PIs Catch Counterfeitters

Four men were arrested on charges that they sold counterfeit merchandise at Traders World.

Police were contacted by a pair of private investigators Saturday who have contracts with various trademark holders, such as Nike, Coach, and Tiffany & Co.

The investigators purchased a $60 watch advertised by a Traders World vendor as a Rolex, which they later determined was phony, and police on Saturday arrested vendors Mamadou Abderrahmane and Abou Morou Keita.

New Zealand Police to Work with PIs

Detective Inspector Paul Berry, who heads the National Bureau of Investigation Support, has been appointed by deputy commissioner Rob Pope to "reinvigorate" the relationship between police and the security industry.

He aims to have all parties working together in a common bid to reduce crime and increase community safety.

Berry told the Sunday Star-Times that police already benefited from the work private investigators did, especially in investigating dishonesty in the workplace.

Trevor Morley, president of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Investigators (NZIPI), said for many private investigators, up to 70% of their cases involved dishonest employees.

Private Spies

Think private detective and what springs to mind? The worldweary, chain-smoking Philip Marlowe? Sherlock Holmes solving another crime with his sidekick Watson? Even Magnum P.I. and his impressive moustache jaunting around Hawaii in a flashy sports car? And really, who could blame you?

Over the last century, few professions have been infused with as much daring, glamour and intrigue as that of the private detective. As a trip to the crime section of any book shop will reveal, authors have always been fascinated with private investigators, while Hollywood and television annually churn out yet more films and shows on detectives, the vast majority of which only add further mystique to the sleuth. Still, one thing holds true: as you might expect, private detectives are a suspicious bunch and none of those I spoke to would allow me to use their full names or have their photographs taken.

"Sad to report, but for the most part, the reality of being a private detective is not like it has been depicted in television, films or books," says Ron, a private detective with Dublin firm Eye Spy. "No two days are the same but it's not international espionage or fortunes-at-stake stuff. I've yet to see a private investigator driving a Ferrari, although there are a couple who wear sunglasses day and night -- but that wouldn't be my idea of blending in."

Private Investigator Alerts Man of Lottery Win

A Castle Rock man turned a losing lottery ticket into a record-setting winner thanks to Colorado’s Second Chance drawing.

Calvin Beamon won $1 million with a $20 Colorado Millionaire lottery scratch ticket when his number was pulled from more than 200,000 entries, said Erika Gonzalez, media specialist for the Colorado Lottery.

It took lottery officials several days to reach Beamon, who works in Rifle and could not be reached for comment for this report.

He did not respond to phone messages and officials were unsure if he received a certified letter. A visit from a private investigator finally triggered a response. When the investigator left a business card on Beamon’s door, his son — who was checking on the house — alerted him to the mysterious visit.

Barack Obama Birthday Gate: Obama Birth Certificate Dispute

Today is Senator Barack Obama's birthday, which at the age 47 makes him a youngin' in the presidential campaign. Yet, four presidents took office at a younger age: Theodore Roosevelt 42, John F. Kennedy 43, William J Clinton 46 and Ulysses S. Grant 46. For some voters, however, it is not Barack Obama's birthday that is relevant but whether or not Obama's birth certificate is authentic.

Jail Inmate Attempts Escape, Harms Private Investigator

Police say a Douglas County Jail inmate tried to escape Thursday by assaulting a defense attorney’s private investigator and climbing into the crawl space in the ceiling.

The investigator was meeting with Karl Paul Volosin, 28, in an interview room at the jail when Volosin climbed up the Plexiglas barrier between himself and the interviewer around 3 p.m., according to a Douglas County Sheriff’s Office press release.

Volosin then allegedly assaulted the investigator and climbed up the window and into the crawl space above the ceiling tiles.

Donaghy to NBA investigator: Drop Dead

Tim Donaghy may not have his dignity or his freedom but the ex-NBA referee still can decide who he' will talk to.

The NBA is not on that list.

And stop calling him names.

According to this story in the New York Times, Donaghy has decided not to meet with Lawrence Pedowitz, a former federal prosecutor who is leading the league's examination of their anti-gambling policies and the NBA officiating system.

Slain Father Had Hired Private Investigator

Durban man Johan Lotter, fearing for his life and those of his wife and children, had hired private investigators after receiving death threats in the week leading up to his murder.

Lotter, 53, and his wife, Magdelena, 52, were slain at their Thames Drive, Westville, home at the weekend.

Their children, Hardus and Nicolette, appeared alongside Mathew Naidoo, Nicolette's boyfriend, on two charges of murder in the Pinetown magistrate's court on Wednesday.

Lotter had been strangled, and his wife died of stab wounds.

Private investigator Brad Nathanson said Lotter had approached him last week after receiving several SMSs and a letter threatening his life.

The Internet - A Private Eye's Best Friend

For private investigator Steven Rambam, the Internet is his most valuable tool in helping to find missing persons, cheating husbands, and your competitor's dirty secrets.

But while the intelligence business is booming, individuals are losing the battle to protect their privacy with every blog post, Google Web search, and online photo, Rambam, director of the Pallorium investigative agency, said in a keynote session late on Saturday at the Last HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference.

"Anything you put on the Internet will be grabbed, indexed, cataloged, and out of your control before you know it," he told CNET News after the session. "The genie is out of the bottle. Data doesn't stay in one location. It migrates to hundreds of places."

Information that he used to have to search for or dig up in far away places is now available at his fingertips. All types of information is being digitized, older stuff is being scanned and put online and it's all being aggregated into uber-databases that are being sold to marketers, government agencies, and anyone else who can pay, he said.

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.

Family Found: Sisters Reunited In South Korea Thanks to Private Investigator

Wanda King's life in the United States has been a good one.

But as a child in North Korea, she lived under communism and saw the effects of war. She remembers seeing red skies after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and her mother warning, "Don't you go outside! You're going to be sick." As American bombs fell on her own country during the Korean War, she and her family fled south with hundreds of other refugees to escape the fighting. They ate insects and slept in rice paddies to survive.

"I don't have a happy life when I was young," she said. "I have a hard life."

Although conditions improved after the war, she was still living in poverty in 1962 when she met Ben King, a young soldier from Davie County. He fell in love with her, and he vowed not to leave South Korea without her.

She was 23 when she married him and left her family behind in Seoul. She built her own family in a new country.

Her children grew up with plenty of food and without fear of bombs falling in the night. King, now 68, watched with pride as they married and started forming their own families.

Despite all that she had, King ­mourned what she had lost.

College Hires Private Investigator to Investigate Mock Newspaper

Cambridge College has hired a former FBI agent to find the authors of an anonymous, widely circulated mock newspaper that condemned the chancellor and suggested the college is on the verge of closing.

The newspaper, called the "Cambridge College Chronicle," featured a sharply worded critique of college leadership and personal attacks against Chancellor Eileen Brown, who has led the college since its former president was fired in January after college officials found evidence of alleged financial misdeeds.

Davis to Hire Investigator After Grand Jury Report

Davis city leaders have hired an independent investigator to examine the Yolo County Grand Jury's allegations of fire department misconduct.

The grand jury released its report June 30, detailing the investigation prompted by citizen complaints. Primary complaints were that the department has inconsistent promotion practices, a hostile work environment caused by a too-close relationship between fire Chief Rose Conroy and the firefighters' union and misuse of sleeping facilities by drunk off-duty firefighters.

Cove Rock Estate "Burglar Ring" Bust

Four men, including a Pakistani shop owner, were yesterday arrested during a raid in Orange Grove and in the East London CBD.

The arrests were the culmination of six months of investigations into a spate of burglaries at homes in Cove Rock Estate.

The suspects, aged 19 to 21, pointed out to police a cellphone shop in North Street where they said they sold cellphones and laptops allegedly stolen from homes.

One of the suspects told a private investigator who had tracked them down how he had got into the investigator’s house and stolen a laptop, cellphones and PlayStation games.

Investigator Specializes in Blood-Spray Analysis

The spray of blood means more to Les Guttmann than it does to most of us.

The lone investigator of the Fruita Police Department’s force of about 15 officers has never really gotten an answer to the question of when the small city of nearly 6,500 last investigated a homicide.

But if a murder did occur on Guttmann’s turf, the former Los Angeles patrol officer might get a try at solving it by calling on his expertise in blood-spatter forensics.

Trash Haulers Keep Eyes Peeled for Bad Guys

The men and women keeping your neighborhood safe may also be the same people who are hauling out your trash.

Waste Management recently launched a program in Northern Colorado, joining Denver and other states, to train their employees to be on the look out for suspicious activity while driving through the neighborhoods.

Child Support Spies to Watch Parents

Private investigators will be used by the Child Support Agency (CSA) to spy on parents who are not meeting their child support payments.

The Federal Government says the new measures would help the CSA collect outstanding debts of $1 billion from the current financial year.

Human Services Minister Joe Ludwig said a small proportion of parents was not doing the right thing.

Private Investigators Examine House Explosion

A team of private investigators converged Monday at the site of a home destroyed in an apparent natural gas explosion.

Last Thursday’s blast at 410 Wellingford Street, near West Sugar Creek Road and North Tryon, killed 4-month-old Synora Coleman and injured her parents.

Official Tracks Diesel

A vice president of a mobile fueling company — suspecting drivers were stealing fuel from company trucks — used GPS tracking and a private investigator to determine that more than $30,000 of diesel had been stolen.

Two employees of SMF Energy Corp. — James R. Russell, 31, of Zachary, and William Cain III, 42, of Baton Rouge — were arrested Wednesday by Louisiana State Police after the vice president approached the agency last month with evidence from the company’s internal investigation, State Police spokesman Trooper Johnnie Brown said.

Eye on the Prize

Common sense and tenacity are two crucial attributes of private investigators, says Roger Miller, who has been working in the field for more than two decades.

Mr. Miller, who landed his first private investigation job in the early 1980s, is now vice-president of Northeastern Investigations Inc., a full service security and private investigation firm in Dartmouth.

First O.J., Then Gotti, Now Vito; Staten Island Rep. Hires Private Eyes to Probe DWI Arrest

In an effort to try and get him out of serving jail time for his DWI arrest last month, Congressman Vito Fossella has hired the same ex-NYPD investigators that were employed by O.J. Simpson and John Gotti during felony cases, according to a published report.

The Daily News is reporting in Thursday's editions that Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) has hired private investigators James Harkins and John McNally, who are reportedly interviewing employees are the Logan Tavern, the Washington, D.C., watering hole Fossella was last seen at before being busted for DWI.

Investigator Donates Time to Missing Kids

She went jogging like she did most mornings.

But on May 27, Crystal Sexton, a rising junior at Loganville High, kept running. Her mother got in her car and drove around, looking for the 16-year-old.

“I said, ‘Something is wrong,’ ” Donna Sexton told me. ” ‘This is not right. Something is just not right.’ “

She called Loganville Police and the Walton County Sheriff’s Office. She passed out fliers with Crystal’s photo.

Fayetteville Reels in Bogus Movies, CDs

A DeKalb County man, who was found with over 300 counterfeit movies and 800 counterfeit music CD’s in his car, now faces felony charges in Fayetteville

According to Capt. Steve Crawshaw of the Fayetteville Police Department, Kenneth McCrory, 50, was arrested Wednesday and charged with unauthorized distribution and sale of recorded material.

According to Crawshaw, the arrest came after Fayetteville Police were contacted by a private investigator working for the Motion Picture Association of America.

The investigator told police he had purchased movies from a man selling them out of his SUV, Crawshaw said.

Phone Calls Put Two Soldiers to Rest

May 17, 1983, a young soldier from Portland, James R. Williams, was killed in Korea.

Jim's platoon leader, Tom O'Sullivan, heard the explosions and saw the flames shooting from the tank. Tom crawled into the tank, across molten metal. He cradled Jim in his arms and lifted him out of the tank. Jim died soon after.

For 25 years, Tom wanted to speak to Jim's family in Portland about Jim's death.

In 1983 the Army said no, Tom could not contact the fami ly. After he left the military, Tom searched for years for Jim's relatives.

One, a retired police detective who now works as a private investigator, was able to find Jim Williams' father within "10 to 15 minutes," she says.

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.