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!

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!