An article by CFO.com reports that a recent Ernst & Young survey of more than 300 corporate-development officers and other finance professionals found that many companies use forensic techniques, including hiring private investigators, to learn more about local market dynamics and the people involved in a potential deal.

This is a great opportunity for investigators to locally market their investigative skills and international contacts to conduct international investigations.

Many private investigators who belong to international PI associations such as WAD - World Association of Detectives, WAPI - World Association of Professional Investigators, CII - Council of International Investigators, WIN - World Investigators Network, and many more. Their members already know the financial benefits of international networking.

Our world has gotten much smaller with the Internet and ease of international travel and trade regulations.

You can learn more about international investigative marketing from Jimmie Mesis at PI Magazine.

The New York Attorney General site, Project Sunlight, makes many New York State public records accessible in one search. Conduct a name search simultaneously through corporation, charities, lobbyist, financial contributions and state contracts databases.

U.S. Passport Applications 1795-1925 have been collected together into one database that can be searched by name or date and other criteria. Ancestry.com has assembled this from U.S. government sources The images of original applications may include photographs, physical descriptions, country of origin, place of residence, travel companions, marriage status and affidavits of relatives.

Search the FamilySearch.org index of international birth, death and marriage records collected by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ProGenealogists collect links to international vital records that are searchable in online databases.

The International Association of Insurance Fraud Agencies links to state government insurance agencies, insurance fraud associations and international organizations. In the U.S., the same government agency can be responsible for investigating individuals who defraud insurance companies as well as dishonest insurance representatives who steal from or otherwise defraud the consumer. This site covers both types of resources.

The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud delivers consumer fraud alerts and research papers to journalists. The Coalition also has brief summaries of various insurance scams.

The Fraud Prevention Checklist is an interactive guide to assessing a company’s vulnerability to fraud, provided by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Get insurance company financial profiles and data on the types of policies they issue, from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Consumer education and tips on email scams, mortgage costs, tainted drugs and identity theft prevention are at the federal government Federal Citizen Information Center, Consumer Action Web site. The site also has a complaint form letter and a list of all the federal agencies to which you direct your complaints, with topical indicators (i.e. “Airline Accessibility or Discrimination” or “Telephone Service”)

Some states list enforcement actions at their Web site. The Maryland Insurance Administration regulates Maryland insurance companies and agents. It issues public orders of actions it takes against agents, agencies and brokers, cataloged to 2003. Search all enforcement actions by keyword from the Google search engine using this query but replacing “keyword” with your terms.

keyword site:www.mdinsurance.state.md.us/

The interest in private investigators isn’t limited to just the USA or the UK, as Malaysia introduces television viewers to their own version of a PI.

According to Malaysia’s The Star Online, TV3 has started airing a new action and comedy series Kaber Hero Kaber Zero. This private investigator has super powers and the script takes him on what is best described as weekly zany adventures. The show also includes computer generated graphics to enhance the powers that enables the private investigator to leap off tall buildings, run at high speed and even walk through walls.

Fortunately, the show is so far from reality, one would hope that the average person won’t expect real life private investigators to perform any of these feats. However, there are those that will now expect us to compete with Superman.

This is the sort of topic that those of us in a fairly offbeat line of work, with a twisted sense of the world -which pretty universally applies to private investigators- can appreciate and put to practical use. Let’s start with terrorism, shall we?

The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), “a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism on U.S. soil or mitigating its effects”, maps real-time global terrorist threats and events. MIPT also has resources on terrorism-related court cases and terrorist groups and leaders. See all types of worldwide calamities, suspicious activities and threats on the Global Incident Map.

Global health outbreaks, derived from multiple sources, are tracked on HEALTHMap, a project of John Brownstein, Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Clark Freifeld, Research Software Developer at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program. View by disease type, country and recent incidents.

Incident1 is a start-up emergency incidents and crime mapping site. Drawn from law enforcement and highway patrol sources, it aims to be national but is currently limited to a few regions. Search by zip code or the drop-down menu of regions to see recent crime and accidents. IncidentLog covers many local crime, traffic and fire events that aren’t at Incident1. Plot events by type and/or region, state, city or street. IncidentLog also has a running list of the events by selected criteria and provides a link to the source Web site.

A collection of federal agencies collaborated on the live mapping of wildfires, which lists date the fire started and the number of acres involved, as well as a link to the source agency. View fire locations back to 2002. The USDA Forest Service active fires map shows the location of large fires in the US and Canada but seems to have data that is a subset of the wildfires map. Other maps of active fires are found at Geodata.gov.

The new Google My Maps feature enables anyone to easily configure a map with selective features. Google Maps Mania discovered this Google My Maps creation of wildfires in Waycross, Georgia.

Locate recent earthquakes, active volcanoes and tropical storms on the Asia Pacific Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities Atlas.

Volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, floods, power outages, epidemics and other unpleasant occurrences are noted on this global map provided by the National Association of Radio-Distress Signalling and Infocommunications, Emergency and Disaster Information Services (EDIS), Budapest Hungary. Scroll beyond the map image for a list of events by date and time.

The National Hurricane Center has lots of live maps of weather patterns.

The International Chamber of Commerce, Commercial Crime Services has a news service of piracy alerts and maps global piracy events. Additional maritime incident data can be gathered from the International Maritime Organization, which provides detailed incident descriptions with free registration.

Even a map of wars and violent conflicts doesn’t cover all disaster events but I wanted to leave room for you to add your own resources!

The laws of conducting surveillance on insurance claimants can vary by state and even by country.

An article appearing in Out-Law.com highlights the potential conflict of British laws that involve government surveillance and verifying the validity of an insurance claim.

In August 2002, the UK police instructed a private detective firm to observe a former sergeant to see if he was doing anything that was inconsistent with his claimed injuries. Nine minutes of video footage showed the ex-policeman mowing the lawn and in his car.

The former policeman wanted the Tribunal to rule against the police force under RIPA, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, but the Tribunal has found that it has no jurisdiction to do so because the filming of the former policeman did not constitute the kind of surveillance that RIPA governs.

The Tribunal is where individuals who think that their rights have been infringed can complain about the actions of public bodies. The Tribunal, though, only has jurisdiction if the surveillance dealt with is “directed surveillance” within the meaning of sections 26 and 48 (1) and (2) of RIPA.
See: The ruling (27-page / 231 KB PDF)

Search the Puerto Rico Sex Offenders Registry in Spanish or English.

The Nevada Appeal News reports…

The Churchill County Recorder’s Office began in August alerting those who do business with the office, such as title companies, that beginning Jan. 1, Social Security numbers would not be allowed on public documents.

New Hampshire courts are slowly implementing a new case tracking system that will link all of the state courts - in about 3 years. The Supreme Court is still debating which personal identifying details will be masked in the Internet site.

It also will improve public access to court records. For the first time, court dockets _ including the names of the parties, the type of case or criminal charges, and the dates of filings, hearings and decisions _ will be publicly available, going as far back as 1988.

But public access won’t improve immediately. That’s because the Supreme Court is still working on rules governing what records should be available only on paper, what information would be on public computers at courthouses, and what would be on the Internet.

A number of local town councils in Australia have reportedly paid thousands of dollars to private investigators to visit brothels in an effort to gather evidence.

“But honey, I was just doing my job…really!” (..now a ‘divorced’ PI)

It’s hard to beleive, but many community leaders have found that hiring private investigators to infiltrate and pose as regular bloks to determine if illegal brothels are operating within their jurisdiction.

Since local police can not “go all the way” to get the evidence to catch these prostitution locations and promoting unprotected sex, PIs have become the latest tool in fighting this growing problem.

However, a member with the Sydney’s Willoughby Council says it is worrying councils have had to pay private investigators to have sex with prostitutes, so they can gather enough evidence to shut down illegal brothels.

Looking for unusual types of assets? Search the Canadian Stallion Directory for pedigree horses by the first initial of the owner or farm.

Ancestors On Board is a database of ship passengers traveling from the British Isles from the years 1890 through 1960. Search by name, port or country.

With ancestorsonboard, you can search for records of individuals or groups of people leaving for destinations including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA featuring ports such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Passengers include not only immigrants and emigrants, but also businessmen, diplomats and tourists.

Canadian private investigator, Kevin D. Bousquet has an extensive analysis of the detrimental effects of privacy regulation on the public and the everyday work of attorneys. [Thanks: Ca Privacy Law]

The public is in panic over crimes like impersonation, bank fraud, mortgage fraud and insurance fraud all things the private sector investigates every single day. They are the answer to the problem not the cause. All of the tools that hold personal data are needed to investigate but are slowly cutting off the private sector slowly over time.

In Provinces like Quebec and Alberta, PI’s have no access to government motor vehicle information. They can’t even run a license plate to follow an insurance claimant or a driver’s record to see previous driving infractions.

How are we expected to do insurance claim investigation if we have no access to vehicle or driver information? How is a PI supposed to help a person enforce a judgment or child support order when for the most part credit bureaus make it virtually impossible for PIs to have access even if they have a certified copy of a Judgment or Support Order?

The legal is community is in big trouble they just haven’t realized it yet. Sooner or later would be Plaintiffs and the general public are going to realize that when they sue in court attempting to recover their losses even if they win their case if defendant simply refuses to pay there is every likelihood their court ordered judgment or monetary award could be nothing more then a worthless piece of paper.