Detective services

What is it?

In certain circumstances,  legal proceedings need specific papers to be handed in person to someone involved in the case. This process of ensuring legal documents being delivered is known as process serving.  Examples of documents that may need to be delivered in person include:

• Divorce petitions
• Family court orders (Non-Molestation Orders, Injunctions)
• Witness summons
• Plus many more...

Why get a PI to do it?

There are many reasons you might  employ a PI to serve a process. 

Firstly, a process server must be uninvolved in the case, so often it cannot be simply delivered by a friend. Having a PI do it ensures that it will be done to an evidentially correct standard. 

Secondly, individuals who know that they are likely to be receiving such papers sometimes do all that they can to avoid being served them, for example by not coming to the door, or staying at a friend's address. Hiring a PI means hiring someone who makes a living out of finding people, and you are more likely to get your document served successfully and without having to resort to other options. 

Thirdly, people can sometimes react negatively or unpredictably to receiving court documents. If delivered by someone trained in conflict management, it can help to explain the process to them and ultimately avoid any unpleasantness or confrontation. 

What is it?

Person tracing is, to cut a much longer explanation shorter, finding someone whose whereabouts you do not currently know.  

Why do I need to do that?

There are many reasons someone may want to find someone else.  Perhaps you are looking to find a long lost relative, or perhaps a tenant left your property without paying for the last few months rent and didn't leave a forwarding address.  Maybe you need to find them to serve legal papers on them, or maybe you need to inform them of a death in the family and have no way to get in touch. 

Is that legal?

Again, to cut a longer answer short, yes. The methods that reputable PIs use to gather information on people are completely legal in the UK. Generally the information we gather is information that is publicly available, if you know where to look. 

If the information is publicly available, can't I just do it myself?

In theory, yes, you could attempt to do this yourself. A question you should ask yourself before you try, however, is how much value you place on your own time. Without knowing how to go about it, you may well spend days trying and not get anywhere. In order to find someone based on public records, publicly available information, and good old fashioned sleuthing, you need to know how to go about looking. By employing someone who is trained to do it, and who makes a living out of it, you are far more likely to get a good result in a much shorter period of time than if you tried to do it yourself. 

What is it?

In our internet heavy world, it has become easier for people to say things and target people with fewer fears of repercussion. Sadly, in that internet heavy world, it is also often impractical simply to stop using social media, which is common advice given by police officers when cases of cyberbullying are brought to them. 

When will the police get involved?

The police are likely to get involved if a clearly identifiable criminal offence has taken place, and this offence has been enabled or facilitated with the internet. Examples of this might be an abusive partner using Snapchat's GPS system to track his/her partner's movements.  

Why involve a PI?

It is often much harder to fight back against someone at the other end of a keyboard than it is to fight back against someone sitting across from you at the office, or the classroom. Hiring a PI to investigate, and ultimately end the behaviour may be the best option, especially in cases where simply coming off social media is not a realistic possibility.  For example, if your child is getting cyberbullied by someone at school, they may be receiving an overwhelming amount of daily abuse online via their social media, something that can be devastating to someone's mental health. As a former detective with an online specialism, I am well equipped not only to identify who is at the other end of that user account, but also to gather the evidence of that bullying behaviour. I could then present this evidence either to you as the client, or speak to school representatives on your behalf. In this way the bullying of your child can stop without you having to take the drastic step of pulling your child off social media for their own health, something that can often be perceived as punishing them for being a victim. A similar approach could be taken for someone receiving online abuse at their place of work.  

Strange as it may seem, there can be a very real need to have someone conduct some online research before online dating becomes a face to face relationship. Online dating, whilst very much a large factor of meeting that special someone in our modern society, is rife with scammers and con artists intending to take advantage of people's desire for connection. 

Is that a thing?

The Internet Watch Foundation found that between 2020 and 2021, instances of "Sextortion" offences (threatening to release intimate images sent to an online relationship scammer or similar if the scammer's demands are not met) almost doubled. With reliance on technology only likely to increase in the coming years, the number of these kinds of offences is only expected to increase. 

When faced with the risk of having your private images released to your family, friends, work colleagues, or posted on the internet in general, hiring a PI  to reduce the risk of falling prey to such scams is not as strange a thing as you may initially think. Thanks to my online training and specialisms, I am able to conduct discreet enquiries into the person on the other end of the profile page, to provide you with as much assurance as possible that they are in fact who they claim to be.  

I also offer my services and skillset as an independent workplace investigator.

Don't HR deal with complaints and disciplinary matters?

Workplaces generally have their own internal complaints and disciplinary procedures. Sometimes however, a particular complaint might be sensitive in nature,  call into question the impartiality of the procedures or staff running them, or concern high ranking people in the organisation who could be accused of being able to pressure internal investigators. 

In these cases, companies often turn to private investigators to ensure that a transparent and impartial process is followed. The private detective will then conduct the investigation, and provide an unbiased report to the relevant panels.

Likewise, if a federation or union of workers does not feel that the complaints procedure is being followed fairly in certain proceedings, they may sometimes hire a private investigator to conduct a separate investigation, again to present to the relevant panels.