4

PIs Come Across Some Very Dangerous (And Stupid) People

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Over the years, our sources learned that private investigators are a godsend to modern stalkers who don't have the time to be creepily obsessed with their victims in person. "Someone will come in," says Jerome, "looking to track down an 'old high school friend,' usually of the opposite gender. My boss thankfully had a pretty good strategy for weeding stalkers out."

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"We would gather the info on their 'friend,' and instead of giving it directly to the client, we offered to notify their friend that they were trying to reconnect with them." Once the client wiped up their panic sweat, they usually left as quickly as they could, never to return.

But not everyone is so timid. Victor, a PI from Baltimore, was once investigating an insurance claimant (that is, trying to capture evidence the man's injury claims were bullshit), when the guy spotted him while out hunting. Fortunately, as the guy and his buddies closed down on Victor with rifles in their hands, "a park ranger happened to be driving by. Not sure, but he might have saved my life without knowing."

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3

PIs Have Run-Ins With The Police Constantly ... Especially If They're Black

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At first glance, the only difference between a PI and a stalker is some paperwork that supposedly makes it all official. That's why it's common for PIs to be stopped and questioned by the cops. There of course isn't anything wrong with that, except for the fact that it happens way more often to black PIs.

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2

Fraudsters Are Dumb As Dirt

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Faking a personal injury is one of the easiest forms of insurance fraud out there because we have ZERO ways of determining if someone is in fact in pain. Maintaining that lie, though, is harder than it looks.

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1

It's Not All About Busting Petty Fraud And Cheating Spouses

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"There was a case where a guy's ex-GF was dating a pedophile and he was molesting his daughter," Jerome says. "He wanted us to get footage of him around his kid so he could get full custody and get her away from him." You have to admire this guy's restraint, seeing as how Jerome worked in a PI office / gun store, which sold thousands of faster, full-metal jacket solutions to his problem.

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"The depressing part is that the mother went to great lengths to ditch us when we tried to tail her, to protect the guy that was diddling her kid. But eventually he was caught and the dad got full custody."

Another time, Jerome's office worked with a client claiming her husband was poisoning her food. Sounds like the crazy lady earlier, right? The one who was sure the neighbors were spraying chemicals into her home? "She would get really sick for a couple of weeks and then get better. She talked to the cops and other PI's, and nobody believed her. We took the case on and installed hidden cameras in the kitchen ... It turned out that her husband was poisoning her food little by little, so it would look like a slow death from a chronic illness instead of a sudden murder." He was eventually arrested.

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And sometimes, well, it's all about choosing when not to do the job. Jordan discovered this while investigating a client who was on benefits and under suspicion of having income she wasn't reporting. "So I show up to the claimant's residence to conduct a little interview, and I'm greeted at the door by a young kid in tattered clothes, playing with some boxes in a tiny single-bedroom apartment ... I discovered the claimant was a single mother recovering from surgery after a serious illness and made extra money from tutoring, enough to cut off her benefits and leaver her with no income ... had I told anyone about it, but I didn't. I didn't consider that truly working, so no need to bother the client with that information, right?"

Note: Victor Bock unfortunately passed away before this article was published:

"Vic's cancer came back in August 2016 and he battled for three months before he died peacefully in his wife's arms the morning of Sunday, Nov 20th. He was truly one of the best around and will be missed by so many."

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter. Bill is currently living in South East Asia and can be contacted on twitter at https://twitter.com/biffskin.

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Surprising Things You Learn As A Real Life Private Eye and I Was A Cop In A Country With No Guns: 6 Startling Truths.

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