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Private Investigations

The New York Times: WHAT’S NEW IN THE PRIVATE EYE BUSINESS; Going After Crime by the Numbers

August 9th, 1987

YOU may think your finances are nobody else’s business, but private investigators don’t agree. They spend a great deal of time these days tracking private financial information.

Nick Beltrante, who runs his own agency and heads the 300-member Council of International Investigators, estimates that financial investigations account for more than 25 percent of his cases. That’s typical in the industry, he said. Financial work has been the fastest- growing part of the business in the last few years, according to Mr . Beltrante and others. Financial investigations are varied. Winners of lawsuits turn to investigators to locate a defendant’s assets. People entering a business – or a marriage – want to ascertain the financial stability of a future partner. But most of the time, financial snooping is done on behalf of corporations.

”That’s where more and more business is coming from,” said Vincent Parco. ”Corporations want financial information for a variety of reasons. It can involve an acquisition, or a brokerage firm that’s taking a company public and wants to know more. It can involve investigations of employees who are being named to a certain post, or those suspected of embezzling.”

Flat-rate fees generally start at $500 to $1,000 and go higher as the investigation deepens. At NISCOR, an agency based in Chicago that specializes in financial investigations, rates begin at $5,000 for employee fraud investigations at major corporations. Investigations begin with searches of public records but don’t necessarily end there. Despite Federal laws protecting banking information, investigators find ways to get into bank books. ”You have to have a network of confidential sources within the financial institutions,” said Cleveland detective Frank Ippolito.

Detectives say they often exchange favors – cash bribes are too risky – with sources in the banks. In a typical scenario outlined by Mr. Ippolito and others, the bank source provides information on a detective’s client. The detective, in turn, helps the banker out by checking out a loan applicant. That’s illegal, but investigators say that doesn’t deter them.

Detectives also to turn to furtive sources that Mr. Baltrante calls ”information brokers.”He describes them as unlicensed freelancers – computer hacks, former bankers and brokers – who peddle their ability to track down financial data. ”I can give one of these brokers a name and address and, for a fee, he tells me how much money the person has in the bank,” said Mr. Beltrante.

The brokers don’t disclose how they obtain information; some detectives, including Mr. Parco, dismiss them as ”unlicensed and unreliable.” Mr. Parco prefers to hire former employees of banks, credit card companies and brokerage firms. Rich Lucas, who heads NISCOR, takes this further: His 50 detectives are almost all former Internal Revenue Service investigators, with plenty of experience at finding hidden assets.

Sometimes what’s hidden is a lack of assets. Alice Byrne, head of Ambassador Investigations in Brooklyn, once was hired by a woman whose daughter was marrying a man alleged to be well-off. ”The guy had everything – a condo, a Mercedes, a boat, a great job,” Ms. Byrne said. ”Something about him made the mother uneasy. We found the car and boat were rented, the condo belonged to someone else and the job didn’t exist. Needless to say, the marriage never came off.”– By Warren Berger

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