Private Eye Guilty of Land Scam

Albert Topasna was charged with theft by deception as a second-degree felony after investigators discovered Topasna received $12,500 for piece of land the defendant sold by executing a "warranty deed."

That buyer later found out from the Department of Land Management that he couldn't register the title to the property in his name because it didn't belong to Topasna, the press release stated.

Closing arguments in Topasna's trial were held Thursday. A jury returned a verdict that same afternoon.

Assistant Attorney General David Rivera, who prosecuted the case, thanked investigator Juan Salas and other staff members at the AG's office for the successful prosecution.

Read more here. 

Washington Private Eyes Get 6 Months for ID Theft

A Belfair couple who ran a private investigation firm have been sentenced to six months in prison and two years supervised release for using illegal methods to dig up dirt on people who were involved in court cases or litigation.

Read more here.

Reporter Moonlights as PI

Private investigator

Fear factor: 0. I laugh in the face of danger.

Cool factor: 10. If private eyes weren't cool, there wouldn't be so many TV shows about them.

Coulda been worse: I could've spent eight hours in a car. Midnight till dawn. In January. In a blizzard. With a full bladder. Or worse.

It was dark. Really dark. The kind of dark you only see when it's not light. Somewhere off in the black-velvet night, a shot rang out and a woman screamed.

Either that or a car backfired and a cat yowled. I get 'em confused.

My name is Yarborough. Chuck Yarborough. I'm a gumshoe. A shamus. A sherlock. A private eye. Magnum with a beard and not just that woolly bear on his upper lip. Sam Spade without the Maltese Falcon.

For today's story, I am a private investigator for Demopoulos & Associates, the firm run by Pete D. and his wife, Bonnie.

Here's how it went down: The other day, I'm sitting in my office, minding my own beeswax, checking out the racing form for Thistledown and reminiscing about the days when newsroom desk drawers came with Scotch bottles, typewriters clattered a staccato symphony and stale smoke hung in the air like yesterday's sauerkraut. And then, this dame walks in like she runs the place.

Private Eye in Exorcism Case Recorded Over 700 Hours of Surveillance Footage

THE man who tailed Madam Amutha Valli Krishnan for more than four months took the stand yesterday and said that, on most days, she looked normal.

Madam Valli is claiming in a lawsuit that she was traumatised by an alleged exorcism at Novena Church in 2004. Among other things, she says she is fearful of going out and being alone.

But private investigator Gilbert Mathews De Silva and his team, who followed her for more than four months last year, got footage of her doing just that.

His firm, SecureGuard Security Services, was hired by lawyer Tito Isaac, who is representing a priest named in the lawsuit.

In all, the investigators got more than 700 hours of footage. It came from hand-held camcorders and closed-circuit television cameras mounted opposite her Ang Mo Kio flat.

Excerpts of the footage were shown in court to Madam Valli's two psychiatrists as lawyers for the defendants tried to prove that she was exaggerating her condition.

Cheating on Your Spouse? Beware Someone is Watching

Two weeks ago the CEO of a blue-chip Nairobi-based company told his wife that he was flying to Mombasa on company business.

Instead of heading for the airport, the man drove to Kitengela where he rendezvoused with his girlfriend. They spent the rest of the day and the night drinking and canoodling.

His suspicious wife contacted a private eye firm to track down and expose the man. It did not take them long to compile a dossier on the philanderer.

Charge Girlfriend Spied on Private Eye

Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano is seeking dismissal of charges against him in a wiretapping case on grounds of government misconduct.

Defense attorneys charge an FBI agent and federal prosecutors repeatedly violated Pellicano's rights by using his girlfriend to secretly gather evidence against him, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

Private Investigators, Once All Males, Now Changing in US

Recent surveys show 15 percent of all private investigators in the U.S. are women. VOA's Ernest Leong has more on the increasing number of women in this male-dominated occupation.

A mysterious woman, the "femme fatale," tells the detective a story that may or may not be true. Men in trench coats and fedoras [brimmed hats] follow each other on dark, crowded streets. A typical Hollywood private eye movie, but Hollywood's depiction of men and women in the detective films is very different from real life.

Eye Spy

Listen to Andrew Faller describe his life as a private eye and you'll realize it's not exactly Miami Vice. Yes, private eyes round up bail jumpers, repossess cars and provide security to VIPs, but a lot of the time they are watching or reading.

Watching the store clerk suspected of pocketing proceeds. Reading the criminal record of a job applicant. Watching the employee chop wood while "nursing" a worker's comp injury.

"It's not like on TV," said Faller, who lives in Meredith and became a private investigator about four years ago after retiring as the police chief in Center Harbor. "There is lots of downtime."