This entrepreneur hired those she trusted most to help administrate her international business. Some of them helped themselves to the profits as well.

Many frauds require collusion to be successful and when the company is a “family affair,” finding willing participants may be even easier. Regardless of whether the business is a closely-held company or a public corporation whose stock is controlled by a family, however, fraud is still theft that leaves victims in its wake–as Isabelle Wentworth discovered.

Isabelle Wentworth had taken over a failing business in the late 1970’s and had cornered the market in industrial manufacturing. Hardworking, intelligent, and tough, she was now the owner of a successful international business with over 300 employees, Wentworth, Inc. Having spent so many of her earlier years building her business, Ms. Wentworth married relatively late in life an equally hard-working and charming man a few years her junior. Her husband proved to be an excellent administrator of her firm’s overseas sales.

Some years into their marriage, Ms. Wentworth heard rumors that her husband had a mistress. Aware of her h8usband’s eye for the ladies, she had suspected as much; however, she had to question where ge waws getting the funds to pay for such a liaison. One of Ms. Wentworth’s informants had told her that her husband’s other woman had no visible means of support.

Executive Housing

Through some of her own investigative efforts, Ms. Wentworth located the telephone number for a woman names Kristina Tomszyk. Investigators hired by Ms. Wentworth traced the phone number to an apartment in a luxury housing complex. Records identified the owner of the apartment as Amertoch Corporation.

Investigators learned thar Amertoch had financed and renovated the apartment to the rune of $100,000. Amertoch provided Ms. Tomszyk with alternative housing, which it called an “executive residence,” during her apartments renovation.

Permits, deeds, and construction documents listed Ms. Tomszyk’s as the director of Amertoch. Apparently her compensation included furniture, a Mercedes-Benz sedan, and a healthy salary in addition to the luxury residence. To Ms. Wentworth’s astonishment, documents detailing the apartment renovation listed Amertoch as a subsidiary of Wentworth, Inc.

The “Subsidiary”

An audit of Wentworth Inc.’s books revealed the parent company was paying Amertoch “subsidiary” about half a million dollars per year for salary and operating expenses–and a bit extra for the “executive’s” renovations. Ms. Wentworth had worried that her husband was taking money from their marital assets to finance his affair. Worse, he was grabbing the cash hand over fist from her business. In essence her husband had formed a new corporation which had no function whatsoever but was listed on his wife’s company’s books as “management consultants.” It white-washed the half-million dollars per year that he was embezzling from Wentworth, Inc. The high-living nominal executive of Amertoch, Kristina Tomszyk, was actually, Don Huellemeier’s mistress.

The Sting

Searching Amertoch’s public records for confirming evidence that the business was a sham would only tip off the culprits to the investigation, In order to prove the fraud, the investigators targeted Kristina Tomszyk. They visited her office at Amertoch’s corporate headquarters, which turned out to consist of no more than an empty room in commercial building with a professional answering service to ward off unwanted business calls. The they visited Ms. Tomszyk.

Confronted with investigators who knew all the details of her apartment’s financing and fraudulent purpose of “her” company, Ms. Tomszyk denied that she was an employee of Amertoch and stated that she had never set foot in the corporation. She admitted drawing money from an account that funneled money from Ms. Wentworth’s firm for work that was never performed. In all, four trusted staff members of Wentworth, Inc., had helped the husband pull of his fraud, including his cousin and one of the firm’s directors, whom he had paid $50,000.

The Confrontation

Given a choice of either facing criminal prosecution or confessing that he had been embezzling from his wife’s company to support his mistress, the philandering husband confessed and signed divorce agreement paying back penny for penny the money he had taken during his two-year fraud, $1.5 million.

Vincent Parco, private investigator, is a  Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Forensic Examiner and member of the American Academy of Forensic Examiners. His professional experience includes terms as senior investigator with the Office of Professional Discipline and as senior investigator in charge of the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

Appearance can be deceiving: in this cautionary tale Mr. Smith learns that he should have looked before he leaped at an opportunity that was too good to pass up.

Mr. Khan was the picture of a successful business-man. Born of upper-class Pakistani parents, he was educated in the finest schools in England. He wore impeccable Saville Row suits, drove Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, and he always had a beautiful woman on his arm. He conducted his business from opulent offices in Manhattan. Mr. Khan made money for his partners and especially for him-self. He ran two companies (Sarab Trading Co. and Byssus Textiles Co.) and a number of ad-hoc shipping companies that he formed when the right situation became available. Mr. Khan bought and sold commodities such as grain through the Sarab Trading Co., and he bought and sold textiles internationally and shipped them through the Byssus Textiles Co.

 Outwardly, Mr. Khan (not his real name; all names and identifying details in this article have been changed) was a hard-boiled, efficient, sharp businessman who allowed a number of partners to make money with him, but they never knew the true story—until it was too late. At the beginning everybody made money. Mr. Khan would offer good prices, negotiate March 1998 good deals for ships, and make a healthy profit for himself and his partners. As time went on, his business associates, business dealings, and business in general increased. It was not uncommon for Mr. Khan to be negotiating a multimillion dollar deal with companies in Pakistan, Korea, England, or anywhere else in the world.

 After doing business with a group of investors, one in particular became his major part-ner. His name was Mr. Smith, who thought he saw a golden opportunity and proceeded to invest large sums of money with Mr. Khan. Mr. Smith also brought in a number of his own business contacts and associates to invest with Mr. Khan. All was fine, apparently, for approximately two years, until Mr. Smith was surprised to find himself being served with legal papers involving a shipping deal that had gone wrong. Apparently, Mr. Khan had time-chartered a ship to bring Korean steel from Canada to the United States.  Mr. Khan received a generous fee for his charter. He chartered the ship with an option to buy, not taking title to the ship but insuring it with himself as the beneficiary of the ship’s insurance policy.

 Most of the ship’s crew were from Pakistan, South America, and China: There were no American citizens among the crew. Along the Atlantic coast, the ship developed “engine trouble” and docked in Balti-more, where it off-loaded the steel at 40¢ on the dollar. Mr. Khan pocketed this money. The crew was paid off handsomely in cash and the ship was then put out to sea and scuttled. Mr. Khan filed an insurance claim on the ship and its contents. The Korean steel company did not receive the insurance money for the contents of the ship, nor did it receive a refund on the charter: They were out millions of dollars. They proceeded to sue Mr. Khan and Mr. Smith for $4 million for the contents of the ship. Mr. Smith decided it was time to hire an investigator to check out Mr. Khan’s background. During the course of the investigator’s (belated) due diligence, he learned that Mr. Khan had had a number of lawsuits filed against him and had lost a number of them, so that he owed approximately $3 million in various civil judgements. According to the telephone records the investigator obtained, Mr. Khan was conducting business with other nancia1911entities. When the investigator contacted these businesses for general background information, his inquiries revealed that Mr. Khan was in the midst of— or making preparation to— defrauding these other businesses. Mr. Smith was informed by his investigator that he was one of many victims of Mr. Khan’s schemes.

The Devil Is In The Details

Even as the investigator was gathering more information, Mr. Khan moved from a Madison Avenue office to a Fifth Avenue office in Manhattan. Most people entering his office were impressed with the plush surroundings and had little doubt that Mr. Khan was a very successful man. Although he owed millions, it was a small unpaid bill that brought about the collapse of Mr. Khan’s house of cards: He did not pay a contractor $5,000 that he was owed on the renovations for his new office. As luck would have it, the contractor hired the same attorney who was representing Mr. Smith. That resulting $5,000 judgement proved to be the key that unlocked Mr. Khan’s schemes for all to see. Now that there was a judgement against Mr. Khan, Mr. Smith’s investigator was legally allowed to obtain a credit report. The credit report listed many real estate loans, holdings, and inquiries by several real estate, mortgage, and credit card companies. When the investigator contacted these companies, he uncovered all of Mr. Khan’s schemes and intended purchases of property. The investigator had found that Mr. Khan had based his entire business on a proverbial house of cards, and he informed Mr. Smith that in order to pay for his lifestyle (which included a $1.25 million home in Texas; a $875,000 home in Connecticut, and a $1.2 million condominium in Manhattan), Mr. Khan took from Peter to pay Paul.

The picture was constantly shifting: Mr. Khan proceeded to pay off almost $3 million dollars of the judgements outstanding against him. The fact that he had the ability to come up with this amount of money indicated to the investigator that he had a tremendous amount of cash income. It also suggested that Mr. Khan was cleaning up his credit for a future scam. Mr. Smith was able to extricate himself from the scuttled-ship lawsuit by suing Mr. Khan and reducing his involvement in the judgement. Although Mr. Smith still had a partial judgement against him, he was able to secure a judgement against Mr. Khan. From Mr. Khan’s credit report Mr. Smith learned of the mortgages on the houses in Connecticut and Texas, and he attached the houses. Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, Mr. Khan was able to dispose of the Texas house without Mr. Smith receiving proceeds from the sale. Mr. Smith attached Mr. Khan’s condominium in Manhattan and got back a considerable amount of his investment.

As Time Goes By

Things were quiet for a few years when suddenly Mr. Khan resurfaced. He was importing charters of textiles from Iran and pulled one of his pirate schemes in which the ship mysteriously disappeared. He collected the insurance on the ship, the goods, and so on. The Iranian carton company obtained a $3.3 million judgement against Mr. Khan in the World Court, which was troubled and therefore set the judgement at $10 million. Mr. Khan was successful in hiding all his assets. His whereabouts were unknown. The offices that fraud he had used to conduct his operation were found to be abandoned. A few months after the World Court judgement there was a front-page headline in a European newspaper regarding Mr. Khan’s dealings with a bank. According to the newspaper story, Mr. Khan was time-chartering ships, borrowing small amounts of money from the bank, increasing the loans, and then paying them back, developing an excellent line of credit with the bank. Once he had succeeded in raising his loan amount to $50 million, Mr. Khan proceeded to default. A member of the government who had assisted Mr. Khan in securing these loans with the bank, resigned in disgrace. The bank almost went belly up. Mr. Khan was put under house arrest, but eventually slipped out of the country. He returned to Pakistan, but his whereabouts are not known now. He is a fugitive from warrants in at least two countries. Wherever he is, Mr. Khan is most likely making more deals, ensconced in a well-appointed office and wearing a nice suit.

Seeing Red

Clearly there were red flags that were ignored by people who entered into deals with Mr. Khan. First, the shipping companies that did business with Mr. Khan did not follow-up within the trade regarding his dealings with other shippers, probably because they were blinded by Mr. Khan’s cheap prices: He offered a deal that was just too good to pass up. They ended up wishing they had.

Second, investors should have been suspicious about the w3ay that Mr. Khan dealt with so many people and conducted so many different business deals. Investors should have wondered if all those deals could possibly have all been above board. Mr. Smith regretted not hiring an investigator at the beginning of his involvement with Mr. Khan rather than waiting two years. Mr. Smith learned the hard way that all that glitters is not Gold.

Vincent Parco, private investigator, is a  Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Forensic Examiner and member of the American Academy of Forensic Examiners. His professional experience includes terms as senior investigator with the Office of Professional Discipline and as senior investigator in charge of the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

A good deal is hard to find. A bad deal will find you. During the turmoil in the real estate market in 1990, property was at it’s lowest price in a decade, and real estate investors were looking for a good deal. An office building in downtown Pittsburgh, PA was for sale, at a fair price.

A group of investors heard about this fantastic opportunity from their local Rabbi. The Rabbi informed this group that this office building was once the jewel of Pittsburgh. After years of mismanagement, fluctuations in the real estate market and the loss of some major tenants, the building was up for sale at ten times the rent roll.

The deal was presented to the investor’s group which we will call “Pittsburgh Development Corp.,” to give the building as is and a presentation of the outstanding leases were included in the deal. The building was so9lid, structurally sound, with approximately a twenty percent vacancy rate which was standard for that type of building, at that time. The grow3th potential for the investment was in renovating the existing vacant space and selling it at market value which then in Pittsburgh was about $18.00 per square foot. There were also some small leases that were due to terminate in the near future and would allow the investors to rent larger parcels of office space to more prestigious clients.

The building had two or three national corporations as tenants which was a draw for the renting agent to bring in other good tenants. At the time of the closing, this was all presented to the investors at an average of fifteen to sixteen dollars per square foot. On paper, it showed a gross income of approximately Two million Four Hundred Thousand Dollars. The only expe4nses that they could realize was a debt service to the building, maintenance, taxes, electricity and other expenses which indicat4ed a a reasonable return on the investment.

The group invested approximately Eight Million Dollars and were able to get a mortgage for Twelve Million Dollars. The deal went through without a hitch and Pittsburgh Development Corp. had itself a sixteen story office building. The partners decided to keep the existing real estate agent and proceeded to send out notices to all the tenants that there was new management. They set up a computer generated billing system which printed bills according to leases in July 1990. In August 1990 they received half the anticipated rent and were perplexed as to why they did not receive the full amount.

The partners contacted the managing agent and tenants individually, and ask4d them how much they were paying. Many of the tenants produced the same lease the partners had, except that their lease had a rider attached to it. The rider stated if the tenant did any leasehold improvements, their rent would be reduced considerable and that they could automatically take that deduction from their rent. In essence, someone paying $15 a foot, was able to put up a sheetrock wall, paint their office, install some carpeting and they were entitled to deduct $6 or $7 per square foot from their rent. However, the new owners did not know about this, nor were the tenants aware that the new owners did not know. They maintained that they were paying legal rent as per their prior agreement.

It did not take long for the partners to realize that they have been had an as they were scurrying around the building, trying to straighten out the rent soi they could pay their mortgage, the6y knew that they had a big problem. They tried to renegotiate leases with the tenants to no avail and 3when the6y did re-negotiate their leases with the major tenants they were forced to give major concessions which caused them to default on their mortgage and lose the building.

They started a multimillion dollar lawsuit. During the investigation we discovered that there were many different types of side deals that were made with the tenants. One was sublet agreements which were not disclosed to the new buyers. There were many deals through the managing agent and the tenants that would be considered “sweetheart deals.”

This matter was brought to the district attorney’s office in Pittsburgh. They declined to prosecute claiming that it was a business transaction and that the buyers did not do a proper due diligence. Further investigation indicated that this group headed by a Rabbi and some of his real estate cronies perpetrated the same fraud in Queens, NY, but were caught by the buyers and were forced to make some restitution. However, they did pull a scam on another group of buyers.

STEPS TO PREVENT THIS TYPE OF FRAUD

• Visually inspect the premises to determine if there are any leasehold improvements required.
• Interview tenants and read the leases that are outstanding to see if they conform to the offering.
• Conduct an in depth background investigation of the sellers to ascertain if they perpetrated ay prior fraud.
• Hire a real estate consultant in the city in which the real estate is for sale, to learn if this deal is sound.
• Perform a background search on the tenants themselves to see if they are credit worthy and if they would remain in the building once the deal was finalized.

Vincent Parco, private investigator, is a  Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Forensic Examiner and member of the American Academy of Forensic Examiners. His professional experience includes terms as senior investigator with the Office of Professional Discipline and as senior investigator in charge of the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

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

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

Which of the following stands to profit from New York’s new divorce law, which went into effect in July?

• A. The husband?

• B. The wife?

• C. The lawyers?

• D. The accountants?

• E. The appraisers?

• F. The private investigators?

• G. The Internal Revenue Service?

There is some debate about A and B, but very little about C through G. Judging from experiences in this state and longer experiences in states with similar laws, the cost of a divorce is likely to be double or more what it would have 

been under the old law, particularly if it goes to trial. It also may take considerably longer now to get a divorce, because of the extra work involved, say many lawyers. In addition, many lawyers feel that more couples are settling out of court because they cannot afford the high costs of trial. The reason for the complications is that the new law provides for “equitable distribution” of marital property, regardless of who owns title or who went out and earned the money. It is designed to help, in particular, the woman who has stayed at home during a long marriage raising children and keeping house.

“We’re more cautious 

,said Lake Success attorney Ken Koopersmith. “We need more detailed financial information than before,” particularly because the transfer of assets from husband to wife can trigger capital gains taxes. He added, “It’s going to have to cost substantially more.” In one complicated case, he has insisted that his client, a husband, “obtain separate tax counsel for which I will not be responsible.” However, according to lawyers in states that have had similar divorce laws for longer periods that is, the vast majority of states this method of splitting up property has many advantages for both parties, as well as for all the people being hired to help. Although a judge may still grant alimony, now called maintenance, a division of property allows for a “clean break” and avoids the frequent messiness of extended alimony. Another new feature is that a judge may also now order limited-time maintenance, until one spouse-usually the wife who had not been working—has time to establish herself in the job market. “This is an important step up for women who were at the mercy of husbands who didn’t want to pay alimony and could not be compelled by the courts to share the marital property,” ‘said Harriet N. Cohen of the New York firm of Golenbock and Barell, who chairs the Matrimonial and Family Law Committee of the New York Women’s Bar Association. “The law will particularly help women who had marriages during which considerable property was acquired but placed in the husband’s name only.” 

 New York had been a “title state” where, with few exceptions, whoever had title ended up with the property. In cases where a jointly owned home is a family’s only asset, probably nothing will change. “Some people feel lawyers have benefited [from the new law],” said Assemb. May Newburger (D-Great Neck), who helped get the measure passed. “But I really do feel it’s a distinct step forward. The law now recognizes a woman’s contribution as spouse and parent.” The new law means that judges must decide what the assets in the marriage are worth and how they can be divided, as well as what “equitable” (not necessarily equal) share each spouse is entitled to-based on the contribution each made to the marriage, the length of the marriage and other factors and the possible tax consequences of these actions.

As a result, lawyers on each side hire accountants, appraisers, paralegals, investigators and other professionals to protect their clients. Even if the matter never reaches a judge, attorneys for each side must work out solutions to these same problems, and the research involved could be just as extensive. One appraisal firm, R.J. Smythe and Co. of Manhattan, has added a special divorce division of 30 appraisers, experts in anything from jewelry to real estate. “I think it’s a much-needed law,” said the firm’s vice president, Kurt B. Edelhofer Sr. “Certainly we’re happy about it.” Fees approached $7,000 in one case, he said.

For private investigators, such as Vincent Parco of Manhattan, tracking down assets has nearly replaced “trying to catch people in motels.” Since the divorce law took effect, Parco has traced yachts and condominiums that husbands attempted to hide, as well as a phony partnership used to cover up assets. “It’s taking longer than usual because the lawyer has to think not only of what he can do to protect his client but what sorts of things might change, so the client can’t come back and say, “Why didn’t you protect me?'” said Richard Neumann, who heads Hofstra Law School’s Community Legal Assistance Corp. In California, he said, a divorced woman successfully sued her lawyer for $100,000 because he overlooked the value of her husband’s pension. 

After her divorce, the California Supreme Court had decided that pensions may be included as as-sets. Many New York lawyers have been waiting for court cases in this state to use as guidelines before they resolve their clients’ cases out of court. The state’s first trial was finished only last’ month in Nassau County Supreme Court. It took eight weeks, and the judge, John S. Lockman, later wrote in the New York Law Journal that more streamlined methods must be found to resolve the financial aspects of divorce cases such as using Attorney E. Allan Riebesehl says courts must consider tax repercussions of judgments. – By Aileen Jacobson

PRIVATE eyes don’t just spy on cheating spouses anymore. More and more, they are investigating companies involved in mergers and acquisitions, pursuing corporate embezzlers, checking out Insider trading scandals, uncovering illegal apartment sublets and proving insurance fraud. It’s a world Sam Spade, Lew Archer and Travis McGee would hardly recognize. “The private eye today Is more educated and sophisticated than his counterpart of a decade ago,” said Nick Beltrante, head of the Council of International Investigators in Washington. “His client list Is more diversified and his whole operation is more efficient and more professional.”

Samuel Webster, president of the World Association of Detectives, said: “Portrayals of detectives as guys who follow people around and look through windows are inaccurate.” Gumshoes of yesteryear would barely know the business these days. Gone, for the most part, is the battered old desk, with its hall-empty whisky bottle lucked away in the bottom drawer. Today’s 50,000 or so private eyes use computers, high-tech surveillance gadgets, polygraph machines – and, increasingly, lipstick.

The number of women In the business has increased dramatically in Industrywide revenues, 100, are up, about 20 percent a year during the last decade, according to the World Association of Detectives, a 700-member group based in Long Beach, L.I. Vincent Parco, former secretary of the Society of Professional Investigators, based in New York, and head of his own agency, estimated that the industry pulls in about $10 billion a year.

Insurance claim work represents the largest caseload at many agencies, but financial searches seem to be the fastest-growing segment. Detective work has long drawn retired police and military officers, but now attracts more young people. Carolyn Moltett, administrator at New York’s Superior Career Institute, said enrollment in its detective school has doubled in the last couple of years. Rules vary state by state, but in New York, would-be private eyes must work for three years under a licensed detective to be eligible to get their own licenses. Once licensed, they can begin charging going rates that range But most detectives say it’s not the money that lures them. “Every day is different,” said Marla Paul, a 22-year-old detective with Vincent Parco & Associates in New York City. “It beats the office routine.”- By Warren Berger

During the summer months, when the tourist season is at its strongest, the sleepy town of Holiday Beach, South Carolina, bustles with activity. The gift shops can’t keep enough stock on the shelves, the hotels and restaurants thrive, and the small town’s economy booms.

In fall and winter, the town is hard pressed for cash and industry suffers. Consequently, Sunburst Garment Manufacturing Co. was a welcome addition to Holiday Beach. No one knew that Sunburst was part of a very sophisticated scam that would cost the town millions of dollars.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

A THRIVING BUSINESS

Vincent Parco, private investigator, was formerly a senior investigator with the Office of Professional Discipline and Senior Supervising Investigator with The Office of Professional Medical Conduct. He is a  Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Forensic Examiner.