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26 Unexpected Things People Discovered When They Hired A Private Investigator, As Shared By People Online
What associations do you have with the words "private detective"? Probably big guns, fast cars, dashing chases with some crazy gunfights, brilliant brainstorming - in general, everything shown in TV shows and detective films. In real life, as often happens, everything is much less intense.
In fact, the greater part of the cases that private investigators have to deal with is insurance fraud and allegations of adultery. Yes, and their work for the most part consists of the usual surveillance and sitting in the archives. And yet, sometimes things worthy of the pen of Agatha Christie or Rex Stout slip through this routine.
There is a popular thread in the AskReddit community whose starter asked just one simple question: "Redditors who have hired a private investigator... what did you find out?" Usually, as we have said, the answers are related to marital or insurance investigations - but even here, there are incredibly thrilling plots.
Bored Panda compiled a selection of the most popular, unexpected and interesting answers and stories from those who responded to this thread. So feel free to scroll to the very end, read all the tales, and be sure to comment - after all, it's elementary!
More info: Reddit
Discover more in 30 Unexpected Things People Discovered When They Hired A Private Investigator, As Shared By People Online
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#1
PI Helps To Find Person's Homeless Mom
Hadn't heard from my mom since I was about 15 (very unstable due to drugs n alcohol etc) ... When I was 29 I decided it was time to find out what happened to her. I figured if she was a Jane Doe somewhere then I could put her to rest, and if she was alive then I wanted to let her know that I forgave her. Hired a PI to help... I guess she was moved by my story and so she also ran info for the man my mother was apparently married to (on the house) ... And with one clue from his report I was able to track them down. I wouldn't have found my mom (alive and was just starting out on recovery after being homeless and addicted for many many years) if it wasn't for the PI who kindly ran an extra report for free. (Mom has remained sober now for about 7 years and is probably the healthiest she's ever been, physically and emotionally).
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#2
Owners Hired Pet Detective To Find A Lost Cat
I know someone that hired a pet detective to find their cat and he f****n found him.
#3
Woman's Dad Leaves Family And Dies In Jail
My mother's dad walked out on mom, my aunt, and my grandmother when mom was just 5. A few years later, my grandmother died of a grand mal seizure. Mom was taken in by her grandparents, but she always wondered why her dad left and what became of him. In her 40's, she saved up a bit and hired a PI to track him down. Turns out he moved over time from Pittsburg to California where he wound up in prison for armed robbery and so e other violent crimes. He died in San Quentin penitentiary. I think mom got a lot of closure out of that. She was able to see that life would have most likely been even worse had he stayed. At least living with her grandparents, she was loved and raised to fulfill her potential.
#4
BF Wrongly Accused His Fiancee Of Cheating
I was the recipient of a PI. I came home from work one day and my bf asked to have my engagement ring as he wanted to take it to be professionally cleaned. The second he handed it over he accused me of cheating on him. The conversation went back and forth for ages. I was beside myself, I couldn’t believe what he was saying and he would not believe I was innocent. He then told me he’d had me followed for six weeks by a PI who had seen me get into a red mini. It was a girl I knew giving me a lift to work but he would not believe me. I knew then it was over and packed my things and left. I told him to get in touch with the PI and have another look at this so called evidence that I was cheating. An hour later he turns up at where I was staying begging to have me back. He’d realised his mistake. There was no way I was going to get back with someone who would behave that way though so we parted ways.
#5
Detective Took Pictures Of The Suspect's Brother Instead Of Himself
I have a story about private investigators doing a hilariously s**t job. So, years ago, my brother injured his back at work because of his employer's unsafe work practices. During the ensuing suit, my brother's lawyer was given a folder full of documents from the employer's team. Turns out, they had hired a PI to investigate my brother to prove that his injury was faked. Well, unfortunately, the PI had been taking pictures of ME, operating an ATV mounted leaf hopper. My brother walked into the court hearing and watched the color drain from the opposing lawyers' faces when he introduced himself, looking nothing like me.
#6
Woman's "Boyfriend" Turns Out To Be A Crook
My grandmothers first "boyfriend" after my grandfather died said he was a retired cop and a veteran. They enjoyed dancing to country music together, and bought a new car, in her name though, even though she can't drive anymore. My uncles hired a PI. Turns out, that old b*****d had a habit of shacking up with widows and bleeding them dry. (The boyfriend not the PI).
#7
Parents Hire PI To Find Out Who's Their Daughter's Online BF
My parents hired a private investigator to find out who my online bf was when I was 13. The PI came back and told us he was just a fat a*s 13 yo... l***o
#8
The Woman's Newfound Sibling Was Actually Herself
My sister (mid 30s) is adopted and hired one to find her estranged biological father. They came back saying that not only was he still alive and nearby, but he had a daughter. Meaning she also had a biological sibling! Further digging from the PI uncovered that they weren't just similar ages either, they were exactly the same age. The evidence suggested that my sister had a twin and her birth father had taken the twin and vanished. Huge, life-changing news. Eventually, through more incredible detective work, the PI realised that the daughter was actually just my sister. There was no other sibling and they had just been investigating my sister the whole time accidentally. Needless to say, we asked for the money back. TL;DR: Sister hired a private investigator, private investigator accidentally investigated sister.
#9
Parents Pay $40k To Find Out Their Daughter Is A Full-Time Ski b*m
I was a private investigator for a little bit. Most work p*s do is searching financial/court records and serving documents. But one time I was paid by wealthy parents to stake out their college senior who had stopped returning their calls. They were worried about her. These parents paid like $40k for round the clock monitoring just to find out their daughter dropped out of school and was a full time ski b*m. Btw stakeouts are mostly just sitting in your car reading all day
#10
PI Helps To Find Out That Teachers Ignored A Special-Needs Kid At School
Not mine specifically, but my mother hired one to spy on the school. See, my little brother is dyslexic and has severe social anxiety, and so was struggling a lot in a public school setting. He had an IEP, which the teachers and principal were insisting was being followed. But everyday my brother would come home in tears shaking because he felt abandoned and stupid. So mom hired the investigator, and sure enough the teachers were basically just ignoring my brother. They'd sit him in the back of the room and demand he do his work, then wouldn't help him through it. Then they'd yell at him because he didn't do it (again, he couldn't write because of the dyslexia). With all the evidence, my mom was able to arrange a meeting with the school board and threatened to sue. They agreed to pay his tuition for a private school that was supposed to help. It didn't, and mom ended up just pulling him out and homeschooling him. He's been doing a lot better.
#11
Woman Tries To Find Her Daughter Kidnapped By Her Ex, Later Becomes The Detective
My mom's best friend. She divorced her husband and was awarded full custody of their daughter. His family was a s**t-show. He kidnapped his daughter, and he and his parents just disappeared. (This was easier in 1977 than it is now.) She tried hiring a PI, but couldn't afford one. So she started learning how to trace people on her own. In the days before the Internet. She spent years doing this whenever she wasn't waitressing. She did find her daughter in ''81, but by this time her daughter was poisoned against her. Mom's friend went on to get her PI license, and was a PI specializing in woman's issues for the next two decades. I dont know what happened to her after that. If she's alive, she would be in her '80s I think. Edit: Thank you for the upvotes everyone. There's a couple of common questions that people are asking about this. 1. Did mom and daughter reconcile? I asked my mother about that. She lost contact with her friend when mom left Texas over 20 years ago. The last she knew, no. They never reconciled. They communicated. That's it. 2. What about the police? As I explained to another comment, it was different in the 70's. Unlike now, it was easy to assume a new identity, and easy to "get lost". It was hard to find people who didn't want to be found. The most popular method of assuming a new identity became a plot point in the 1986 movie "Highlander". - Police usually considered kidnapping by a spouse to be a "civil manner" to be handled by the courts. It was low priority for the police. - Amber alerts weren't a thing until 1996. Before that were just milk cartons with pictures of kids on them. Edit: Amber alerts started in 1996. Before that, there were several other ways to highlight missing kids. Adam Walsh was famous. Kids appeared on television - often after the show "America's Most Wanted".
#12
Private Detectives Spend Most Of Their Time Investigating Insurance Scams
I had a girlfriend that worked for one for a while. She said that the majority of their work was insurance scams. She took a lot of pictures of guys who said they were hurt on the job playing golf and surfing and such.
#13
Family Hired A PI To Do Some Covert Geneology
My boyfriend’s family hired a PI to do some covert geneology, because they’re white but all have thick wiry hair that only black hairdressers can handle. And because there are things older folks in these parts Just Don’t Talk About. Turns out there’s a fair amount of Lumbee Indian (a community founded by disenfranchised Native Americans and escaped slaves back in the day) in boyfriend’s family, which explains the hair.
#14
Couple Hires PI To Expose The Thieving Babysitter
Had a babysitter we thought was stealing from us, luckily our neighbor was a PI couple and they ran a background check for $10. Babysitter had a string of DUIs and a few days before a large fine was due, my camera disappeared. He also stole money from my kids piggy banks. He sort of disappeared but was also really into Instagram so I surreptitiously followed him. He started babysitting again for a single mom (easy target) and posted a lot of ‘fun’ pics with this family. I tracked down the mom and sent her a long email detailing out his whole scam. She said we were right and it was clear he’d been stealing from her business. He has since gone underground but I still Google him regularly to see what he’s up to. He’s been able to avoid arrests for a while now.
#15
Stepdad Turns Out To Be Polygamous
When I met my wife, she seemed to have a normal modern family. Two moms, two dads. Over time it became apparent her step-dad wasn’t around much. Holidays, birthdays, you name it, he’d pop in to say hi, grab a nap, whatever, then take off again. My wife’s family thought this was normal, just the way it had always been since they were teenagers. He claimed to have a job following FedEx trucks around the state to prevent theft and drug trafficking. But I thought it strange and started making jokes about him having another family. Well, I guess it got my sister in law thinking because she gets a favor from the PI at her law firm. Sure enough, he has not two but THREE wives around the state, and five other (step)children between them. My sister-in-law breaks the news to her mother who immediately changes the locks and files for divorce. They never speak again. Cold Turkey. Divorce is even uncontested. As a FU they also send the report to his other wives. Edit: I thought I was late to the thread so I wasn't expecting as many reactions. Thanks for the gold! To answer some of the questions. Yes, polygamy is illegal but it's not really worth prosecuting except to make an example of people. I don't know if my MIL was his first wife or not. I do know that one of the wives had been married and divorced him between their marriage. How does it happen? Counties don't exactly share marriage certificates. His families were pretty far from each other.. Was their wedding legal? No idea, IANAL. Probably the separation was just a formality for paperwork purposes which is why it went to court, why it went uncontested and why he never showed up again. I think he reached out once or twice but she never answered the phone. And if he ever showed up again, we weren't told about it. My MIL is a strong independent woman of faith who just "didn't know". He fooled his step daughters for 15 years too.
#16
Insurance Company Hired PI To Tail A Guy Who Was Suing Their Client
I used to work for an insurance defense firm years ago. Best PI story I have is where we hired one to tail a guy who was suing our client for an injury that wasn’t entirely our client’s fault. The guy was refusing to settle, and was insisting on going to trial even though we offered a fair sum that would’ve paid his medical bills. The PI we hired got some good pics that showed the plaintiff was nowhere near as “injured” as he claimed, but the crown jewel of the photos was one where the guy was walking on a pier with a woman who wasn’t his wife. Had his hand on her a*s and everything. Later in a deposition, the attorney slid the picture to the plaintiff and said something like “Mr. Smith (obviously not his real name), who is the woman in this picture? We would like to schedule a deposition with her as well.” The guy went ghost white and told his attorney he wanted to settle. At least he was smart enough to realize that if his wife found out the other woman was gonna be deposed, he was gonna have to get a family law attorney as well, because the divorce papers would soon follow. EDIT: Wow, this blew up overnight! To clarify some points in the comments, no, this is not technically blackmail. Our firm had the PI follow him to see if he was faking his injuries, which is standard operating procedure, not to see if he was cheating on his wife (we had no idea he was doing that). The fact the woman in the picture was his mistress was irrelevant. The attorney would have asked for the person's contact info even if she were just a friend, coworker, cousin, or whatever. The attorney wanted to depose her to ascertain the extent of the guy's injuries. At no point did the attorney say "drop the suit or we'll out your affair to your wife."
#17
Man Spends 5 Years Trying To Find His Lost Brother
Not me but my grandfather did. He was separated from his brother when the Japanese occupied China. My grandfather safely made it to Hong Kong and eventually to Canada. His brother made it to Singapore or Malaysia according to family friends back then. So my grandfather spent a good 5 years or so working with a PI to find his brother so they can be reunited. Sadly, with just a picture and the fact many people died in the war, it wasn’t much to go on. My grandfather is still alive and always thinks of his brother. It’s his wish to see him one more time. Edit: Provided response in thread below and copied here. Wow thank you everyone for the kind wishes and suggestions. To let you know- my grandfather worked with this PI many years ago, say between 1999- 2004ish? And maybe a few touch points here and there in the years after. My grandfather was disheartened because he made many trips to Asia over the years thinking “this is it”. But it just cost more money and got his hopes up. No clue if the brother married, if he even made it to Singapore or Malaysia (or it can be even outside of Asia all together). Not even sure if he’s alive. He would be in his late 80s now (estimated). He has not spoken about it directly with me, just with my mom (his daughter). If I’m being honest, we haven’t exactly encouraged him to continue the search either. All my aunts and uncles tell him to move on, and enjoy his time in peace rather than in constant yearning. I don’t have the status in the family to overstep my mom and her siblings and start bringing up the past and asking him to consider a DNA kit. If I do, I’d have to do it in secret and consider the emotional investment my grandfather may make. He’s not living unhappily by any means- he has a great life and quite accomplished with raising 6 kids to have families/homes of their own. We each take care of him. He has tons of friends, likes to cook, use WeChat to talk to anyone and everyone, travel (precovid) and read. He does want to see his brother, but as time goes by the memory and drive becomes more faint and eventually the day-to-day life just makes it easier for him to accept the circumstances.
#18
Investigator Says The Main Job Is Searching For Long-Lost Relatives
One of my jobs is to search for long lost relatives (usually several generations ago). Typically, the case is about old plots of land where I should track down owners (or their heirs) to update the land registry because a state wants to build there something. Let me tell you, the amount of information you can find on Google and in public records is astounding if you know where to look.
#19
Detective Helps To Find A Stolen Car But The Owner Can't Get It Back
Back in the 90s my dad had a friend who owned a Renault clio williams and one day someone stole his car (the car was located in Athens). So after reporting the event to the police he really wanted to get his car back (because it was expensive) and he hired a private investigator to find his car. After like a week he received a call from the investigator telling him that his car was located at a junkyard outside of Thessaloniki. So he went at Thessaloniki and found his car, so he rushed inside a police station to inform them that his car is located at X location. Believe it or not the officer told him not to mess with the owner of the junkyard (this junkyard was known for stealing cars etc) and hope he will get his money back from insurance. Edit: sorry for any mistakes I am not a native speaker
#20
According To A Private Detective, Many Suspicions Of Infidelity Are Actually Justified
I'm a private investigator and I'll tell you that a lot of people are right. Your spouse is cheating on you
#21
Detective Helps Client To Reunite With Their Father
My good friend was only raised by her mom growing up, who would always tell her that her father had walked out on them when she was a baby and that he had never wanted anything to do with her. My friend took it really hard and struggled through her entire childhood believing in that... but then a couple of years ago she hired a private investigator to see if they could find him again. Well, they did, and it turned out what her mother told her was a lie; her dad is seriously one of the sweetest snd softhearted guys I’ve ever met. He left because my friend’s mom forced him out when he uncovered her infidelity. I guess he wasn’t actually her dad, because her mom cheated on him while they were together, but he loved her like she was his own and has only avoided contacting her because her mom convinced him he legally has no rights to her child— and, even worse, she threatened to accuse him of molesting my friend when she was a baby if he reached out anyway. Thankfully my friend is an adult now and has moved out from her mom’s house, and she can have the relationship with her dad that she always wanted. It just s***s that she had to go through the effort of hiring a PI to achieve that. EDIT: I talked to my friend to get a few more details and apparently the “left when she was a baby” thing was a bit of an exaggeration; he left when she was about 22 months old. He only found out she wasn’t his child a month prior to that. To be quite honest, I never questioned that it might be weird for them to be so connected to each other emotionally because in his eyes she is his daughter and her eyes, he is the dad she briefly had and then was denied access to her entire life. They have a great relationship now and she’s gone NC with her mom. EDIT 2: Finding him had to do with tracking down the man whose name is on her birth certificate. That man is her dad, aka not her bio dad.
#22
The PI Used To Annoy Her Employer's Former Family
A PI tried to contact me about my father a few years ago. She was extremely rude and pushy, and intimidated my sweet mother by showing her a pistol she wore on her waistband. She called me once, yelling at me about why I was hiding from her, calling me my father’s name. Took her 5 minutes to stop talking long enough for me to explain who I was. Warned her that if she ever threatened my mother again, I was just as armed and I’d call an actual police officer to calm her a*s down. She never bothered us again.
#23
Private Detective Finds Out That The Businessman's Brother Was Stealing From Him
My dad hired a PI in the mid 90s in Eastern Europe to find out if one of his business partners was stealing from him. Instead he found out his own brother was stealing from him. He refused to believ the PI and his brother robbed him blind. Took a huuuuuge amount of money and left him with gigantic debt. He still forgave him.
#24
A Man Who Allegedly Disappeared Years Ago Suddenly Shows Up To See His Dying Father
My uncle disappeared without a trace in the 1990s, about a year after his daughter was kidnapped and murdered. We hired a PI to track him down, and the PI found next to nothing. As my uncle had developed a heroin problem following my cousin's m****r, the best guess the PI had is that he had died by OD or suicide, and that his body hadn't been found or he was reported as a John Doe. Imagine my family's surprise two decades later, when my uncle calls my mother, who is his only sibling. My grandfather had been on his deathbed for a month, and somehow the uncle found out. He arrived to make a show of paying his respects, in an attempt to get money out of his parents. When it was clear he wasn't getting anything, he took off once again. He never gave us a real or detailed explanation of why he left, where he'd been, and what he'd been doing. He left no address or telephone number and made no attempts to remain in contact. The PI we hired must have been a s****y one, that or my uncle really knows how to disappear.
#25
Private Detectives Found Out Almost All The Information About A Potential Employee
I had one hired against me, and they found out everything. Tattoos that aren't visible normally, the address I lived at in a different country, medical records from an accident that happened 6 years prior, so many random things that aren't publicly available.
#26
Hired Detective Proved That Man's Wife Cheats On Him
Not the person who hired them but my father hired one and found out my mom cheated on him while they were married. My father still has the evidence in his house. Edit 1: clarification. The only reason I know is because my dad told me and showed me the DVD trying to make me watch it to hate my mom.
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