WHEN IS A POTENTIAL CLIENT A…BAD THING?

 Steve Davis: October 29th 2011

As a private investigator we are faced with unknown people calling our office asking for information about people for various reasons. In most cases, these requests are legitimate background requests such as pre-employment, tenant screening or some other similar situation. However in the six years I have owned Davis & associates Professional Background Services, I have had requests that were suspicious in nature. Our company has a good intake processing procedure that in most cases will be able to determine if such a call is a valid call worthy of the risk of giving out personal and private information. I urge any PI to take some time and determine your own procedure of taking such calls. Doing so will certainly limit your exposure to a law suit, but even more so, the safety of potential victims that a caller is searching for.

We are all in this business to make money and help people; however we should never put money over our ethics in giving out information that could potentially harm others.

One example that comes to mind recently was a caller that called our intake division asking how much we charge for finding information on a potential roommate that was going to move in with him. The caller was asked the general questions about why and what he wanted to find on the subject. The questions were simple intake questions that verified not only the use of the information, but the caller himself. When a caller refuses to give you simple intake information, any investigator should never just throw caution to the wind. In this case, the caller said “I just want to know something about her background, such as relatives and where she was from etc.” After talking to the subject for a few minutes he became more agitated when we tried to pin him down as to why he needed such information. The caller then told me “Look man, my girlfriend is acting weird and I wanted to find her relatives to call them and ask them if they could give me any information as to why”.  Well, needless to say our company would not help this person and his motives could have easily been criminal. Running a simple background search with our data would have certainly given him all the relative information and had his motives been illegal, would have placed our company in a very dangerous situation. This was one of at least a dozen calls this year that we did not feel comfortable in assisting the caller with, and although we could be passing some legitimate clients by, we just do not take the risk.

Davis & Associates Professional Background Services is in the business of collecting information and returning that information to the client in the most credible, legal and professional manner possible. Our company policy has always been enter into a contract with all clients, which allows us to get as much information, release forms (if needed) and financial information on the potential client, prior to releasing private and personal information. If a client refuses to give such information, run away! I understand that in our line of work, some people want to remain as anonymous as possible so that the person they are checking on cannot/will not find out they are doing a search. We simply have to let our gut feeling and more importantly our ethics as a PI guide us in the direction that is best suited for our business.  Remember, there are a lot of nuts out there that will simply use you to gain access to commit crimes.

Steve Davis/Owner: Davis & Associates Professional Background Services LLC.

To Shred Or Not To Shred........

No matter if you are a single person living alone, or one of the largest corporations in the world, you have sensitive documents that contain confidential information.  Whether it’s the criminal that goes through Mrs. Jones trash and obtains her personal information off of a doctor’s bill, or trade secrets being shared via dumped trash in a large city alley, you must stay protected. I cannot even imaging throwing out any documents no matter how minor they seem to be in these days of identity theft.

With an estimated $100 billion lost to criminals each year it is no surprise that the rise in identity theft is on the rise. The dumpsters behind your buildings, the trash cans out on the street in front of your house are easy targets to thieves seeking confidential information for various reasons. In most cities in America there are no laws governing “Dumpster Diving” and going through your trash that is not sitting on your private property is perfectly legal. You will often see local television reports of trash being dumped and important papers such as law firms, dentist and even important government document being thrown out that contain employee pay stubs, meeting notes, social security numbers and medical information. These stories are becoming more and more prevalent.

A secured shredder bin is ultimately the best way to protect your business. A security plan for employees will assure that all documents are safety placed into the bin and shredded in a manner that will keep you and your business out of trouble.

Davis & Associates Professional Background Services have several law firms, governmental agencies and small businesses as clients. I can’t think of any of them that do not have a plan of action for shredding documents and keeping their businesses safe. Most often, having an employee sitting next to a shredder takes a lot of time. A locked shredder bin is really economical and you can schedule pickups as often as daily, weekly or monthly. Just the thought of one piece of confidential information being thrown out improperly and being used illegally could potentially save you thousands in law suits.

You can find most document shredding companies online or in any telephone book. Davis & Associates Professional Background Services highly recommend such services. Protect yourself, protect your employees and protect your clients……..Shred it!

Steven Davis/Owner
Davis & Associates Professional Background Services LLC

That Lying Client Can Cost You More Than Just Your License......

That Lying Client Can Cost You More Than Just Your License

Everyone expects clients to be honest with them, especially since it's going to be you who helps them get out of sticky situations. However, at Davis & Associates, we realize that this isn't always the case.

It doesn't matter whether you are an attorney, an HR executive, or even a manager at a company - you don't always get the truth, even if it's what you need to do your job. Most of the time, it can be ascribed to simple confusion, or a missed detail. No harm done, nothing too bad will happen.

Other times, it turns out to be a horrible, horrible disaster.

While I worked for one of the largest firms in Denver, I found out that attorneys are often the unknowing targets of clients that intentionally lie, in order to make their case more favorable. Some issues are minor mishaps, like a traffic ticket that may or may not affect a client's case. However, I have also seen clients deliberately lie to attorneys by refusing to give them vital information that might not only end their case completely, but also cause legal issues for the innocent attorney who took their case.

We have done background checks on clients because the attorney at hand wanted to know the facts before they filed a case. Many clients have lied from the beginning of an intake process such as a computer generated form, or phone message to the firm. From there, we have seen those same clients that have come into the attorney’s office and have given stories of their cases that actually were the opposite of what really happened. In some cases, the client has come into an intake and told the case manager or attorney that they were the victim of a car accident, when after a simple background check, showed that the client was actually cited in the accident and was the defendant listed on the accident report.

It can get even worse than car accident trials. Clients will often either omit or tell a complete lie to attorneys when asked about their prior injuries. Most of the time, this is because they wrongly believe that the attorney won't take their case if they don't lie. One can only imagine the look of horror on an attorney's face after he finds out that he had filed a case, spent thousands of dollars into it, only to find that the client has been involved in prior injury cases that have already received money settlements.

Even a seemingly innocuous Facebook account can be an issue in your case. Davis & Associates has a track record of using social media outlets - not only to track down defendants and their daily activities for cases, but also clients as well. Because of this, we often advise those who are in the middle of personal injury cases to avoid using social media while they are injured or healing. More often than not, clients do not heed this warning, and will often post photos, stories or similar postings of activities that will harm their injury case should opposing counsel view the site, and trust me, if we do it, so do they!

Every day, Davis & Associates conducts dozens of background searches on clients and their cases. On an average of two to three days a week, we will uncover at least one form of potentially dangerous information that is then passed onto our clients. This way, attorneys can better prepare their staff and clients. We can help you, whether you need a single background check, or a thousand. Why take the chance?