With remote learning in full swing across much of the country, it’s not just important to practice good cybersecurity and identity protection ourselves. Our entire families - including the youngest members - need to be protecting themselves. Here are ways to make remote learning more secure for the students in your household.
NATIONALONLINESAFETY.COM
Safe Remote Learning in Education: How to Ensure Safer Use of Technology | National Online Safety
With remote learning in full swing across much of the country, it’s not just important to practice good cybersecurity and identity protection ourselves. Our entire families - including the youngest members - need to be protecting themselves. Here are ways to make remote learning more secure for the students in your household.
NATIONALONLINESAFETY.COM
Safe Remote Learning in Education: How to Ensure Safer Use of Technology | National Online Safety
Lots of private investigation work is routine and pretty normal, day-to-day kind of stuff. And then you have stories like this one.
BLOOMBERG.COM
Bugging the Ritz, Private Investigators and Billionaires at War
Identity theft is still rising because of COVID-19, but you don’t have to sit back while cybercriminals wreak havoc. Take these steps to report identity theft and protect yourself.
NERDWALLET.COM
How to Report Identity Theft - NerdWallet
✅ Celebrate the incoming board for the Somerset County Bar Association
✅ Enjoy the outdoors and live music
✅ Finally get to see everyone we've missed
All in all, an amazing event #SCBA - nicely done!
Surveillance can be costly! While sometimes necessary, there's an alternative out there for lawyers and their clients: social media surveillance.
OTLOLLC.COM
Social Media Surveillance: Low-Cost Alternative to Traditional Surveillance
Overpaying the IRS? Making off with family heirlooms? While you may sometimes need a forensic accountant to evaluate financial statements, a private investigator can expose the creative ways in which people conceal their true net worth - and then find the actual assets.
SMARTERDIVORCESOLUTIONS.COM
The Shady Ways People Hide Income and Assets in a Divorce - Certified Divorce Financial Advisor Phoenix | Smarter Divorce Solutions
When a private investigator uncovered deceptive practices at Nikola Motor Company, the company’s stock plummeted. Lean how PIs have become an essential tool for investors.
FASTCOMPANY.COM
Nikola’s downfall shows why the investing world needs more private investigators
Conducting an asset search? Rules and regulations abound when it comes to bank searches and investigators -and law firms - have to stay on the side of compliance to avoid fees, fines, and penalties.
So that means when it comes to asset searches, above all else, you have to have permissible purpose. There are numerous permissible purposes for asset searches: debt collection, family law matters, estate investigations, subpoenas, due diligence with an existing credit obligation, and more.
Background checks aren’t just for employers or criminal records - there are a lot of different types that come up in investigations. Here’s a useful guide to the different types and the who, what, and why of them.
GOODHIRE.COM
What is a Background Check? 10 Common Types and What They Include | GoodHire
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that’s not including the metadata embedded in it. Investigators use high tech tools to discover what’s underneath the pixels. Here’s what we can find - and how we find it.
KOMANDO.COM
These forensic tools expose any photo's hidden data - Komando.com
Falsified resumes are more common than you might think. Contact us to learn how pre-employment background checks can help make sure your new hire’s shiny qualifications are backed up by experience.
INC.COM
Inside the Shady New World of Fake Resumes, Professional Interviewees, and Other Job-Seeker Scams
Private investigators have been around for a long time—and contrary to popular belief, they haven’t all been male. A new Netflix series celebrates the female agents common in Victorian England. Welcome to the profession, Enola Holmes!
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK
Opinion: Move over Sherlock – real Victorian female investigators were brilliant
The requirements for full driver’s abstracts differ from state to state.
In New Jersey, you can obtain a full abstract as long as you have the right supporting documentation. In Pennsylvania, obtaining a full abstract requires a signed release from the individual.
Contact us to learn more about the requirements in your state.
From Sherlock Holmes to Veronica Mars, private investigators have been imagined as misfit masterminds with a passion for truth. And while we might not all actually have sidekicks, that doesn’t mean we aren’t fans of the legend! Celebrate Halloween by dressing up as your favorite fictional gumshoe.
YARDBARKER.COM
The most famous fictional detectives
Using a private investigator for child custody, divorce, or other family-related legal disputes is common practice. Learn how a PI can help with the discovery process.
FAMILY.FINDLAW.COM
Using a Private Investigator for Child Custody, Divorce, and Other Disputes - FindLaw
For a business asset search, you’ll need an FEIN, the business address, and the name of the principal or owner.
The results of the search will include the name of the financial institution at which a business account is located, the address of the branch where the account was opened, and whether the account is identified as checking or savings. We can also find out the balance of the account, and, typically, the date on which the most recent deposit was made.
While it is possible to do an international asset search, it’s much more difficult than conducting a domestic search. Some countries enforce very strong banking regulations relating to privacy, which can greatly increase the difficulty of locating accounts. Switzerland might come to mind—but Liechtenstein, Denmark, Singapore, Panama and Uruguay also make it very difficult (but not impossible) to uncover assets. If you are considering an international asset search, contact a private investigations firm for a country-specific consultation.
Disciplined, resourceful, observant—these are just some of the qualities that make a good private investigator.
After all, when your career requires finding information that somebody is trying to hide, you need to be pretty sharp—and unfortunately, investigative canine Lulu just couldn’t cut the mustard.
Thankfully for Lulu, when you’re this good looking, even failing out of the C.I.A.’s dog academy can’t keep you from stardom.
NYTIMES.COM
Bomb School Wasn’t for Lulu, but the C.I.A. Wishes Her the Best (Published 2017)
These days, private investigators go through extensive training to make sure that their work is compliant with the law—so you might be surprised to learn that professional ethics were once decidedly more flexible.
In fact, the very first professional private investigator was an 18th century French criminal mastermind named Eugene Francois Vidocq. Vidocq believed that in order to catch a criminal, you had to think like one—and that a bit of experience escaping from prison also couldn’t hurt.
HEADSTUFF.ORG
Eugène François Vidocq, French Criminal turned Detective - HeadStuff
Background checks can reveal information that might be relevant to any case where an individual’s credibility, character, or financial motivations are of interest. For example, a recent bankruptcy could be relevant to personal injury cases, and knowing a history of criminal judgments or even traffic violations can help establish an individual’s credibility—or lack thereof.
Reasons to hire a professional private investigator include experience, skill-set, and potential cost savings. If an amateur sleuth breaks the law in the course of an investigation, the consequences could result in extensive fines—or even jeopardize the outcome of a case.
As more and more personal information is placed online, attorneys are increasingly turning to the internet to investigate and research jurors. So how do the rules of discovery apply to online investigations, and where should attorneys draw the ethical line?
(Also—attorneys should keep in mind their investigators are bound by the same rules they are.)
UCLALAWREVIEW.ORG
Applying Rules of Discovery to Information Uncovered About Jurors - UCLA Law Review
Each year thousands of slip and fall claims are filed, and they aren’t all genuine accidents—just ask Slippin’ Jimmy.👇 The right private investigator can help determine the difference between an accident and a fraudulent claim, saving insurance companies millions of dollars a year.
On The Lookout’s slip-and-fall services include:
☑️ Witness statements
☑️ Interviews
☑️ Security footage review
☑️ Scene reconstruction
YOUTUBE.COM
The story of slipping jimmy
Social media evidence: We find it. 🔎
You use it. 📖
Reasons to use a private investigator for social media investigations:
✔️ Maintaining compliance with local and state law
✔️ Efficiency: experienced PIs conduct investigations more quickly than attorneys
✔️ Cost: devote an attorney’s hourly rate for legal work only
✔️ Anonymity: PIs know when to use a fake profile to avoid tipping a subject off to the inquiry
Contact us with questions! We’re here to help.
Meet Ira Cooper, St. Louis’ first Black detective.
Cooper became a plainclothes detective in 1907, and was frequently called in to solve cases that others couldn't crack.
Cooper was promoted to sergeant, and later became the first African-American lieutenant in the city’s history.
NEH.GOV
St. Louis’s First Black Detective Always Cracked the Case
Whether or not you can use a GPS to track somebody is something of a legal gray area in many states (including New Jersey).
Right now, you can use a GPS on a car if the individual who owns and uses the car signs an authorization and release. But with the potential complications that could arise, we generally recommend avoiding using GPS. There are other ways to get the information you need that won’t run afoul of the law.
Online background checks can be riddled with errors—and even the most accurate ones don’t cover everything.
For example, most standard background checks don’t include:
❌ School and Military Records
❌ Bankruptcies
❌ Criminal Records, depending on state
❌ Medical Records
An experienced, licensed private investigator can use techniques like asset searches, surveillance, and witness interviews to help fill in the gaps.
So thankful to our fantastic clients for voting us the "Best Of" in Private Investigations for another year!
Every year we're still thrilled to receive the honor and are grateful to our clients for their continued support and to our team for all of their hard work. 🎉
OTLOLLC.COM
On The Lookout Voted “Best Of” By New Jersey Legal Community
