The Expert Podcast

If you're going to hire a private investigator to track a subject or to do any kind of work for you, make sure that you know what they're doing on your behalf. There are certain things that are illegal that some investigators either don't know or they just break the law anyway.

In this case, the mayor of Reno, Nevada is suing a private investigator and the private investigator company because they found a tracking device on their vehicle. The mayor had brought their vehicle in for normal routine service, and the mechanic found this tracking device. Once it was found, they did some research on the device — who bought it, who's using it. A tracking device has to send back data to an email address, and they discovered that it was being tracked by a private investigative agency, a company.

So the mayor sues them, because guess what — it's illegal to put tracking devices on vehicles in most cases. It's against the law. You can go to jail for that. So that private investigator might have criminal legal problems for putting that device.

But it's worse than that, because the complaint — the lawsuit — says the investigator is working on behalf of an unidentified third party whose identity has not been able to be ascertained yet. That will come out. Even though a private investigator has certain privacy requirements and they can't reveal their clients, if there is some violation of law, normally that breaches the privacy. So at some point in this case, the identity of that client is going to be revealed to this mayor and to law enforcement.

We have seen cases like this. As an investigator, we have seen the counterparties to cases we've worked on hire private investigators that have done illegal things — illegal asset searches, tracking, hacking, breaching phones or emails — and we find this as counterintelligence for our client. Then they go back and file claims against the other party. And that's exactly what's happening here.

The tracking and surveillance of the person caused her significant fear and distress — as it would any person if you find a tracking device on your car. That’s legitimately going to cause you distress. She, this mayor, filed a lawsuit and she's seeking restitution for invasion of privacy, trespassing, civil conspiracy, and negligence. These are civil claims, and some criminal charges could apply to the investigator. And if the client was aware — or should have been aware — they could be liable as well.

She’s also seeking to know who hired the investigator. That’s going to come out in court. There’ll be a deposition, or testimony, or discovery that will reveal that. Then all of the emails, all the communications that happened between the client and the investigator are going to come out. And maybe it's a political rival, maybe it's a stalker, maybe it's somebody that's in business that wants to find out about this mayor or where they go. All of it's going to come out. It's going to cause major liability and expense for the investigator — possibly for the client that hired the investigator if they knew anything about it, or should have known anything about it, or even if they said something like, “I don't want to know.”

There have been cases where clients have said to an investigator, “Look, I just want to know this. I don’t care how you find out,” or “I don’t want to know how you do this.” That could be considered negligence and create liability.

We have clients come to us all the time that ask about things that are illegal. Now, most of the time, the client doesn't know that it's illegal. We tell them: you can't put a tracking device on a car, you can't hack somebody's computer, you cannot break into somebody's phone illegally.

Now, there may be ways to get the information legally — by finding where it exists outside of the protected areas — and that's very often what can be done instead of hacking somebody's computer or their phone. The information sometimes is outside of that computer or phone in other areas. It might be in the cloud, it might be in a vehicle, it might be somewhere else. And we can suggest ways to find it legally so you're not violating the law.

But sometimes, clients just say, “I don't want to do that. I want to do it this other way.” We’re not interested. We don't get involved with cases like that. And even if you are a client who finds an investigator who says they'll do something illegal, just because the investigator does it doesn't mean you're off the hook.

There have been many cases where the client themselves has been found liable and has had to pay damages or even sometimes had criminal cases. There was a case in the 90s — don't quote me — I believe it was Hewlett-Packard, a major Fortune 500 company, that had a leak from their boardroom. Some of their board members were leaking stuff to the press. And they hired a private investigator to get into their cell phone accounts to find out who they were calling. It was revealed that this investigator hacked the phones, and several of the executives at this company were now found liable for this. And I believe one of them had criminal prosecution because of that.

Just because you hire a third party to do something illegal doesn't automatically get you off the hook. Again, we're not attorneys giving you legal advice — we just want to make sure you're aware that you want to not only be sure that you're hiring a licensed, legitimate investigator, but that their methods aren't going to get you into trouble because you're the client.