions in their head? So respect was kind of kind of the key there. Let me give you an example. Yeah. So I was in the FBI or when I was in the FBI with my partner and I were looking to find out

the identity of this particular broker, this kid named Lou who was selling stocks, fraudulent stocks all across the state of New York and the city. So he was really sort of very nefarious in our minds. Every boiler room we had gone into, we had found his name, but we never found him. He was always moving one step ahead. So one day I'm sitting in our squad room and I have my phone rings and they say, hey, there's a guy here who wants to talk to somebody in securities fraud. And you guys have a case that had his name in it.

He comes up. How did he know you? Oh, he just walked in. To the FBI. He wanted the FBI to protect him. That's why he came in. Oh, okay. Caught up with him finally.

They call us. We talk, we sit down with him. It's this guy, Lou, we've been looking for for a long time. He walks into us. And he says, look, I'm going to give you a 10 minutes here. You don't know who I am. I want protection, but I can give you a ton of information. But I went to another office and tried to do the same thing.

And these guys didn't know who I was. And I walked right out. He said, basically, I said a few choice words. I got up and walked out. They had no idea for how great I am in my world. Oh, so he walked in and he got pissed because the FBI agents didn't have information. They didn't know. He wasn't famous enough or infamous enough for him for them.

So for me, it was great. You know, we sat down with him. I gave him 25 minutes of. who he is and what stocks he sold and who he sold them to and what victims he had and and all the things we had against them. And at the end of that, he felt like, hey, these guys have paid me the appropriate amount of respect. They know what a great criminal I am. So I can deal with you. You know me. You know, you know what I'm about. And that to me was really telling. And I think that that's true across the board with interviews. So for him, he needed that respect. But you definitely

have to figure out what these people, you know, what the interview he wants or needs. it's not just that you have to become a subject matter expert in the crime. You have to become an expert in the subject of the interview, the witness. That's right. The subject matter of the crime is important once a person is interested in talking to you. It's what, it's getting the person to want to talk to you is often the most difficult part. That's where the other information is vital. How do you go about that? How do you become an expert in that particular individual? Well, again, it's a lot of research. Sure. Hopefully you get to talk to other people who know this person because research doesn't tell you the whole picture. That's often key. We would talk to

associates, friends, people who knew them. And with that same person, not only did I tell about the stocks, but I would say, well, let me tell you, here's who your girlfriend is. And let me get you, your friend has a pet monkey. Here's the, this is true. Here's the pet monkey's name. At the end of that, his statement to me was, how long have you guys been bugging my phone? And you hadn't been bugging my phone? Absolutely not. When somebody says that, how long have you been following me? How long have you been bugging my phone? you know that you've done your job. Wow.

And they're at the point where they're like, I might as well tell you everything because you know it already. That's a, that's not just a throwaway statement, though, the last thing you said. I might as well tell you everything because you know it already. That's kind of what you're going for, right? Because you want them to go,

there's no point in lying. They know about Jimmy's monkey dacks. There's no way they don't know about me having embezzled from my boss for two years. If they know this crap, they know everything. 100%. That is the key. As I describe it as putting someone

the box and I close the wall as tight as I can around them. Wow. Okay. I like that. So we basically give them every reason to tell the truth that we could possibly find. Right. And it begins with the premise that people, as I said, will tell you what they think you know. And they don't want to tell you a little any more than that, right? So when you can explain to people, sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's specific depending on the person, how much you've done in preparation, how many people you've spoken with? You feel like, they start to feel like, well, how am I going to lie? They've already spoken to 25 other people. He's read all the documents. He's seen my email. Am I really going to try to lie now? Right. That's the process, sometimes subconsciously,

sometimes consciously, that goes through people's minds. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Kevin Barrows. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. Now back to our show with Kevin Barrows.

The other thing you said is interesting as well. They're only going to tell us what they think we already know. So the idea here is to get them to think that we already know everything in the first place. That's right. Okay. So putting the witness in a box. said like that. That's a, that's like a, maybe a slightly more hostile way of me conducting this particular show, right? I don't want to put you in a box, but I want you to go, well, there's

no point in lying because he already read this, or there's no point in not going into detail on something because Jordan read the book, which is kind of what I'm going for. So you want to tell them all the information, probably in a general sense, what you've already gathered. I guess you don't want to be too specific because then they can find where something where you might. You want them to fill in the gaps. That's right. But they'll fill in the gaps once they realize, well, you know it all. So now I'm just giving you details. It doesn't matter. Right? It really doesn't matter. So you have to be good enough to say, you know, you may sometimes as very, as I said, general, I read everything. I've seen. Sometimes it's, yeah, I spoke with this person and they told me these five things and I read these five things. Sometimes it's more specific. It depends on the person. One line that I'd love from our prep here was, if you were me, what would you think about all this? Always. Tell me why that works. Tell me when to use that and why it works. Well, I use it somewhat often in interviews because I'll be speaking and I'll say, well,

did you steal the checks? I'll say no. Well, you were the last one to handle the checks. Yes. And you were the one that was supposed to deposit them in a bank. Yes. And you remember seeing this check. Yes. But you didn't steal the check. No. Stop. Now, I'm going to switch hats with you now. You're the investigator. I'm you. What are you thinking as an investigator right now? what I just, most of the time they'll go, yeah, I'm pretty sure I think I stole them. Yeah. When somebody says that, that's, you're getting towards an admission. You're getting them, you're sensitizing to the fact that they're going to ultimately say that.

It's just edging your way there. And that's, it's really effective because sometimes people say, kind of you got me at that point. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean, in their own mind, it's like, yeah, I guess doesn't make sense what I'm about to say. And sometimes they'll say it again, I'll say, you understand, that doesn't make sense. there is a time to sort of confront people. It depends on the person's personality where I'll say, I don't believe you. I think you're a nice guy. I don't believe what you're telling me. I mean, I think if they're innocent, they would say, I realize this looks really bad.

I mean, what does an innocent person do versus a guilty person? Is it a different reaction? Yeah, it is often. A person who's innocent when I say, what would you think, they might say, I don't know what I think, but I didn't do it. I know, you know, it really depends on the person as to how they'll react. but there is definitely a difference often in how somebody who actually did it would react versus who did somebody. That's scary because I'm thinking, uh-oh, what happens if you didn't really do it? Yeah, but there's a way to, you tease it out elsewhere. Yeah. And that's, again, that's not the end.

That's the beginning. Once they say, yeah, I think it probably looks like I stole them. And then we sort of start to dig a little more. Let's rethink now, are you sure this didn't happen? Maybe this happened. Maybe you're covering for a friend or that. And sometimes that sort of just, it's the beginning of that. process where they're, I can say it. I'll often say, I know you did it. You can say it. I know that. I know

what happened already. You're not going to, I'm not going to be shocked by anything you tell me. I tell people that all the time. It's true. Because sometimes I don't want to admit things because I'm afraid it's going to be so shocking to you, you know, that kind of thing. So you have to sometimes I'll say to people, I've heard it all. I see it go, I know these are things that you're going to, you know, say. It's just a matter of you saying. Right. So we're looking for confirmation instead of finding out the story for the first time. We're just basically saying, look, we already got the whole, we have our idea of how this all went down.

We're looking for you to sort of tell us that we're right. Right. And this is different than an interview where you're just going out blind and knocking on doors and talking to people. Of course, at that point, you're just asking questions. Everybody could be lying to you, but you have no ability to sort of have a back check before. Yeah.

All right. So what about body language? Everybody, we talked sort of pre-show. Everyone's like, oh, if they bounce their leg, they're, full of crap, oh, if they scratch their face, they're not telling the truth. There's got to be something to that, but I think there's an over-emphasis on tells because it's, it looks good on TV, or it sounds great in a poker match, or in a book. I'm very conscious of tells. It's something that I'm very aware of. But I think you're absolutely right. I think there's sort of an over-emphasis,

an over-reliance on it. But what I do is when I start speaking to someone, I take a baseline in my own mind. So I say, well, I'm going to ask, these are groundballs, where you, how long have you lived here? and all those kinds of questions, right? What's your date of birth? Do you have any siblings? And then what I do is from that baseline, I see how you answer those questions. When I get to the tougher questions,

I see how your baseline changes. And that to me can often be the key. So sometimes, again, I'll ask a lot of questions right and around, no problem. We get all the way up to, what did your brother do in this? You'll tell me, what do you do? And then it's like a five second pause.

then I'll say, stop. I just want you to understand. So I just ask you these questions, no problem. I just asked you about you and you took a five seconds. I mean, it was like five seconds between, you see what I'm thinking now that you're either thinking, how can I lie to them? Right. I'll talk to people through that process sometimes because I know that they're thinking through. So you'll just narrate, like, so you're taking the long pause, what are you thinking about?

How can I get around this question? I'll say, I noticed that you took a long time to answer that. Now, you didn't take a long time with all the other questions. So that tells me that you're either thinking, how can I lie or how do I say this? You know, so I'll sort of, I do that often. And there are times when, again, you ask tough questions and people start to rub their eyes like this. And I'll say, I notice that you look like you're all struck out now. We had no problems up to this point.

Right. So tells art, there is something to it, but it's not the end all. Right. So the baseline, I think, is the concept that most people, maybe even if they've heard of it, most of us probably haven't. Even if they've heard of it, they have no idea what that means, right? Because we think, we might even think, oh, I don't need a baseline because this guy I've known him for a while. But if you haven't seen someone in a specific context, maybe you don't know. Somebody who's known me for a while, might go, Jordan's normally really

relaxed. But yeah, now I'm in a room with two cops. I'm still innocent. It's just weird. I'm sitting in a room with two cops. I'm like, am I in trouble? Of course I'm going to be nervous. Absolutely true. Yep. So we have to get a baseline every time. Every time, because every situation is different. If I see at a party, you're not going to talk to me the way we're speaking today or the way we'd speak if it was an interview, you know, for some offense. So you have to, you know, when you sit down, people are going to be nervous. They're talking to an investigator about something that's uncomfortable by its very nature. So you take a baseline at that moment when you sit down through the first five minutes, ten minutes of questioning.

And you know when something goes amiss. Yeah. Oh, man. I can imagine that innocent and guilty alike are not going to be very comfortable in most contexts where they're being interrogated for any reason at all. It's very true. I mean, it is an uncomfortable. And like I said, I often tell people, look, I understand it's uncomfortable.

And I try to set their mind at ease, you know, during the process as best we can. So how do you know whether to confront them about their change in baseline or to, I mean, Is there a reason we might not confront them? It seems like that's a great time to do it. But is there a reason to just kind of let them continually stew in that? Yeah, there are times when you just let them continue to lie. And then, like, what I do, it really depends on a person. I have to kind of get your personality, sort of read the type of person you are during the course of the interview.

Some people, you know, if you confront them too early, you know you can lose them. They can walk out. Say, I'm not talking. So you don't do that. you go through the process and then maybe I circle back. 12 minutes, 15 minutes later, I'll go back to a question I asked earlier. So now, oh, this is the second time. What's the reaction going to be now?

You know, so that's sometimes telling and sometimes it changes. You know, their behavior change or they come to realize, you didn't believe me the first time. You didn't say it, but you're back asking me the same question. Right. So that means you didn't believe me. You know, so it really, it depends. It's an instinct thing. It's an experience thing.

It tells you when you should, you know, drop the hammer and say, hey, I don't believe. believe you and when you should let it go and circle back and be more gentle. Identifying the witness's motivation. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but being that good judge of character is obviously crucial for someone who's an investigator. How do you decide what the witness's motivation is to cooperate or not? I mean, you mentioned the large ego, but we didn't really talk about what to do if we find that this person is clearly a narcissist. How do we leverage that? Well, a lot of times it is, you may pay the person a certain amount of respect. So I'll say, for example, I'd say to you, thanks for meeting with me.

I've seen your podcast. You're tremendous at what you do. I have to tell you, I think you're absolutely the best in the business. Yeah, that would work on me. It's working on me now and you don't even mean it. Well, what's happening here is, right, where I'm starting to make you feel like, hey, I kind of, I like this guy. He's okay.

He's a guy I might tell the truth, too, ultimately. I'll give you an example. I was doing an investigation after the Bureau for a client on a check scheme where a woman was, in this case, actually stealing checks herself for a third party for a friend outside of a company. So I sat down with her and I realized just through looking at her history and the employer had provided me with her work history that she was just absolutely loved her job and loved the fact that she was so well thought of by her employer. So I understood in my mind the thing that's going to get her is not going to be threatening her or scaring her. It's going to be trying to play into the fact that she feels so bad about what she's doing. She does because she loves her employer. So ultimately, I was telling her a lot of things.

Let me just say before we begin, thank you so much for meeting with us. I've heard amazing things about you. You know, Barbara said that you're one of the best people that's ever worked at this firm. And I know you're a loyal employee, but even loyal employees make mistakes at times. It doesn't make you a bad person, right? There's a lot of people where there's two forks in a road. You go left or right. It doesn't mean you're a bad person your whole life, but you take that wrong.

You almost said it doesn't mean you're a criminal, but it does. Yeah. So in this case, it does. But I would say it doesn't make you a bad person. Right. That kind of thing. But it doesn't make you criminal. Actually, hold on.

Yes, it does. You're already under a right. And frankly, there are people, that's how life is. I mean, there are some people who, you know, one of my cooperators wrote a book called Born to Steel. This guy was born to steal from the time he was this big. He was involved in fraud. There are other people.

who are good people who make a bad decision at the wrong time. Yes, they're still criminals ultimately, right? But there doesn't necessarily mean that they're inherently bad people. That's a good distinction, actually. And do you, does that affect your approach? Because it seems like it would have to in some way, but I guess if you're investigating one specific crime, if it's a career criminal versus somebody who made a mistake, how does that change things? Well, career criminal is going to be much more savvy to the system. Sure. To the interview process.

So you have to approach that completely differently. Whereas someone who's never really done this before and knows they made a mistake, it's much more inclined to say, yes, you're absolutely right. It was a terrible mistake that I made. I'm not a bad person. They want you to know they're not a bad person. I feel like if I committed a crime, I would feel so bad. I probably would crack in a second because I would want to tell, I would just want to get it over with.

Many people are like that. Yeah. I would be the kind of, I couldn't go on the run of any kind. Not that I would ever, ever do anything that would warrant that. But even still, I would just be like, you know what? I just arrest me and I will go through that. That way, I don't have to stay up at night worrying about when it's going to happen. And the other thing is lying, remember, it's hard because you have to memorize a script.

Yeah. The truth isn't hard. So that's something that you know, right? There's one, typically one truth. There's a, the lies are very difficult to keep track of. So a lot of times I keep going back to the story and I think, well, last time you didn't tell me your brother was there. Your brother was there this time? Oh, okay. What else? Then I go back to the story again. Oh, this time your brother, was your brother there? He wasn't. He was. Then he wasn't. Now he is again. So you're almost telling the person your credibility is not great right now because your story continues to change. And if there's a truth, there's really one story, right?

You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Kevin Barrows. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're listening to the show on the Overcast Player for iOS, click that little star next to the episode. It really helps us out.

Now for the conclusion of our episode with Kevin Barrows. The idea of the story changing is sort of near and dear because I had a problem. when I was in Serbia 10 plus years ago or 15 years ago, almost now, one of the things that the investigator, I actually had a, their state security officers took me and my friend and essentially kidnapped us, but I guess if they're cops, I don't know if you can count that. It's still, it's still the same thing. And one of the things that they kept saying is, oh, well, this never happened because your story changed.

And I kept saying, well, wait a minute. What are you talking about? Oh, well, you know, first it was these guys and this, it happened then and then your story changed, but they couldn't pinpoint when the story had actually changed, which made me think, this is just something you say when you're trying to poke holes in someone's credibility, if you don't have a specific example. But you and I talked pre-show about testing the person's voracity throughout the discussion. Can you give me an example of that? You kind of mentioned your brother was there now he's not. But there's more to this. And this would work with kids

really well, I would imagine. When I speak with anyone, I'm always testing throughout the whole process, not just on the critical issue, which is, well, did you steal the money, right? Not that story, but all along, for example, I might say, I may have spoken with a co-employee some time ago and said, hey, when's the last time you spoke with Jordan? They'd say, well, it's about a week ago. We talked about these three things. And then when I'm speaking to you, I say, hey, did you speak with this person? No, you haven't spoken with when's the last time when she left two years ago.

That tells me that, well, look, this is something you didn't need to lie about. Right. It's not a material. It's not material to what we're doing. So I'm testing your, I'm already seeing that you're thinking, well, I better not say this because it might lead to something. So I'm going to lie. Right. So I'm already saying your credibility is not great with me to begin with.

Okay. So it doesn't mean the person's just a liar and a compulsive liar and they lie about what color shoes they wore yesterday. It means that in their head, they're going, okay, I got to close off all these little avenues because otherwise they'll get to the core of my BS. That's right. So it's a little. And sometimes, I'll give me an example. in a case where there's some sort of a sexual assault allegation. I work these cases often.

And the question is, it's a he said, she said, proverbially, right? And you speak with a victim. And if it's just two people in a room, the victim could say 50 things happen to make the story that much more horrendous and the civil side make it more that much more money to them, right, in their case. But the victims who say, no, who are consistent, no. You know, all he did was X, not X, Y, and Z. That gives you credibility. You could say anything. You can make the story unbelievably outrageous if you were a liar, right?

If you're a person who's inclined to lie. But you didn't. You kept the story exactly to what you had said and to people in the past. It's, you know, it's not good, but it's not horrendous. That to me gives you a lot of credibility because there's nobody to say you're a liar there, other than the accused who is saying you're a liar about everything. So the fact that you have so much freedom to embellish but didn't goes to the credibility that, look, this might be, there's a stronger indication that what you're saying is potentially.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a good point because I think, I'm trying to think when I, when I was a kid and just BSing my parents or my friends or something like that, sure, what you say is, oh, well, if I'm going to go and tell this bullshit story, I'm going to lean into it. That's right. And say, oh, they were like 50 guys there. And I beat up all 50 guys, right? It's not just, yeah, I smacked the one guy and ran away. Like, let me leave. No one else is going to prove me otherwise.

So I'm just going to go all the way through with this. Completely right. And adults do this too. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Because it's like, well, why not do that? It's going to maximize the dramatic impact of this. And you can't prove it anyway, so I might as well tell you the greatest story of all. Right.

Weave a tale. Yeah. Huh. Why is it the people who lie about small details are more likely to lie about the larger thing? We talked before, yeah, maybe they're trying to close off an avenue. Are there just some people that will lie about every little thing? Sure. Because it seems like that's such an obvious way to get caught if you're just completely BSing the entire time.

But remember, people, again, it always goes back to they'll tell you what they think you know. If they don't think you know that, these little things are lies, then they're not lies in their mind. See what I'm saying? Ah, yeah. So, but it's a matter of credibility. And when you're assessing whether someone's telling the truth, it comes down to, do you believe this person was a credible person? And if so, were they, what was the information you were giving you truthful? That's really what it comes down to.

So how would you and I, if we're dealing with kids or friends of ours that we think might be full of it or an employee, how would we test their veracity? I mean, it's going to be pretty obvious if I'm like, hey, did you wear jeans yesterday? And we saw them walk into Starbucks yesterday. And they go, yeah, why? I mean, is there kind of a sly way where we can do this? There is. Well, it has to be within the context of what you're talking about. But it might be, hey, did you text any friends and tell them you did this?

No, I didn't text anybody. Because you don't think that I know that you texted your friend, right? You deleted it from your side, but didn't realize that I talked to your friend or your friend's mother who called me. So that's the way in which it's not the big one yet, right? The big, you know, lie. But it's little things that tell me already you're building up the story so that I can't get to the truth. Building these kind of walls around yourself. So I can't box in.

That's what you're doing. It's a game, right? So at some point, at that point, I may say, I may get through the, the whole interview and then go back and say, you know what, you lied to me about that because I know I have the text here. So why should I believe you about this now? You know, that's an effective way to confront someone without, you know. Is there a right answer to that question? Like, hey, you lied about the text. Why should I believe you now? No. Oh, because now I'm not lying, but I was lying about that other thing. Because, again, kids just like will tell you what they think,

you know, and they only know this, so I'm only going to tell them about this because all this stuff is really bad. I'm just thinking back to all of the things I lied about as a kid that I can remember, and I always fell for this, right? Like, I always, it was never just, did you leave your Legos out in the basement? There was always, it was always like this big web of BS that was impossible to maintain. Right, and you could ever repeat it in the same way. I know. No.

And people are like that also. I mean, adults. Yeah. Oh, man. When you find, do you ever find really convincing liars where you're like, man, I think this, and then you're just shocked when you find. out that they were full of it. They've really been able to pull the wool over your eyes in the beginning? I'm not going to say it's never happened, but it's not often. Usually, you can't always

prove it at the time. Can't always confront them about it. But there's many times when I've walked out of an interview and said, I believe about 40%, maybe 50% of what this person told me. There's nothing you can do about it. You just don't have that evidence to confront them on. Right. So then you're back to the evidence collection process where you're like, you know, he says, that he has nothing to do with the guy who owns a junkyard, we've got to watch him until he meets up with the guy who owns a junkyard. Because I know that that just doesn't add up in my mind. And again, then at the end, you're saying, well, I don't believe him. I couldn't confront him on it, but what's his credibility like? Well, he had a misdemeanor. He had an assault charge against him

four years ago. He lied to me about being married. He was never married to this woman. That paints the entire picture. Giving people the opportunity to come clean was one of the things we talked about pre-show, and I'm just thinking, that would definitely work on me, because I'd be feeling so much heat, and you're just like, hey, just tell me what happened. I would be like, oh, okay. So here's what happened. Now that I've realized that I'm not getting away with this, here's the whole story. Yeah. I mean, sometimes I can see it in people where they're struggling. There's like a pause and there's eye closed, and I'm, and I may say something like, it's all right to say that. You know what I mean? I know already. You're not, there's no shock here.

We've heard it. I know what you're about to say. You just have to say it. It's done. And then, you know, what's going to happen is, I'm going to tell your employer that you did the right thing. You came clean. You're remorseful. And, you know, I'm going to tell them that, you know, to do the most they can for you,

given that you did the right thing. You know, that that's somehow a way to get people to relax a little bit because they're afraid when I, those words come out, they can never come back, you know. What do you think when you see, I don't know if you're able or comfortable commenting on this. But you hear about these politicians that had like a picture taken where their buddies got a KKK hood on or something like that. And they go, oh, yeah, you know, that was really, we shouldn't have done that. And then the two days later, they're like, oh, that wasn't me. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's so clunky. That's bad. You can't recover from me. No, you can't

recover. That's why, again, you know, knee-jerk reactions to questions are lethal because you, once it's out there, you know, there's no taking it back. So anything that follows is going to be measured against what you said initially. And that's why I go back to, I want to be the first interview all the time. Oh, you want to be the first interview? Always, of that person. Right. Meaning if it's the, I don't ever want, well, legal counsel went out and spoke with

this person and HR. Now it's your turn. Once you speak with somebody the first time, they build up their defense. And once they build up, okay, now I know what they want, what they want to know. Here's how I'm going to lie to them. Once that's built up, it's double and then triple difficult. to break that because now they not only have to come clean, but they have to admit to have lied to their employer or to HR or to their legal counsel. That makes the job that much more difficult.

That's interesting. Plus they've got a couple practice runs of like, oh, I know where the questions are going. Right. When they ask me about that, I got to have a good answer for that. And I didn't really. And she kind of didn't capitalize on it because she's the HR manager or not an investigator. So yeah, when they say, didn't you do this at your last job, my answer is going to be, oh, I didn't even work there or like, no, I never had any cash that I handled at the last job. And they asked me about email. So I won't go back to all my emails. I'm going to say this one they're going to ask me about. I'm going to explain this. I'm going to tell them this is why I wrote this. Because they're going to ask me about that. Right. So the five second pause that they would have had the

first time becomes a no pause at all because they have. When I asked him an email, yeah, there was an email. Yeah, I remember that email. I wrote that to her because it's already, the story's already been set in stone. It makes it a lot more difficult. That's really interesting. I think anybody who's really good at spinning a web generally has gone through that line of questioning with somebody who was not a good question. I pulled some serious pranks in middle school and stuff like that. And I remember talking with like, the assistant principal

who was like, did you do it? No. Well, we think you did it. Well, it wasn't me. And just like really amateur lines of questioning. And I thought, okay, look her in the eye and be really honest and all this BS. And then when the, I don't know, now. I don't even know who it was. Like the school resource officer came in. I had already had this really good dry run with the assistant principal. So when he started, or it wasn't the school resource officer.

It was a regular sort of beat cop. And he said, do you have credit card numbers at home? Because I used the credit card that I had made up using an algorithm to order pizza for my whole school. Hopefully the statute of limitations is up on that. Oh, I think it is. You're good. And so the principal asked me all these amateur questions. And of course, I was able to sort of pass that.

I don't know if she really believed me or not. But then sort of this like new-ish young cop who was probably 25, but looked older at the time, came in and said, do you have internet at home? And I said, yeah. And he goes, did you download credit card numbers? And I go, no, like, who's going to admit this? So, of course, I saw that coming. And then when the school resource officer came in, he asked me those questions.

And he was like, hmm, who have you talked to about this already? And I was like, oh, the assistant principal. And then this regular cop. And he went, okay. So you, let me, let me turn this up a couple of notches. And then he got me with some other stuff because he, first of all, I was used to interrogating people and he was used to kids who were full of crap. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The story was already set in stone. Yeah. That was great. So instead of framing this as, is the opportunity to get punished, how do we do this? easier for you? Well, I think first thing, you have to make sure they understand the cover-up is going to be worse than a crime. Okay. So if you admit to be the crime, we're going to deal with

it in an appropriate way. I'm not going to go, but if you continue a cover-up of this crime and lying about it, it's worse than a crime. So you have to make sure your kids particularly understand that, but employees the same way. If something happened, we get it out in the open, we deal with it, and it's gone, but the continued cover-up and lying about it is something that can never be tolerated because that reflects terrible credibility, right? It tells me that you're not a person that can be trusted, right? People make mistakes. They do stupid things, kids, employees, adults, everyone.

But you can't be covering these things out. Is that one of the rationales behind the law of you can't lie to federal investigators? Because even if they can't prove these certain things, if they can at least prove that you're full of crap on these other accounts, they can still get to it. That's why it is. It's a federal offense. Is that any law enforcement officer or just federally?

agents. I don't know. Yeah, it's Title 18, USC 1001. You can't lie to a federal agent. Yeah. But what if I just lie to the Troy, Michigan police? Well, that's, well, you can still, if you lie to a police police officer, they have state statutes, of course, that deal with it. And perjury is, of course, an issue too, if it's under oath of any kind.

Right, right. Huh. Good old statute of limitations. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was sixth grade. No, you're good. You're good.

I did eventually admitted a bunch of that stuff and just did a bunch of community service at the YMCA. I felt so bad about all that. My God. Yeah, that was, that was when I realized, I'm not cut out for this crime. Yeah. This is not for me. But you on the straight and arrow then. Yeah, this is, I wouldn't, well, it's not go that far. I mean, at the end of the day, I still somehow managed to make money from doing this. I don't know. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm doing what I love. That, that, uh, it seems like there's got to be a catch. Kevin, thank you so much. This has been really great. Let me say it was my absolute pleasure to meet you, to be part of this.

And I hope, you know, we helped a few people out there. Great big thank you to Kevin Barrows. That guy really interesting. And one thing that was kind of cool, Jason, when he left, was he goes, let me know if I can ever help you with anything, especially if you need to find somebody. I'm pretty good at finding people. And I was like, that is such a, that's a baller way to leave the room, right? Oh, man.

I think I could take him up on that, definitely. Let me know if you need to track anyone down. Like, okay. A little Joey from, you know. know, seventh grade still owes me like $4 from that game of marbles. Can you find this guy and help get my money back? Because I'm Italian. So with interest, that should buy me a house.

Yeah, that's right. It's a house in Hoboken at this point. Yeah, there was a lot of things that he was really good at and interesting. Like, I just, I love guys who've just sort of seen some shit, you know, and that like come at this with a totally different angle of experience. Law enforcement, cops, all those guys are just so interesting to me. There's a lot of cool stories that some are more applicable to the show than others, but I'm going down that rabbit hole recently.

I've been reading books about all kinds of investigative techniques, which I think are just fascinating. If you want to know how I managed to book all of these great guests for the show and manage relationships with a lot of really amazing people over years and years, well, check out our six-minute networking course. It's free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course, and it's designed to take, well, like six minutes per day. So don't tell me you don't have time. It's a bunch of BS. It's about consistency. It's

about habits. And it's free. It's over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Speaking of relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Kevin Barrows. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. And I want to give a special thanks here to Will Benedetto, who let us use his venue here in New York at the Mondrian Park Avenue Hotel. down in the boogie room there in the basement of that hotel. That's where this was filmed. This show is produced in association with podcast one,

and this episode was co-produced by Jason, nothing but the truth to Philippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode, so please share the show with those you love

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