The Essential Guide to Hiring a Private Detective for Effective Private Investigations

Mitchell Goldenberg • January 08, 2024

We’ve all seen the TV shows where the private investigator breaks into homes, places wiretaps and otherwise uses unethical or illegal practices to get the information their client needs. But out here in the real world, what are the risks of hiring a private investigator? No matter what your imagination may tell you, you’re actually at higher risk if you don’t hire a private investigator in many situations. Here’s a quick overview of the process to help you get started.

What are the Risks of Hiring a Private Investigator?

Okay, so just because you’re probably wondering, what are the risks of hiring a private investigator? If you don’t check their license, you could be working with someone who isn’t licensed, which makes them more likely to work outside the law to get the job done. If a private investigator says they can break into a place that you don’t have ownership of, you’ll want to walk away, because PIs are not allowed to break the law in the completion of their duties.

However, these individuals are few and far between, with ratings and reviews that reflect their lack of professional work ethic. Something as simple as checking for business reviews or checking with the Better Business Bureau allows you to see if there is a suspicious lack of reviews or outright bad reviews. If you see something like this, walk away and find a professional licensed private investigator to help you with the issue you’re trying to resolve.

What are the Risks of Not Hiring a Private Investigator?

Now let’s talk about the impact of not hiring a private investigator. You’re getting ready to hire a new accounting professional, but the individual gives you a little bit of a bad vibe. If you hire them on the spot, you may soon be finding concerning accounting issues, fraud or embezzlement issues, which can sink your business. However, you could have avoided the entire problem if you’d spent a little money to hire a private investigator to run a background check , letting you know about the three states where this individual is wanted for a variety of fraud and related issues.

Maybe you’re concerned about your children when they stay at your ex’s place, because they’ve got a new love in their life, you discovered they were less than honorable in their intentions towards you and your kids or you have worried that they’ve fallen back into bad habits and are using drugs or drinking excessively around your kids. Your son comes home with new bruises or your daughter is suddenly cautious around men, which could have been avoided if a private investigator had been hired to help monitor the situation, immediately contacting the authorities when the suspicious behavior started, sparing your children these types of harrowing experiences.

It could be that you’ve been recently put into a position of power or you’re going through a messy divorce, and are concerned that someone may be monitoring your conversations or activities. Rather than deal with the risk or worry that you may be under surveillance, why not set your mind at ease by hiring a private investigator to do a sweep of your office, home or vehicle to learn whether there is any surveillance technology at work in your environment?

You suspect your spouse is cheating , but don’t know how to extract the data from their digital devices without raising suspicion. You need to have a witness interviewed for a court case, but want to make sure all avenues are pursued in the process. In many of these types of situations, hiring a private investigator gives you a third party to investigate.

As you can see, there is a wide range of benefits that drastically outweigh the risks of hiring a private investigator. If you’re considering hiring a PI for your situation, whether it’s background checks on prospective employees, tracking down a cheating spouse or investigating fraud, the experienced professionals at Barefoot Professional Investigators are ready to help. Please feel free to reach out today with any questions, to get more information or to schedule a consultation with one of our investigative professionals.

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