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Vincent Parco Consulting LLC
Private Investigations

The New York Times: WHAT’S NEW IN THE PRIVATE EYE BUSINESS; Of Bugs and Bytes and Zoom Lenses

August 9th, 1987

IF Bill Kizorek is tailing you, he won’t be doing it from a few yards away with a newspaper hiding his face. Chances are he’ll be a block away, watching you through a video camera in a surveillance van -and you’ll never know he’s there.

Mr. Kizorek, a Chicago investigator whose agency, InPhoto Inc., specializes in uncovering fraudulent disability claims, uses state-of-the-art video equipment, including video camcorders with 600-millimeter zoom lenses, to catch people bending and lifting when they’re supposed to be in bed.

”I don’t have to get anywhere near them, so I never get spotted,” Mr. Kizorek said. Mr. Kizorek is part of a new breed of detective that relies as much on high-tech equipment as old-fashioned legwork. ”In the old days, detectives might spend days on a stakeout, sitting in a car and drinking lots of coffee,” said Vincent Parco of New York’s Vincent Parco & Associates. ”Now they can set up a hidden camera with 10-day surveillance. It’s not only easier, it ends up costing the client and the agency less money.” Mr. Parco has installed hidden video cameras in lobbies and hallways of apartment buildings to observe activities ranging from illegal subletting to drug dealing. ”All you need is some space behind the wall to set up a camera – and the landlord’s cooperation,” he said. Video is not the only new high-tech toy at the local detective agency. Many investigators are now using computers to help them track information faster. Data bases are available from public agencies such as state departments of motor vehicles and private companies such as Dun & Bradstreet. The detective pays a user fee each time one of these computer lists is referred to – Mr. Parco figures he pays Dun & Bradstreet about $4,000 a year in fees – but it saves legwork and time spent digging in public record files.

A number of agencies, including Parco’s, have installed lie detector machines in their offices and employ a licensed polygrapher. But among high-tech detectives, bugging specialists such as Ray Melucci tend to have the most sophisticated equipment. Mr. Melucci operates an investigative service out of his Brooklyn home, which has a basement stocked with thousands of dollars worth of bugging and debugging gadgets. One of his favorites is an ETA-1 Analyzer, a $5,000 machine that locates phone taps. His French-made RF Meter machine checks for radio frequency signals coming from bugs that may have been planted in a room.

”It’s possible to do physical searches using simpler devices, but it’s slower and not as thorough,” he said.

Mr. Melucci, who charges $500 and up for a debugging job, said his clients range from ”people in the mob to Fortune 500 executives.” A retired detective with the New York Police Department, Mr. Melucci became a private investigator eight years ago. ”I don’t follow people anymore,” he said. ”I’m completely automated now.”– By Warren Berger

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