The Expert Podcast

If you are a licensed private investigator or looking to hire an investigator one of the key words to be aware of is a phrase called pretexting pretexting is basically pretending to be somebody else or making up a fake story in order to gather information. And pretexting by itself is not illegal, but if you're using it to get information under certain categories it may not be legal As an example, if you use pretexting. To pretend you are a person to get somebody's bank account records That's illegal. If you use pre texting's just to observe something it's probably not illegal

For example, if you you know walk around with a yellow vest on to make it look like you're official, just to be able to. walk down the street to maybe. You know look what's going on in a neighborhood That's probably not illegal but if you pretend that you are ups driver put a ups patch on carry a box go up to somebody's house. to be able to look inside their house that may be pretexting to invade somebody's privacy. There's many laws at the federal and state level that will determine whether or not your pretexting is allowed or not. So you might think well who cares if it's legal Why shouldn't I just do pretexting and get away with it

Well, Part of the reason is if the information you're obtaining is ever going to be used in court which more than likely that's what you're doing it for to use assets for asset recovery, or to use evidence in court. At some point you're going to be asked how did you get that information? And if it's discovered that you obtain the information through illegal pretexting not only can the evidence not be usable. The person who performed this activity can be sanctioned and really getting legal trouble Sometimes it's actually a criminal offense to do this. You as a client may be. Held liable. Under vicarious liability. Where you might have damages against you civilly and worst case scenario your entire legal case could be found against you.

Now remember we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice so you want to get good qualified legal advice But the important thing is to make sure that if you're gathering information, That whoever's gathering the information for you is doing it using proper procedures and not using illegal pretexting there's a federal law called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act, which covers a lot of this illegal pretexting. And this came because there was a very large case where some, a board of directors for a company hired an investigator. To pretend they were another person to get some cell phone records. And the cell phone records were used in a court case. And this started the whole Gramm-Leach-Bliley act.

If you obtain records. Improperly, it can have a domino effect on you your case. and all the, all the gains you're trying to make with your endeavors. Okay. One of the other factors in pre-texting it doesn't have to be a big thing We have a case a few years ago where. client was in a lawsuit with an opposing party. And we knew that both parties were wanting to get information on assets of the other side to see if they won how much could they get? Did the other side have any money to fight the case There was a lot of reasons to find out about assets. And part of our. Efforts in this case was to find assets on the other party So we were doing, you know asset search bank account search all the type of searches you normally would do for a case but we were doing it legally using. GLB compliant methods No illegal pretexting whole nine yards.

But as we always do we counsel our clients to be aware of things that might be used against them We tell them look, be on the lookout for things that are happening. That might be another investigator investigating you. Right. And we tell the attorney. Be on the lookout for these actions by your opposing party by their attorney by their investigator… It's called counter-intelligence and we ask them if anything happens unusual and weird people come to your door you get weird mail you have phone calls that are unusual Maybe someone's following you let us know so we can look into it.

Well sure enough. A couple weeks later. The attorney for our clients said look they got this piece of mail that didn't make any sense. And what they received was a check in the mail. It was a rebate check. It was from a generic company called USA rebate. It was for $10. And it said… Thank you for purchasing our product We appreciate you buying American Here's our appreciation. For you buying our product. Here's your $10 rebate check Use it in good health whatever it was And it was a letter attached to it And a check for $10. And they said it didn't make any sense We don't remember what we bought in the letter itself even look kind of. You know, wasn't as formal as you would expect that the company really didn't make any sense It was from a PO box.

So we took the letter we took the check. We did some investigation on it We tracked. The PO box traced it back to who it was and what we told our client was take that check I open up a new bank account. At another bank then where you bank from, put a small deposit a hundred dollars, right Open this account. Now take this check. And deposit it. Right into. the account. And. Well we wanted to do. Is. See what happened with this check?

So. The reason that this check was given to our client was because the opposing party this lawsuit was trying to see. If this. was deposited. What account it went to so they can do an asset search on that account. Right. Well technically that's illegal Pretexting because you made up a fake story about this rebate in this product you bought which was a totally made up story. You know now that a true story. By itself is not illegal but you're using it to get sensitive information to get bank account information. So. We found out who it was We tracked it back We found out that this PO box that happened to be halfway across the country, traced back to a private investigator that was in the town where. The opposing party was located In fact we took it a step further.

We S we searched that private investigator and we found that in the past. They had done work for this attorney that represented the other side. So…it was a complete circle and traced it back to him. We presented this evidence to our part our our client to their attorney and their attorney. Brought it to court and they got sanctions against that attorney saying look, you hired an investigator that did something illegal. And it had consequences for the other side So it could be something very small. So being aware of those things.

look, when we, we dealt with that other investigator that other investigator had to sit for a deposition and was deposed by our client's attorney. And I when I looked at the transcript of that deputy deposition I believe that they didn't even know what they were doing was illegal. Right Many times investigators think they're doing something that's legit, but it's totally illegal And the in this person didn't even know. Right. That's why it's important to deal with. Making sure that your resources are doing something proper, so you don't get into trouble and you don't lose traction on your case. And lose benefits that you may have. That get thrown out the window because accidentally somebody did something wrong.