GivenTime

It's Friday late afternoon, the phone rings and a client is on the line stating that they need someone found and they need them found immediately. They have tried different companies, have spent a lot of money and have had no success. They are in a spot of desperation. Now given time anyone can be found, but time is not on this person's side. They have two weeks to locate and serve this person. So after hearing their plea and explaining that given the time constraint we cannot guarantee that the person will be located in time, they`understood and we accepted the task. A database inquiry was ran, but the information was outdated, still if possible sometimes going to the old neighborhood can be of some help. We do that and meet an individual that knew the person we were looking for, he advised that the person moved to the high desert area, he was certain of the town but could not provide any further information than that. The area where this individual moved to is one where people go to get away, its rural, loosely populated, and small. Well we like small, small can be of big help. The following day a trip is made to the local post office in town. The postal service was willing to help once the right forms were filled out. A good address was obtained, we attempted service but no one was home. The alarm was set for o dark thirty the following morning. The following morning we arrived at the residence, we noted that rottweiler on property sign and approached with extreme caution. A door knock was conducted and our subject answers, we explain to him why we are at his residence and also that our client has been searching for him. The subject expressed his surprise that he was located, but was extremely cordial and accepted the documents with no problems. Given the time, anyone can be found. And just because the information is outdated does not mean that it has no use, you just have to get out there and make it work for you. 

Morrow Detective Agency is a licensed private investigation firm located on the border of Ventura and Los Angeles, Ca in Simi Valley, CA. Morrow Detective Agency is capable of performing surveillance, process service, locates, background investigations, asset investigations, and more. Please feel free to visit our website at www.MorrowDetectiveAgency.com or give us a call at (805) 823-3540 and allow us to make your problem our solution!

The Money Shot

Three days of surveillance, three days of dealing with the hot California summer, of hiding in the backseat of a car dealing with cramps, thirst, and the need to urinate...all of it is about to be worth it. We got contacted to conduct a surveillance on an individual who claimed that they were injured at work after their wages started getting garnished. This individual claimed that an injury to their hand and arm was keeping them from doing their work duties on a regular basis. The employer smelled a fraud and hired our client to find out. 

Day one of surveillance, we get there early in the morning. We sit for approximately four hours, we check in with the client and they request that we wait a little longer, about twenty more minutes into our wait the subject departs. We give the subject a little distance and begin our tail. Everything is going smoothly for the first ten minutes, but behind us we hear emergency sirens and see flashing lights, of course we are supposed to pull over to the right hand side like everyone else, but our subject is moving, I would be lying if I stated that I did not consider continuing with the tail. But civic duty and knowing that someone's life may be on the line took over that natural hunters instinct and it prevailed. My subject made a left turn at the light, by the time the emergency vehicles had passed by my subject was gone. We call the client and advised what happened, it is one of those tough breaks that they don't show on t.v. The client requests that we come back out and we do. 

Day two we arrive in the morning, the subject has called out sick from work. We wait for approximately three hours before he departs. We follow him again things are going smoothly, I check the rear view mirror and there are no emergency vehicles...so this looks like it is going to be a great day! The subject is followed to a job career training facility, the subjects vehicle is a smaller one and where it is parked our view is slightly obstructed, the subject exits the vehicle and enters into the building, the subject remains in the building for quite some time. The subject exits the building, departs, and heads back to their residence. A few hours of waiting and the subject departs, they are followed to a neighboring city. The subject appears to be lost ( this is a surveillance investigators nightmare) the subject drives around in circles and we are forced to give the subject a lot of rope or get caught. The subject makes it to a building, the exit the vehicle dressed business casually and enter into the building out of view. We wait again and the subject comes out approximately thirty minutes later. We follow the subject back to their residence and quit for the day. This is a productive day, we even see that the subject is seeking other employment opportunities...this is something that the client needs to know. But this will not help with the injury claim. 

Day three we arrive in the morning the subject has called out sick again. The subject departs in the mid morning. The subject is followed to a residence, the subject enters the residence and is out of view for a couple of hours. The subject emerges from the residence accompanied by an unidentified woman that we believe to be the subjects mother. They depart and are followed around the city, they go to a check cashing facility where the subject is observed utilizing the proposed injured hand/arm to open the door for their Mom. The subject is followed to the grocery store but they wait in the car while their mother does the shopping. The mother comes out of the store with a few bags, she places them in the back seat of the vehicle and they depart. When they arrive at the mother's residence, the subject exits out of the vehicle and is observed using their injured hand/arm to carry the bulk of the groceries. The subject even uses this arm to push the passenger door closed. Three days of surveillance, three days of dealing with the hot California summer, of hiding in the backseat of a car dealing with cramps, thirst, and the need to urinate...all of it is worth it because we just got the money shot, the shot that shows and contradicts everything that the subject stated that they are unable to do. The client can now defend the employer in the future should this subject come back and try to lie even more, also the client can now show the subject what they have and the subject may throw out the bogus claim. 

Not all claims are bogus, we have sat on some pretty legitimate surveillance's in the past. What makes the surveillance worth it is when you finally get that breakthrough, that time when the subject lets their guard down and does what they should not be doing in a setting where they feel safe to do it in. The money shots are what makes all of that worth it. 

Morrow Detective Agency is a licensed private investigation firm located on the border of Ventura and Los Angeles, Ca in Simi Valley, CA. Morrow Detective Agency is capable of performing surveillance, process service, locates, background investigations, asset investigations, and more. Please feel free to visit our website at www.MorrowDetectiveAgency.com or give us a call at (805) 823-3540 and allow us to make your problem our solution!

Sometimes they outsmart themselves

This case involves fraud. A client was referred to Morrow Detective Agency by an attorney client of ours.  This client placed a down payment to purchase a mobile home from a private party. The private party advised that she would give our client the deed to the property the following week when my client would be able to come up with the rest of the money. The following week my client comes back to the residence to find a for sale sign out in front of the property. My client also finds out that the person had moved out and left no further contact information. We are employed a couple months later by the client to locate the woman so that a service of process can be done on her. We run a search through our databases and come up with nothing new. We contact old neighbors and come up with minimal information. The woman's social networking indicates that she works for the county. A further inquiry finds that she is no longer employed at a certain county facility. We go to the post office and learn that there is no forwarding address information on file. In the meantime my client is attempting to call the woman but is either taunted or ignored. We decide to attempt a pretext but the woman is unresponsive. After many attempts we decide to attempt a phone trap. The woman responds but from a different phone..after hearing the message she hangs up. Fortunately the phone trap documented the phone information. A reverse look up was done on the phone number and it lead to a different county facility. We also learn from one the neighbors who we had spoken with earlier that the woman may have recently purchased a home in a different city. The city that she may have purchased a home in happens to share the same area code as the new place of employment. So now what we have this information it is time to put it to use.  We try to serve her at her residence but have no success, our next hope is her place of employment and we are successful on that attempt. Later on we get a phone call from the same number that called our phone trap. The female subject is furious and states that we have no right to serve papers on her at her job, and she feels that we had harassed her by doing so. After hearing the subject out we advised the woman that we had to serve her the best way we could, we also sneak in the opinion that had she called back our client in the first place, she would have never been tracked down in order to be served. 

This is a case where the subject played it to smart. If the woman had called us from her cell phone instead of her work line we probably would not have been able to get to her in time. But since she had to be sneaky and call us from her work line, we she in turn gave us the lead we needed to close the case. 

Morrow Detective Agency is a licensed private investigation firm located on the border of Ventura and Los Angeles, Ca in Simi Valley, CA. Morrow Detective Agency is capable of performing surveillance, process service, locates, background investigations, asset investigations, and more. Please feel free to visit our website at www.MorrowDetectiveAgency.com or give us a call at (805) 823-3540 and allow us to make your problem our solution!