March 8th, 2010 → 2:58 pm @ Jim White // 29 Comments
As you might be able to tell, my boss is a former police officer with a lot of experience interviewing bad guys. As for me, I became a Cincinnati private investigator only after I worked for years as a corporate investigator. My job was to conduct forensic interviews whenever there was an incident, such as theft, sexual harrassment, or other major issue that corporations (and even small businesses) don’t tolerate well.
In that role, I traveled to various stores, or a distribution center or other work site to interview company employees to find out which of them was telling the truth and which was lying. Typically I investigated major theft cases, where people had a huge incentive to lie, because if they got caught, they knew they might end up in jail.
Naturally, I had years of experience and a lot of training in how to conduct a controlled interview. We were trained in the art of neurolinguistics – that is, the study of subtle brain functions and how those functions manifest themselves under specific circumstances. In my case, I was interested in the involuntary bodily functions that show up when a person is lying.
But one of the signs of deception that is easiest to recognize is the “strategic stall.” When a person is about to tell a lie, they know there are serious consequences if they get caught. So before telling a whopper, most people want a few extra seconds to think carefully about what they’re going to say, because they have to be certain they aren’t stepping into a trap. In fact, a strategic stall before a big lie is most common when the person being questioned hasn’t had time to think of a good answer ahead of time. In those cases, they often will subtly create opportunities to buy themselves a little bit of extra time – in some cases just a few fleeting seconds – while the synapses in their brain are firing back and forth to try and stay one step ahead of you. And that’s when the sweating starts…but we’ll save those other signs of deception for another post.
Here’s a quick list of five ways a person stalls before telling a big lie:
Keep in mind that a person giving an honest answer is usually straightforward and direct. In the case of the husband being asked about being with Sue at the hotel, a person with nothing to hide would simply answer the question like this: “No. Why do you ask?”
As with all how-to guides, you should never assume a person is lying just because they exhibited one of the behaviors I listed above. One of the key pieces of my training as a forensic interviewer was to look for multiple signs of deception, as no single act is a conclusive indicator. Remember, you’ll need a lot more evidence to prove your case than the fact a person picked some lint off his pants!
If you find yourself in a tight spot and need some guidance on how to confront someone you think might be dishonest with you, please drop me a line by using our contact form. We’re happy to provide advice and guidance at no charge.
January 25th, 2010 → 10:30 am @ Jim White // 35 Comments
As a Cincinnati private investigator, it’s frustrating when clients call back after getting our report and say their cheating spouse said the evidence we provided doesn’t prove anything. Clients should never reveal photos and video evidence to their spouse or partner. Doing so only reveals to them the limits of what you know, and allows them to craft a story around the photos.
The most common excuse I hear from a cheating husband is that he was holding his co-worker’s hand/ hugging her / kissing her / because she was going through a terrible time with her family and was having an emotional breakdown.
More often than not, the husband tells his wife it was a “one-time thing,” and he probably shouldn’t have been that close to her but it won’t happen again.
But take the exact same evidence, and confront the exact same husband a little differently, and the results will be far different.
In the example below, the husband plays dumb and tries to draw information out of his wife before admitting guilt. But the wife wisely avoids giving away any specifics while confidently asserting that she knows a lot of details. She makes it very clear that it’s up to him to reveal details, not her:
In the example above the only detail revealed by the wife is that she knows her husband is having an affair with a woman, and cracks are beginning to form in the husband’s defenses as he slowly realizes he is at an informational disadvantage.
Remember, you would not be confronting your spouse without rock-solid proof. You aren’t trying to find out if your partner has a good excuse for holding hands with another person as they entered a hotel room together. There is no excuse for such behavior. And your partner will know exactly what you’re asking about.
The absolute worst thing you can do when you confront your cheating spouse or partner is to lay all your cards on the table.
Let me repeat myself: the absolute worst move you can possibly make when confronting someone is to reveal all of your evidence to them.
Don’t do it, no matter how tempting it may be to show you have the upper hand. It will come back to haunt you.
Here’s some basic guidelines for confronting a cheating spouse:
Remember, you hold all the cards. The two questions every cheating spouse is dying to ask (but can’t) are these:
How much do you know? And how long have you known it?
If you want as much of the truth as possible, do your best to protect the answer to those questions. If your spouse chooses to lie about his affair without knowing those answers, chances are he’ll minimize his guilt and will leave out key details in the hopes you aren’t aware of them, and then you’ll know when he or she is lying to you.
Here’s another good article on how to correctly confront a cheating spouse. It’s good advice.
If you have questions or need advice on specific circumstances, contact me and I’ll give you the best advice I can at no charge.
January 21st, 2010 → 8:35 am @ Jim White // 85 Comments
Cheating spouses often make mistakes that get them caught on Valentine’s Day. In fact, our Cincinnati private investigation firm traditionally stays very busy on that day. It seems that an unfaithful spouse always feels compelled to spend some time with the person he or she is cheating with, and that makes them very easy to catch.
The news clip below tells the story:
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Valentines Day is coming up fast. If you think your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, or partner is cheating on you, a good Cincinnati private investigator can find out for sure.
Contact us immediately if you need answers. We have a limited number of investigators available and our schedules fill up fast on Valentine’s Day.
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January 13th, 2010 → 4:19 pm @ Jim White // 32 Comments
On a surveillance job a couple nights ago and got myself in a dicey situation in a bad Cincinnati neighborhood (not far from Over-the-Rhine). Luckily things worked out, otherwise this blog wouldn’t be updated anymore…
The client was a typical wife who wanted to know the answer to a simple question: “How do I catch my cheating husband?” She wanted to know what her husband was up to at night. He had recently started “working” late. One night she happened to note that his car wasn’t where he said he was, and she got suspicious and hired me.
To make a long story short, I followed her husband one night as he left work and drove to a bar in downtown Cincinnati. There, he picked up a woman – from what I could tell, they definitely knew each other – and after a few drinks and quiet conversation at a table, the two of them headed to his car.
I tailed them to the parking garage of a nearby motel and when they headed for the exit I snapped the attached photo. Since I didn’t have any info on who the woman was, and I knew the client would want it, I had no choice but to hang around to find out more information. As you can see from the picture, I was stuck in a bad area with only one exit – not exactly the way a pro like me prefers to do business.
When a couple of neighborhood thugs walked through the parking lot and spotted me, I decided to switch to Plan B. Now, I don’t want to give away any trade secrets here, but the bottom line is that there a several ways to figure out who this cheating husband was hanging out with. Within a few minutes, I had relocated the car and found myself in the “lobby” of the hotel chatting with the night manager. He was still processing the latest guest registration, which, as luck would have it, was in the name of a female.
From there, it was just a matter of doing some additional investigation to verify that the name I had was indeed the same person I had seen. I terminated surveillance and went back to the office, contacted the subject’s wife, and filled her in. Two days later, just a few minutes ago, in fact, the case was closed.
Another cheating spouse busted by the best Cincinnati private investigator (if I do say so myself). And yours truly was safely blogging away from the safety of my office, which is way better than staying out on surveillance in a bad neighborhood.
If you think you have a cheating husband or cheating wife, contact us today. We can get to the bottom of the matter right away.
January 6th, 2010 → 2:34 pm @ Jim White // 30 Comments
One of the most common requests I get as a private investigator is not just to find out what a client’s spouse is up to, but also figuring out who the spouse is spending time with.
The case usually starts out with doing basic background research on the subject in question. The client was a woman who’d been married for more than 20 years. Her husband had only recently started working late – or so he told his spouse.
A sudden, unexplained change in work schedule is one of the potential signs of a cheating spouse.
But no single sign should ever be taken alone as a solid indication of infidelity. In almost all cases, more than one sign is present – and when there aren’t more signs, it’s important not to jump to conclusions.
In this case, however, there were more than enough indicators that something fishy was going on.
The client told me that her husband had been exhibiting several of the classic signs of a cheating partner:
Perhaps the most significant factor that prompted her to hire me was the fact that his cell phone bill no longer was delivered to the house. She noticed that she used to always get the phone bill at home on the 15th of the month, but in December, it didn’t show up. When she asked about it, he said the company was going to reimburse him for business calls so he had it delivered to the office.
But when she noticed a debit out of the checking account to pay the phone bill (in the same amount as always), she knew something wasn’t right.
After she hired me, I gave her instructions to to alert me the instant he called and warned her he would be coming home late for work. After only three days on standby, I got the call around 4:30pm and raced over to his office building. From experience, I knew he likely wouldn’t be at the office for long, despite what he told his spouse.
I was right. At 5:05pm, I snapped the photo above when he came out of the office with another woman and got into her car. I assumed she was likely a co-worker, but it’s important to never assume in this business, as I soon found out.
After tailing the car to an apartment complex a few miles away, the subject followed the woman into the apartment complex. They remained there until 7:30pm, then she drove him back to his office where he got in his car and drove home.
Knowing the client wouldn’t be satisified to know that her husband wasn’t merely at work, the next step was to find out the identity of the woman. As a private investigator, that was the easy part – but what I found out was that she wasn’t a colleague at all – she was the man’s divorce lawyer!
Needless to say, when the client found out what was going on, she was able to take measures of her own to protect herself.
When you hire a private investigator, you should expect to get a thorough report – not just confirmation of the things you may already intuitively know, but also additional information you could never guess.
November 13th, 2009 → 12:00 am @ Jim White // 3 Comments
Just a quick blog update to give people an example of how we work at Accelerated Solutions. On a recent surveillance job to investigate a cheating spouse, the client’s partner was discreetly tailed to parking garage at a local hotel. During a meeting earlier in the week, the client made it very clear that the target of the investigation was very paranoid and would be difficult to photograph without being spotted.
Of course, being an investigator with over a decade of experience, this wasn’t the first time I heard the client say something like that, but it doesn’t matter how often I hear it, I take it seriously every time.
The client simply needed solid evidence that his spouse wasn’t telling the truth about where she was during the day. A quick call to the client confirmed she had told her husband that she was headed for the grocery store and would be gone a little more than an hour. I quickly determined that a shot of her in a parking garage (which the grocery store didn’t have), and another shot of her entering the hotel would be all the client needed to confirm his suspicions.
Keeping in mind the client’s warnings about his wife’s paranoia, I pulled my vehicle into a spot perpendicular to her SUV, on the driver’s side, then waited for her to come back out.
An hour later, I used my left side mirror to shoot a number of hi-resolution images that could later be cropped. In the second shot below, the target looked in my general direction, giving me a great shot of her face, but in the darkened garage, it was impossible for her to see me through the mirror and the window. Here’s a couple of examples of discretion in the line of duty. And up tomorrow, proof that she actually went into the hotel…
November 7th, 2009 → 11:20 pm @ Jim White // No Comments
Domestic Investigations
When you need answers to tough questions, Accelerated Solutions can help. We know that domestic surveillance can be a very delicate situation, and we handle all of our domestic cases with extreme care. We guarantee your privacy and will go the extra mile to ensure we don’t compromise the investigation. In addition, we have very flexible payment options to give you the freedom you need to seek the truth. The following is a partial list of our payment options:
