Name: 私立探偵だけど質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan
Uploaded: 2025-03-21T09:46:19.000Z
Duration: 16 min 2 s
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I'm Mike LeCourt, I'm a private professional investigator.

Let's answer your questions from the internet.

ICD Potential 3392, what is the most interesting case you have ever solved?

This individual had a mistress and that information would have been devastating to him if his family found out.

And whilst morally that's wrong, blackmail is a criminal offence too.

The first thing he wanted was this problem to go away and he was willing to pay for the problem to go away.

His mistress' computer was compromised and some of the data on that was being printed and shared with the client and left on his car.

We started to put an investigation together.

We used a combination of forensics on the computer to try and see if we could get leads from the app.

We swept the address and the vehicles to make sure there were no listening devices.

In the end, we identified the blackmailing group.

A couple of the individuals who were behind it ended up being deported.

That was a testing time for all of us because it pushed our investigation boundary to its maximum.

You've got a client on the one hand that's potentially done something that's immoral in terms of the way he lives his personal life.

And then you've got a criminal activity that's taking place, trying to extort and blackmail the client for personal gain.

JNK456, when you are hired to find out if a spouse is cheating, what percentage of the time are they actually cheating?

When there is a niggling doubt with someone, generally there's something going on.

In order for someone to make that decision to hire an investigator, there's got to be some type of issue, breach, untrust that's happened.

More are actually cheating than not because spouses will do some groundwork themselves internally first.

And it's pretty even in terms of male, female coming to us in terms of being the client.

Let's put that figure anywhere between 70 to 75%.

For the love of Xero, has anyone caught you investigating them?

Look, in the private sector, this can happen, but every professional investigator out there will take every step they can to make sure it doesn't happen.

Every investigator out there will grade their targets from white to red, white being completely unaware, right up to the level of awareness of an individual increasing potentially during an investigation.

If a subject, their awareness increases, you need to then adapt the way you investigate.

Sometimes it's more risk-free being overt to be covert.

Everyone's got cameras, so it's easier to get a camera out and film rather than try and do something hidden.

One of the cases many, many years ago had to get some imagery of these individuals that shouldn't be together.

And we managed to set up a reporting-type scenario with a camera on a tripod, someone holding a microphone, allegedly from a reporting outlet in Leicester Square, and just asking tourism comments.

We approached the target, who's with the third party, and passed the microphone between the two, engaged in conversation, and asked, how long have you been together?

And all of that was documented overtly on a camera.

That's an example of sometimes overt to be covert.

What are the things private investigators can and cannot do?

Things investigators can do, they can put surveillance teams on the ground to follow someone, they can run background reports and check for bugs, tracking devices.

An investigator cannot go into someone's information in their phones or anything like that.

Private sector investigator cannot hack into emails, that's illegal, go into people's bank accounts, anything that's considered private data, an investigator cannot do that.

Hiring a PI is essential before getting married.

I always recommend a deep background check and a fiance test, which is to let her know you're traveling for a weekend, and on that weekend, hire a PI for surveillance.

You don't want to try and test your fiance.

If you want to try and find out the truth, you hire an investigator.

Most investigators will carry some type of change of clothing or items that can change their appearance pretty quick.

During COVID, masks were issued everywhere and it was a godsend for all the surveillance operatives throughout the world.

I always tell my investigation team, it's easier to dress down than dress up.

If you are smartly dressed, you can always take your tie off, take your jacket off, put a jumper on, put a beanie hat on.

In the back of any surveillance vehicle in the boot, you'll see a variety of different types of clothing.

If you want to change your appearance completely, never forget your shoes because that's one item that investigators can miss in changing.

Private investigators of Reddit, what is the most bizarre task you've been assigned to do?

I was contacted a while ago by a celebrity photographer.

This photographer was in a relationship with someone from a band.

The person in the band lent a very famous guitar.

The objective was to trace the guitar and bring it back to its rightful owner.

The individual declined all knowledge of it, but we had proof otherwise.

I had to travel back to the U.S. with this famous guitar on my back with some of the stewardesses thinking I was part of some famous band.

From Red Seymour, what made you decide to become a private investigator?

I started on the ground doing inquiries, field work, surveillance work.

It was something I'm super interested in and I've always have been intuitive and understanding and uncovering facts and the diversity in terms of what a private investigator actually does.

A fun case that we worked on was a few years ago, a family office where the female was suspected of having an affair with her ski instructor.

It was in a very popular ski resort where we needed to put a ski surveillance team together.

Where and how would the target behave inappropriately during the time she's with the instructor?

I tell you, when that task hit the office, most investigators put their hand up for that because it was a good few days skiing and you had to be quite competent.

So the end result of the skiing task was, no, there was no infidelity going on, probably paranoia from the client's point of view.

For the surveillance team, it was a great few days skiing paid for, so I think they enjoyed that.

Lots of countries around the world, investigators need to be licensed in order to practice.

In the UK, an established private investigator that's a member of accredited associations is registered with the ICO as insurance and is DPA checked, is legal to practice.

You need to make sure what you're doing is proportionate and necessary because when you present your reports to the court, so you've followed someone for a year in a way to try and catch someone out on that one occasion.

Private detectives of Reddit, what's your oh shit moment where you had to stop watching and either step in or call the police?

My biggest oh shit moment was we were working a case years ago where there was internal fraud.

It was for a bathroom suppliers company and there was lots of items going missing.

We knew where goods were going missing from.

Let's say this is our client's warehouse.

We had an agent parked in a car park at this position here.

Now unbeknown to us is the team were taking goods out here in the vans and using the same car park here to move them into different vehicles.

He was actually blocked in by the vans when they were moving goods from the client's van into their own van.

If you do get spotted, it will ruin the operation that we've been working on for weeks and weeks.

The other agent could not walk up to the vehicle and drive him out.

We just have to monitor the situation and let it run its course.