Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Here’s another example of a dumb criminal with a twist. It appears that two Mississippi men thought they could actually help free their buddy in a Wilkinson County jail using forged court documents with one of the men posing as a private investigator.

Now, the men are facing felony charges after their plan failed. It is alleged in a news report that Demario Walker, 23, of Prentiss told prison personnel Dec. 27 that he was a private investigator and offered a business card as proof. When officials at the prison run by Corrections Corp. of America asked for photo identification, Walker said he had lost it.

Correction officials were also alert to the fact that the two men were driving a 2004 Kia to supposedly transport the prisoner to another facility.

So, now we have to worry about criminals posing as PIs. It seems that everyone wants to become a private investigator. Who’ll be next?

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Charleston County, SC – Samuel R. Crain, a South Carolina licensed PI has been charged with stalking and was held on $100,000 bond. Even though private investigators are exempt from laws prohibiting stalking, it doesn’t protect anyone who does it for personal reasons and not as part of a case.

The victim alleges that Crain, 41, was stalking her and that she saw him watching her from a Piggly Wiggly parking lot. After signing a warrant for his arrest, Crain was quickly arrested and taken into custody. Crain is licensed in South Carolina and Georgia. I’m sure there will be more to read about this case.

Podcasts are audio files that you can listen to on your computer or download to a portable audio device. Podcasts can be posted on a blog or website and only require a microphone to produce, which is part of the good and the bad of podcasts. On the good side is a new blog with podcasts from fellow private investigator and PI News Link reader, Scott Stys. The Curbside Investigator is a good example of podcasts as a savvy marketing tool that is also informative and entertaining. And if he adds me to his blogroll I might add him to mine!

The Indiana Legislature is reviewing a proposed bill that would make vital records – birth and death certificates – confidential and open to review only by certain classes of the public. Exceptions would be made for family members, genealogists and journalists – although it’s a questionable policy to give access to a specific segment of the general public, excluding others. The putative motive is to thwart terrorism and identity theft but no study or instance of the use of Indiana death records has linked death records to these activities, according to the report in the IndyStar.

Technorati Tags: indiana, vital+records

The chief judge of Jefferson County, Colorado has closed divorce and probate files to the public because he doesn’t have the staff to institute the Supreme Court directive to remove personal information from the case files.

Other states are redacting personal information in their online property and court databases and the federal courts are requesting that filers remove date of birth and social security number identifiers from electronically filed documents. This is the first instance that I recall (just off the top of my head) where courts are reviewing old case files and altering them for public view.

The framework for this policy was constructed by the Public Access Committee of the Colorado Judicial Department in their document, Public Access to Court Records, issued in 2005.

Technorati Tags: colorado, divorce+records, probate+records