Investigative Articles

New Orleans Super Conference Huge Success
By Ralph Thomas

Checking For Crimes: What Employers Can--And Can't--Find Out
About Job Applicants
by Lester S. Rosen, President of Employment Screening Resources

The Origin of Legal Photography
For quite a long time, I have been interested in the early use of photographic evidence in the courtroom, particularly in the United States.
By Andre A. Moenssens

Search Engines and Competitive Research
Search engines can tell you a lot about your competition, if you know what to look for. A panel of experts offers tips on profiling your competition.

Tempest And Compromising Emanations Or What’s Being Displayed
On Your Computer Monitor Could Be Scanned
Risks In Eavesdropping Of Computer Displays. A University Of Cambridge technical report in a PDF download- by Markus G/ Kuhn

New Thoughts on Criminal Profiling
A look at recent advances and declination within criminal profiling. Where should we go from here?,A look at recent advances and declination within criminal profiling. Where should we go from here? By Michael Decaire

Profiling an Internal Fraudster
As internal auditors, we are obligated to be familiar with the characteristics and warning signs of fraud. The main purpose of this article is to examine some of the characteristics of those who commit fraud. By Mark R. Simmons, CIA CFE

The Impressions of a Man
An Objective Forensic Guideline to Profiling Violent Serial Sex Offenders By Brent E. Turvey

Monitoring Web Pages 24 Hours a Day
If you regularly visit web pages looking for new or updated information, you'll save countless hours by automating the process with software that tracks changes for you -- even while you sleep.

Taking A Statement From A Victim Or Complainant
Many investigations begin with an interview of a victim or complainant. The success of the investigation, and subsequent prosecution of a suspect, will often depend on the accuracy and credibility of the victim's original statement. A John Reid Interviewing Article.

Applicability and Ethicity of Behavioral Lie Detection
An examination of the current debate regarding the significant applicability and ethicity of behavioral investigative interviewing. By Michael Decaire

Crime on the Internet
If cyberspace is a type of community, a giant neighborhood made up of networked computer users around the world, then it seems natural that many elements of a traditional society can be found taking shape as bits and bytes. With electronic commerce comes electronic merchants, plugged-in educators provide networked education, and doctors meet with patients in offices on-line. It should come as no surprise that there are also cybercriminals committing cybercrimes.

Assessing Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse
A widely reported finding in mental health journals and other media sources is that allegations of child sexual abuse are increasing. Due to their nature, these allegations require investigation in order to distinguish bona fide accusations from those that are false. By Daniel H. Swerdlow-Freed, Ph.D.

Profile On Eugene E. Borghello
It has been nearly eight years since Eugene E. Borghello hung up a shingle for his private investigator business. He's never been in a shoot-out, never been in a high-speed chase with the bad guys and never been roughed up by underworld thugs. Borghello, who heads up Special Investigations Group, is quick to correct anyone who is

Bombs Away
A look at bomb detection technologies and how they are being used.
By Lawrence Mark Cohe- A Security Management Article.

A Mistaken DNA Identification? What Does It Mean?
Various press reports released in early February make mention of a British case wherein a local police department confessed to having identified an innocent person as a criminal by a DNA test that was said to be in error.
By Andre A. Moenssens

Credit Reports And Pre-Employment Screening
by Lester S. Rosen, President of Employment Screening Resources

Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science
Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science, a research report commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), reviews a number of case studies in which convicted persons were released from prison as a result of post trial DNA testing of evidence. In most of these cases, eyewitness identification was a key element in obtaining the conviction.

Mirroring And Its Value During Interviews And Interrogations
What it is and how to use if effectively. A John Reid Interviewing Article.

Investigating Slip and Fall Accidents
In twenty-five years of investigating slip and fall accidents here is what I have learned.  They don’t settle quickly and they do need investigation.  For those lawyers who think they are small cases that will eventually pay out, forget it.  You are doing your client a disservice.  In order to settle a slip and fall the attorney must have witnesses, photographs and standards.  The witness can be an engineer, the photos can be after the fact but they must illustrate the location and the hazard and the hazard must be covered by a standard that requires that the hazard be identified or eliminated.  By James W. Harbert CLI, FCI

Photography: Can One Trust The Image On A Photograph?
The relative position of objects on a photograph can be altered by using different lenses...

Trap Lines And Blind Line Services For Skip Tracers
And Other Investigators
Trap lines have become a very effective investigative tool in skip tracing and other types of investigations such as when you need to find out where someone works.The idea behind using a trap line is that if you capture the telephone number that the party is dialing from, you have a fact that they were at this location at the time of the call. This could be their home address. If you set it up right and ask them to call at a certain time, they could be calling from their work number. Of course, once you get the number they call from, you need to turn the telephone number you captured into an address. By Ralph Thomas

A New Federal Weapon Against Insurance Fraud
Insurance fraud perpetrators in the USA now face long jail time. By barry Zalma. From the Zemla.com web site.

Attacking The Invisible: Tools For Preventing The Admission of "Recovered Memory" Evidence At Trial
This article was adapted from an advocacy research project conducted in a Seminar on Advanced Forensic Evidence at UMKC School of Law. The paper written by the advocate for the opposing side has not been made available for publication. Publication on this web page of the paper is in the interest of wide dissemination of viewpoints on forensic issues, and indicates neither agreement nor disagreement with the author’s premises and arguments. By Paige A. Nichols

Running From the Police....Is It Sufficient for a "Stop"?
In a 5-4 decision decided in January, the United States Supreme Court effectively dished up more power onto the plates of law enforcement officers, giving them the authority to detain a person who flees at the mere sight of a policeman. Unprovoked flight upon the sight of police, said the Court, is the consummate act of evasion.

A Wreck Or A Bundle Of Evidence?
Most of us do not always realize the importance of the wreck of a vehicle after an accident. Is it really just a wreck or is it a bundle of evidence?

Preparing for a Child Custody Evaluation
An integral aspect of divorce involves the determination of where the children will live and what proportion of their time will be spent with each parent. Even in the best of circumstances, this decision is emotion laden and stimulates strong feelings in each parent and in their children, by Daniel H. Swerdlow-Freed, Ph.D.

The Road to Rage
Workplace violence grows out of escalating patterns of aggressive behavior that managers must be trained to recognize and stop.
By Frank E. Rudewicz, CPP A Security Management Article

How Autopsies Work
When someone dies under mysterious circumstances, what happens next? Most states in the United States have laws that require certain types of deaths be investigated. A HowStuffWorks Article.

Digital Investigation FAQ
A highly interesting set of FAQ on digital evidence with answers.
Prepared by Eoghan Casey

Profiling an FBI Profiler
A Man Who Gets Inside the Heads of Serial Killers

Special Protection for Special Collections
Collections of irreplaceable objects like the Rosetta Stone are usually referred to as special collections, and they require unique security measures. By Margaret Schröeder
 

Investigative News

Colorado Private Investigator Michael Corwin To
Run For US Congress House District 31
The state Democratic Party has picked a 41-year-old private investigator to run for Albuquerque's House District 31.

The Crimes They Are A-Changin'
Art thieves are scrapping stealth for brute force.

Caller ID Spoofing Service To Launch
Slated for launch next week, Star38.com would offer subscribers a simple Web interface to a Caller I.D. spoofing system that lets them appear to be calling from any number they choose.

The Private Eyes Have It
The private-eye business has changed from the 1940s and 1950s images of covert figures sifting through trash bins, lurking in shadows and using a magnifying glass to find clues.

Holograms Help Identify Forgery
Scientists have developed a new tool for fighting forgers. The hologram-based technique produces a three-dimensional image of a handwriting sample that can be used to compare two John Hancocks and determine if they were both jotted by the same John.

Private Investigator Has Rural Clientele
Herb Compton is a private investigator who handles agricultural related cases, many involving cattle. An army travels on it's stomach but the cattle business travels on money, most of which is borrowed. Normally at the end of a cattle deal the buyer goes home with a load of cattle, the seller collects his money, and the lender gets his money back with interest. There are situations when that system fails and that is when Herb Compton and his company, Compton and Associates gets a call.

Ontario Man Charged After Email Death Threats
Against Michael Jackson Traced To His Computer
A Kitchener, Ont., man was charged yesterday for allegedly e-mailing a death threat against Michael Jackson to a California courthouse on the day the singer was to appear in court this week.

Private Investigator's Efforts Discover Fugitive
Working For Federal Government
A wanted fugitive was arrested in Harrisburg on Monday. A woman was arrested at the U.S. Department of Agriculture building after being discovered by a private investigation,

BugMeNot Gets Booted, Restored
The site that helps people evade registration roadblocks on web sites couldn't evade trouble itself. Its server host, perhaps bowing to pressure, pulled the plug last week. But a new host is found and BugMeNot is back up. By Rachel Metz- A Wired News Story.

Private Investigators And Corporate Fraud In India
New Delhi: Till not so long ago, desi versions of Holmes and Poirot had to make do with the unglamorous task of keeping tabs on unfaithful husbands drooling over secretaries while ostensibly clocking in overtime at office.

Dozens Arrested And Convicted In
U.S. Crackdown On Internet Crime
A summer-long effort targeting Internet crime has resulted in dozens of arrests and convictions on charges including use of spam e-mail to steal credit card numbers, computer hacking and online fraud, Justice Department officials said.

Investigator Says Robert Blake Killed Wife To
Get Custody Of Baby
Robert Blake was afraid his wife-to-be would expose their child to a life of drugs and crime -- so he plotted a year before her murder to gain custody, a private investigator testified.

Wrongfully Convicted Man Free After 40 Years Behind Bars
Lufkin , Texas -- A 76-year-old man who spent nearly every day of the last four decades in prison walked free after a judge found that deputies extracted his confession to a 1962 robbery by crushing his fingers between cell bars.

Pet Custody A Growing Issue In Divorce Cases
The custody agreement is comparatively simple. Mark gets Sara one week, Michelle the next, give or take a day or two. If either party leaves the county, Sara remains with the other.

Children Of Criminals To Be 'Targeted' and 'Tracked' In England
Children of criminals are to be "targeted" and "tracked" from an early age by the Government to prevent them following their parents into a life of crime, as part of a campaign to tackle the next generation of offenders.

Seeking A Key To Skeleton's Identity
Forensic experts are on the case of a body found in a Phila. building. Bones, a skull, a pair of coveralls. It might not sound like much to go on. But if you're a forensic specialist - a person who uses the body's own clues to determine the who, when and how of a mysterious death - it can be plenty. By Julie Stoiber- Inquirer Staff Writer

Internet Heading to Light Speed
If you want a faster internet, you need faster switches. A new
nanotechnology opens the door to optical switches and a much speedier network. A Wired News story By John Gartner

Homeland Security 101
As college students return to campus this month, they'll have their
pick of courses tied to homeland security. Options range from a brief history of Islamic jihad to instruction in how to design buildings that can withstand acts of terrorism. By Michael Myser- A Wired News Story

High Tech Passports About To Become Reality
One of the basic forms of personal identification, the passport, is on the verge of taking on a new, high-tech identity.

Computer Users Share Private Files with Their MP3s
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Private photographs, confidential financial documents and even military secrets have joined the list of files that computer users can download as they scour the Internet.

SJ Cybersleuth Leads To Child Abuse Arrest In New Jersey
Cross-country cooperation between a San Jose cybercop and New Jersey police led to the arrest Monday of a 40-year-old man who allegedly tried to lure the officer, posing online as a 12-year-old boy, to the Garden State for sex.

Rejection 2.0
Several new services add a modern twist to the ancient art of
rejection. People unable to say 'no' personally to unwanted advances can now sign up for e-mails and phone messages that do the dirty work for them. By Daniel Terdiman -- A Wired News Story

US Supreme Court Restrains Punitive Damages
Putting a choke collar on punitive damages in the United States the US Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote in State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell, No. 01-1289, overturned a $145 million verdict against an insurer -- saying a punitive damages award of $145 million, where full compensatory damages are $1 million, is excessive and violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. From the Barry Zelma Newsletter.

Top Executive Arrested For Espionage
A former Taiwan executive of the U.S.-based DOW Chemical has been arrested for alleged involvement in what could be Taiwan's biggest industrial espionage case.

Detective Caught in Internet Sting Over Child Sex
A 16-year veteran of the New York Police Department, who supposedly called himself a "boy hunter'' in an online profile, was arrested on Monday after the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine Pirro, said he tried to have a sexual rendezvous with an investigator from her office who had posed on the Internet as a 14-year-old boy.

'Private eye' Turned Out To Be A Thief
Omaha police are asking for help locating a man who misrepresented himself as an investigator while stealing a large amount of cash and concert tickets last month at the El Dorado Bar at 5134 S. 24th St.

DNA Project May Reunite Adoptees, Parents
Sarasota, Fla. - Linda Hammer has helped thousands of adoptees find birth families through her people-finding Web site, weekly radio show and newspaper column. Now she wants to add another tool: a database that would contain DNA evidence from thousands of people.

Insurance Fraud Ring Uncovered In Monterey County, CA.
An investigation by a multi-agency task force in Monterey County has uncovered several cases of insurance fraud at tire and stereo shops, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office says.
The Monterey County Multi-Agency Detail for Commercial Auto Theft uncovered insurance fraud at the stores after being contacted by insurance companies and placing undercover deputies in the shops in 2003 and this year.