Reflections 2014

Being a private investigator is one of the professions where what you do or don't do matters. This year Morrow Detective Agency has reunited four families, kept one person from going to jail for a crime that they did not commit, exposed multiple insurance fraudsters, and caught some cheating spouses. The hundreds of cases that we have worked this year have largely been successful. But it is the cases that we have not been able to resolve that stick in our minds. 

For instance a man was adopted out as a baby, he is now in his fifties,  has some information about his mother, this man does not have the means to pay for our services, so our company wanting to give back to the community at large, decided to take on this case at no charge (we accept three cases a year that we do not charge for). We search for this man's Mother, call hundreds of women sharing his mothers first and middle name. We contact attorneys, we search public records, we bang on the wall, bang some more, and unfortunately find that we do not have the tools to take the wall down-at least not right now. We never truly stop working on these cases, right now as we speak, it sits on my desk positioned in a way that it stares at me and lets me know that we haven't looked everywhere because if we had we would have found her.  In addition to this case for this individual we do find a family member, but that family member unfortunately does not want to have anything to do with the client. The case is not hopeless, it just needs time and some more work. 

However if you only dwell on your failings, you can go crazy. On Christmas day a client that we reunited with her father sent me photos of herself and her father, she also sent photos of her Uncles, and her Aunts. The smile on her face makes the whole year a success for us. The emails that we received from clients thanking us for our extra efforts and stating that because of what we did they were able to get a successful conclusion on their end, reminds us that what we do matters. The young man that is walking free after being accused for a crime that he did not commit embracing his freedom and the opportunity to be able to spend time with his family a and friends reminds us that our families are important, they are the ones that will stick with you when every one else turns around and runs. The wife who got what she needed from our agency in order to proceed forward and divorce her husband that was cheating on her, reminds us that even in the darkest of situations there is still hope and good things can come from the bad. 

So here is hoping that 2015 will be bigger, better, and more challenging than 2014, that all of us are reminded of the things that matter most to us. That we all have the tools needed in order to break down whatever walls are holding us back. We at Morrow Detective Agency would like to say thank you to our clients, to our friends that have been following us on Facebook, on Twitter, and reading our blog. Thank you to everyone that has referred us over to someone that did not think that they could get the answers they needed. You all's esteem in us is what has helped us help others. Thank you all and may 2015 be healthy and prosperous 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!

If at first you don't succeed.

Detective work is full of trial and error. I once spoke with an investigator by the name of Josiah Tink Thompson, he told me that detective work is also full of luck, his parting statement to me was I hope that you are lucky. My experience has shown that it definitely is a blend of the two. Case and point. Our agency was hired to conduct surveillance on a particular subject in an effort to prove that this subject was utilizing a vehicle they were not supposed to be using, and also working when they stated that they are not. The first day of surveillance we get there at an appropriate time and we sit and wait. About an hour after our arrival our subject departs, we give the subject some time to move into traffic and then join into the flow of the morning transportation. The first fifteen minutes of the surveillance went as planned, but suddenly our subject gets off of the freeway, travels onto the surface streets and makes a crazy U turn, in our experience the subject is getting hinky. We let the subject go not wanting to add onto the subjects paranoia. We call our client and advise of what happened. Our client later reports to us that the subject called and stated that someone in the family was attempting to follow the subject. Apparently the person in the family drove the same type of vehicle as our subject and our subject knows that this person is watching them. Our client laughed as the they knew that the investigator and the relative did not resemble each other in the slightest way. We advised a cooling down period and we would attempt at a different time. 

Two weeks later our investigation continues. We get at the surveillance location in the early morning, we wait, and wait, and wait, but no movement from the subject. We decide to go out again, and we wait, and wait, and finally there is some movement by the subject. The subject gets onto the freeway and our investigator followed. Anyone that lives in California is familiar with the 405 and the horrible traffic that it has. Our subject was on the 405 and now the words I hope your lucky took a definitive meaning. Our subject drove like a person on a mission, weaving in and out of lanes with only minimal space to merge, the subject caused cars to slam on brakes, horns to blare, and hand gestures of all kinds to come out of windows. Our investigator followed the subject for approximately thirty minutes before exiting the freeway. The subject travels at a decent pace on the surface streets and finally lands at a building, the subject parks in the lot. Our investigator gives the subject a moment to get together, our investigator was able to take some photos of the subject exiting the vehicle, and we were also able to show that the vehicle the subject was using was not the one that they were supposed to be using. The subject entered into their work place without giving our investigator a second look. 

We have said it in the past and we will say it again here, persistence and patience will win out nine out of ten times. Trying to make things happen in case can cause the case to fall apart instead of working the case in its own pace. Now our client will be able to utilize the evidence to prove that this person is lying and is doing things that they should not be doing. 

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!

There is no traffic on the extra mile

A lot people want the quick result. They want the no effort win. But to truly succeed and do something well, you have to be willing to put in the extra effort. Your going to have to go the extra mile. 

Our offices were contacted in order to serve papers on a subject that had seemed elusive. The other party that attempted service stated that they were unsuccessful after numerous attempts. They tried the subjects residence but found it to be vacated, they tried the subjects office but found that it was never open. They gave up after that. Our offices often get the services that other's have given up on. When I first started working on the file, I started at the beginning. Day one  I verified that the house had been vacated, I spoke with neighbors and they sad that the family may have moved to Glendale. Day two I went to the subjects place of business and I found that it was not open. There was no one around but since I had started early I figured that I could get some lunch and come back. I went to Shakey's pizza ( I love mojo potatoes) ate and went back to the office. The office was still closed but there were other offices surrounding the subjects. One person was exiting his office, I approached him and asked for the subject by name. The man advised that the subject had moved his office upstairs, he gave me the unit number. I go to the office and note that a man is sitting at his desk, I ask for my subject by name, the man confirms that he is my subject I give him the paperwork. Case closed. This situation could have been resolved had the previous servers asked the neighbors, asked the fellow business owners. But more often than not, some don't. 

Another example of this, in my earlier P.I. days I had to track some witnesses down for a case, the case regarded a man that was being accused of molesting some children. One potential witness in particular was extremely difficult to locate. I started calling, no answer, I sent emails, no answer, I went to his home, no response. Now here is the brick wall, it is reasonable and probably rational to give it up here. But that is not what I do, I did not get into this work to do something easy. So the answer was the obvious one, though not the most exciting. I waited outside the witnesses house for 7 hours before he came home. The witness was surprised to see me but did give me a statement, a statement that changed the pace and setting of the case. 

So there you have it, perseverance, not giving up, being persistent. Doing the extra will get you results. You may not win all of the time, but don't let the reason why you lose be because you did not put in all of the necessary  and sometimes the unnecessary efforts. 

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!

A father that never forgot and a daughter that never quit

When I was a kid, I wanted to become a private investigator. I read the mystery stories of Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlow, and Easy Rawlins. I liked how the protagonists in these stories were able to affect the world around them. As I grew up and started doing this work in real life, I learned that even though the stories I read sensationalized  the world of the Private Investigator, I too could help to change the world around me, even if it is just a small part of it.  

Morrow Detective Agency got a call from a client, a young lady that was interested in locating her father. The young lady through unfortunate circumstances was placed in the foster care system as a young girl and though she grew up healthy, seemingly happy, and loved, she felt that a piece of her was missing.  The client through her own intelligence and diligence was able to find her mother, but she was unable to locate her father.  The client needed the help of Morrow Detective Agency to become closer to being whole again. The client's mother was young and unfortunately did not have that much information about the clients father. She only had a name and a time frame of certain events, and of course the rumors that you hear over the years. I started this search by going through the traditional databases that investigators have access to but had no luck. I called every phone number for every potential subject but none of these men turned out to be my clients father. 

So after hitting this brick wall I did what every investigator has to do, I started again from the beginning. I searched court documents and finally found one  this one contained an alias for my clients father. I plugged in the alias but found nothing in the databases...feeling undeterred I continued. The clients mother had heard something about the clients father moving to Washington state.  I searched social media sites and bingo I found a man that resembled my client. He had the same nose, eyes, and mouth. This gentleman had not been on his sites since 2012 but fortunately had left his friends list open. After searching through the list we were able to locate some relatives. The traditional databases allowed for us to contact these relatives by telephone. An associate Gabby Kelpe was able to translate and effectively get through to the clients family that we were not trying to trick them. Also it helped that one family member relayed a story to us. Back in the mid 2000's the clients father tried to find his little girl, he through his own search was able to locate a foster parent but my client had already been adopted. The foster family was able to later get in touch with my client and tell  her this story.  Now all of the pieces of the puzzle connected. We provided our clients phone number to the family who said that they will do everything they can to get in touch with the clients father, he moved out of the country. 

Three days later our offices receive a call from our client, she has spoken to her father who is residing out of the country. The clients father told her that he was pleased that she was able to locate him, that he thought about her often, never forgot her, and always loved her. The client and her father exchanged messages of joys, intentions of getting together and hopefully building a bond that will never break again.  

I guess some of the stories I read as a kid did have it right, sometimes we can be called to do something that changes a persons world. We now can see a branch of the family tree grow more leaves as it becomes reconnected. 

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!

Do you know who you married?

Wednesday afternoon our offices get a call asking for an investigator to go to an attorney clients office and speak with their client. We go out to the office and are met by an attorney and a young lady. The young lady starts telling a story, she has been married for approximately 7 years to a man that we will call John Smith. Through time she and John Smith have accumulated property and have also had children. Well in recent years my client and John Gonzales have had a falling out. He all of a sudden has become distant and extremely secretive. While cleaning she happens to find some documentation that indicates that her husband John Smith may be a different person name John Brown. She sees other documents that are property records and they show the name John Brown on them as well, they also have her name attached as his wife. The client confronts her husband who gets mad and an argument takes place, the client leaves her residence with her child. The husband changes the locks, closes up bank accounts and now has completely shut my client out. The husband does call to see the children, he sees them and takes them and refuses to give them back. The police are called, and the children are taken back home. The client's attorney advises that they need proof that the husband has falsely documented himself and acquired property through fraudulent means. The client happens to get a copy of the social security number that her husband was using and also the recorded property documents. A quick search of the social security number through our databases shows the clients husbands fake name with their shared real address, as well as some other properties, but it also shows someone else with a completely different name, this person who we will call Steve White also lives in the state where the social security number was issued from and from his residence history has resided there for the majority of his life, my clients husband resides in California several states away and is from a different country. After conferring with the client and the attorney it was decided that contact should be made to number one verify our findings and number two see if Mr. White would be willing to swear an affidavit and possibly pursue our client's husband for fraud. A telephone call was placed and as it turned out Mr. Steve White was an attorney, he was shocked at our findings and after verifying some things on his own, was more than willing to swear out an affidavit. The clients husband also probably will be having some problems with immigration at the next court date. 

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!

Digging for gold

Trash digs, they aren't the most attractive part of this work, but they can be fruitful. We normally get this type of request for child custody related investigations. Lets say a person is trying to prove that the other parent likes to party, drinks a lot, or is not feeding their kids balanced meals. A trash dig can help validate that information. 

One particular case comes to mind that can be used as an example. We get a call from a client who is going through a custody issue, the Father of the children has a big drinking/drug problem, when he has custody of the kids he only feeds them fast food and junk food. After hearing the clients concerns we set a plan. First thing that needs to be determined is what day does the trash man come to pick up. It is illegal for anyone to walk onto a persons property and go through their trash, but once the trash is parked at the curb it is no longer on private property and therefor no longer considered property. A call to the local trash company and we are able to determine what day the trash is going to be curved, we also plan our efforts around the end of the visitation that the father has so that it will paint a more accurate picture of what goes on in the house. 

So the following Wednesday, we set our clocks for o dark thirty (it is easier to pick up trash at a time when everyone is sleeping) and made the necessary preparations. The following morning we get to the residence, a quick scan of the neighborhood is done to make sure that the closest neighbors are not up and about. We quickly photograph the residence, the vehicles parked in the driveway, the cans on the curb, all of this is done to establish that we are at the right residence and also that we are obtaining this information in a legal manner. As we are taking bags out of the trash cans, one happens to burst. Luckily we were prepared for this and placed the bags and its contents into a bigger, more secure bag. We go into the recycle can and see so many bottles that it would be almost impossible to grab them all without making a lot of noise, so we grab as many as we can and photograph the rest in the bin to help reaffirm our point. 

Where you take the bags is important, taking them to the office is not going to make your co-workers or bosses happy. We prefer to take them to a public park. We spread out a tarp, grab some sticks and start sifting through the findings. This particular dig shows that there is no produce, just a gallon of milk, and a ton of fast food bags. It also shows that there are quite a lot of prescription pill bottles with names that do not belong to the subject. The subject lives alone and these names are males names. We counted approximately 50 different bottles, everything from hard liquor to wine. Now this is the first dig, about three more in addition to this one, with basically the same type of findings and we were able to determine that there may be a lot of drinking going on and no cooking. The children who have told stories about witnessing their father in an alternate state of mind, have substantiated the suspicions of drinking and possible drug use.  Our client took this evidence to the court house, the father was mandated to get into a treatment program and to be tested before he has visitation with the children. 

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!

You need to know before you say I do.

A client calls and asks for us to conduct a background investigation, their daughter has gotten herself involved with a particular individual and she is now engaged to him. They want to know if he is a person of good character, has he been married before, if so what happened, can he support their daughter? The client provides us with the information that they know about the guy and we start our inquiries. We find out that the person is involved in his profession and appears to be growing in it. We find that he owns a house and has an audi that is paid off. So far this is the report that the client wants to hear. More information is discovered, the type of stuff that the client may have some concerns with. The man was married up until January of this year, he is rushing to get back on the saddle it seems, he has no children but his ex wife claims that he was not physically abusive but was mentally abusive and controlling, she alleges that he controlled all of the money and the finances and did not allow for her to make any decisions. We learn that the ex wife who was a nurse and making more then decent money had to run to her parents residence because she had no access to the accounts. Of course the male subject responds and he states that all of her allegations are in fact fabricated. The disposition of the case indicates that the Judge has awarded the man the property but he has to pay his ex wife 90k, the male subject also has to provide her an additional 100k from his retirement. He does not have to pay her alimony and she is not responsible for any of the accrued debt that they shared. A further inquiry with the ex wife is made and she stated that the male subject was unfaithful during their marriage and that she had caught him cheating and that was the final straw. Now I personally am not against people falling in love or moving forward with their lives, however in this situation one does wonder why would this person be so eager to get back in the drivers seat when he just finished a trip? Now the parents ( my clients) are going to approach their daughter with this information, they are flying out of state to see her and meet her new fiance, they know all of this about him, maybe she knows this information as well, or maybe she doesn't, but at least now it is out there and an informed decision can be made. 

Another client called because they are going through a heated child custody issue, his ex is alleging all of these nasty things about him while she is painting herself to be the perfect person. The client after living with her for so long knows that she is not clean but he lacks the proof to show it. We are tasked with shaking the bushes to see what comes out. Well we start shaking and at first all we find are the normal traffic incidents, but as we keep going we find some drug possession charges, charges that she has neglected to inform everyone, charges that she plead guilty to and served some time for. Could she be clean now? Yes. Could she be an excellent mother now?  Yes absolutely. Does the client and the decision makers deserve to have all of the information before making a determination that is going to affect the lives of others? Absolutely! 

These are some exceptions to the rule. Most backgrounds come up uneventful and with no issues. But anytime that you are making a life changing decision that is going to involve yourself and your family, you should always exercise due diligence, and we at Morrow Detective Agency can help you do just that. 

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!