Miami Pi Chronicles Podcast

Season 1, Episode 5: The Art of Surveillance and Reporting

In this episode, Francois and Oscar discuss the detailed process of conducting surveillance as a private investigator, the steps to compile a professional report, and some harrowing tales from their careers. Key focus is on the importance of thorough investigation, presenting polished reports, and the emotional and dangerous aspects of the job.

Duration:: 21m
Broadcast on:: 08 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[music] Welcome to the Miami-DI Chronicles Podcast. I'm your host, Francois McKinnon, from McKinnon Investigative Group. And I'm Oscar Santa Maria of Optimum Investigations. We created this podcast with the goal to educate, inform, and entertain aspiring beginner and seasoned professionals in the investigative field. With over 60 years of combined experience, we offer invaluable insights and lessons learned. While we may not have all the answers, our knowledge can certainly benefit anyone interested in this dynamic profession. So sit back, listen, and enjoy these episodes. Please don't forget to like, share, and follow. So Oscar, hi. Can you tell us a little bit, once you receive a job, what are the steps you receive a job? And then today we want to cover investigative reports. So can you run us by your steps of what you do? Sure. For the purposes of this explanation, we're just going to assume it's a surveillance. So what happens? I get a case, and then I work it up. I do a little pre-surveillance investigation. I run a database. You know, I want to confirm addresses. I want to confirm current vehicle. If they have professional licenses, if they have any corporations, things like that. Once I confirm that, I go out and I work the surveillance. Let's just assume that everything checks out. Their cars are in the driveway. I establish a surveillance position, and I just wait for them to depart the area. Once they do, I follow them to whatever location they go to. I get as much video of their physical activities, where they're going. You want to make sure you get addresses of all locations. If they meet with anybody, get a good description, get a tag. If they go to residences, you want to get those addresses as well. To be a successful surveillance, you want to get someone from point A to point B to point C back to point A. So let's just assume that all that happened. So then it's time to, it's a one-day case, and then now it's time to compile a report. Now this is really a vital part of your brand. So you want to make sure that your report is very professional, you need to take your time and maybe create one or ask a mentor or a colleague. If you can use one of theirs or if they can help you design one, I have seen many reports that look like eighth grade book reports. You want to stay away from that. You want to have your logo, you want to have the name of your company, the addresses, everything. You have a professional looking report, and then you want to include things in this report like the client file number, your file number, the claimant's name, date of birth address, the description. You used a white male, six feet tall, 200 pounds, and then you want to go into the different topics of every report. If you have a pre-surveillance investigation, you put that first. Prior to conducting surveillance, we conducted a brief preliminary investigation. We developed current vehicles for the subject, current address, blah, blah, blah, then you're done there. Oscar, what about social media? Do you investigate that and search that? Well, yeah, that's part of the pre-surveillance investigation. So you want to make sure you check all that. If you can't find vehicles for this person, you know what? Whatever county they live in, check for traffic tickets. You can see the copy of the traffic ticket in most clerk or court jurisdictions. Just the other day I found the lady was supposed to have a registered vehicle, couldn't find it after a case of violence and spot checks. And then I just said, you know what, let me just go ahead and see if she's gotten any tickets. I went to one county, I didn't find it, went to the next county, found what immediately and actually quite current. I think she had the ticket in June 21st. So now I have a vehicle to go on. The vehicle wasn't registered to her, it was to a leasing company. So we have a vehicle to go on. We also did in that case a vehicle sighting search, which is kind of like they read the license plate readers and can you tell me a little bit about more about that Oscar? So more often you're getting a lot more data compiled on individuals and one of the things that they do is what they call LPR, which is license plate readers and oftentimes you'll check for a certain tag and you'll see that it was in this location, 15 hits in this location. Sometimes you find nothing, but sometimes it turns out to be a very valuable piece of information. So I'm running it to dead ends. I started doing more digging. You know, in the case I just mentioned to you, I'm actually going to go out tomorrow on that case and I'm going to try to locate the vehicle at her provided address and then at a place that we had a couple of hits on the license plate reader. So hopefully I'm going to find this lady and we're not going to keep hitting these dead ends. If you don't do the extra steps, you're not going to find anything and you can turn a three day case, you turn it in in four hours and you can't give up, but you've got to keep digging and digging and digging. That's your job. It's just not sitting back and then just plain follow the leader. You're just sitting where wasting money and that's exactly and that's something that I don't like to do. My clients expect a certain level of results. I mean, nobody's harder on themselves than me when it comes to just turning something that has either no results or very poor results and those things keep me up at night. I try to make sure that every stone is unturned before I just throw in the towel. So what will you submit your report to your client, whether it's an adjust or a law firm? What are the final touches that you do to your report? So as I said, you want to have certain topics in your report. You want to have client's file number, your file number, the date of worth of the claim in and everything, pre-surveillance, what you did during the pre-surveillance and then you want to have a section. This is an etched in stone. Everybody can do it a little bit different. There's no 10 commandments of report writing. As far as reports that I do, I have an investigative summary, which is like a paragraph of what each day of surveillance consisted of. And then I have a detail section, which is like a surveillance log. The investigator arrived. The claimants provided address located at such and such. I observed the following vehicle and then every, whatever activity, the claimant or the subject, whenever they decide to leave, I could video them getting into the car, driving off, getting to their location and put pictures of like, if they go to a grocery store, what I'll do is I'll, under that caption, I'll put a couple of pictures of the claimant getting out of the car, going into the grocery store, you know, inside the grocery store. These pictures, you get them from the video that you shoot and then you just cover it in there. Exactly. I do a queen grab and then I crop the picture. I make sure that they're all the exact same dimensions. And you know, you want to make sure that your windshields are clean because you want nice, clean, crisp pictures. And remember, this is your final product. This is what you want them to see. It's like, wow, you know what? This is a nice looking report. What about your video reports? How do you submit those to the client? Is it a link or do you have it on your website and your versus mailing them like we used to? Yeah, we used to, it used to be kind of inconvenient because when I first started, we was with the big VHS tapes and then it went down to the little smaller mini tapes. Yeah. And then you had to mail those in. But now within the last, I guess, 10, 15 years, you can send these links, these video links. And so what I do is I have a system called Hightail and it basically allows me to make mail, Hight, just read heavy files, like video files. And so what I do is I send that through them. They open up a link and then they can download everything. So it's a lot more convenient today than it was say 15 years ago because it's no fun going to the public. And it's just so much easier. Sometimes technology is a good thing. Yes. Okay, Oscar, we're going to think of break and come right back. This episode of Miami PI Chronicles podcast is brought to you by the law office of Diana Santa Maria, personal injury and medical malpractice attorney for free consultation, call 1-800-668-2156. For all of your investigative and security needs, you can visit the spy shops in Fort Lauderdale or go online at www.spyshops.com, beach paradise experience in South Florida, visit Ocean Manor Beach Hotel, an unrivaled Fort Lauderdale beach resort for families, couples and beach lovers to life. For more information, please call 1-800-995-0444. And we're back. In the other episodes, we discussed where we're the exciting, fun and rewarding parts of our job. But we both know that there's also a not-so-rewarding part of the job. And can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. A couple of things come to mind that are both infidelity related. I remember years ago, early in our careers, when we were partners, we ended up getting this case and it involved the wife of our client that would go to the, this is before social media. This is when the internet was just brand new. And instead of like social media, they would have chat rooms and different forums and things. And this lady would go to these, every couple of weeks, they would meet these people in these chat rooms, meet at certain hotels. And this lady would go to these every couple of weeks and she would bring her daughter, which was like 10 years old, she had a couple of other kids that stayed with the father. And the 10 year old daughter said, yeah, mom gets really drunk and does a lot of weird things when she goes to these things. You got a call from the client and he said, listen, just wanted to check out what my wife is doing at these internet to get togethers that she goes to. So lo and behold, she actually did, we followed her to the Fort Lauderdale strip area. She went to a hotel and then, you know, during the day, she was at the bar, she was getting more and more drunk. Obviously, she knew some of the people there and then by that evening, she was just a mess. I mean, a mess to the point is she was just doing all sorts of very bad things with a lot of people there in front of her daughter. It was just a real nightmare now. We got all this video and it was in the morning, the client called me and I was hoping he would call you, but I guess you didn't answer what I hate to do is break bad news. And he asked me, yeah, I just wanted to know how yesterday's surveillance went and I just woke up. And I didn't know what to say. And I remember I told him, listen, your wife did not behave well at all. We ended up having to go to his house. And you know, this was back in the day when they had the VHS's. We had to go to his house and we're really right in front of him shown the video of what this lady was doing. And believe me, it was not good to remember. I think this is a PG rated show. So I don't want to get into the stuff that she was doing, but it was so bad that he ended up getting divorced, going through a divorce, and he actually got custody of the kids. Even her lawyer was like, Oh my God, what's on this video? If you're not the mother of the years was very sad because you have to watch some man getting out of his life and he's been married. Yeah. And she didn't do it because you didn't because she would lose control because she would get so drunk. But lo and behold, a few years later, she was very remorseful. She went through rehab and she actually strained her life out. And I do believe that they got back together. And then a few years later, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I did another case and it was a very wealthy man. I had gotten this case through another investigative agency. And like the second day that I was working this, the head of that investigative agency died. And so I took over this case. And anyway, this guy got up a letter and it was an anonymous letter from a woman and said that basically his wife has been cheating on him for years. They had a whole bunch of houses and she was currently having an affair with some sort of chef at a restaurant. And sure enough, I did follow him and he called me as she was in the backseat of the car with the chef that was actually the chef's birthday that day. And I remember telling him that story and he just hung out, called me back later that evening. And he just told me and listen, I broke down. I don't ever want to see that video, just destroy it. And he ended up getting divorced and I had to do more things for him later. But it was just sad. I mean, these people, they're heartbroken and what can you say to make it better? And you can't do anything. You just have to tell them the fact that for them, unfortunately, they have to deal with them. And it's very hurtful. I have one of them that, I mean, we've had so many domestic cases that you and I done that we have to break bad news, which I don't think there were any good news except when they were not cheating, but in the marital cases, we had to give a lot of bad news. I guess it's part of the job. For my turn, I recalled a case where it was an industrial Lispianage case where I found a nephew of a CEO of a company stealing secrets from his uncle's company and reselling it and remanufacturing parts of a window latch in China and then. And after a week of investigations, I had to look at my client in the eyes and tell him, listen, this is what I found. Your nephew is willing the same product that you're making at third of the price, which is made in China and important and he imploded and started crying and he was devastated. For me, it was one that I recalled the most because he had done so much. Yet when his father passed away, he had been taking care of him since he was 12 years old and he loved them, put them through college and raised them like a son. And then he went around and screwed them. All this money, lost jobs for employees in the U.S., so it was really sad to see somebody cry like this. It just really happened. You know, unfortunately, we have to be the bearer of bad news sometimes and it's not one of the funnest parts of this profession, but something that has to be done and we sometimes it can be painful. So, you know, do you have any other stories that you recall about having to give bad news? From the top of my head, no, those two are the ones that really stick out because I mean, one, I was in the room when this be the thing is you don't, but it was pretty horrific, especially for a woman to be doing this and read the presence of her child. I mean, she was out of control drunk, I'm not going to judge her, but I really did mess up her life and I just saw the horror on the husband's face and thank goodness that these days you can just send a video through a link and you don't have to witness that kind of stuff and she don't have to be in front of them because they're terrifying. Okay, Oscar, we're going to take a break and we'll be back right after this. This episode of Miami PI Chronicles, podcast is brought to you by the law office of Diana Santa Maria, personal injury and medical malpractice attorney for free consultation call 1-800-668-2156. For all of your investigative and security needs, you can visit the Styshops in Fort Lauderdale or go online at www.styshops.com. First Paradise experience in South Florida, visit Ocean Manor Beach Hotel and unrivaled Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort for families, couples and beach lovers to light. For more information, please call 1-800-995-0444. The segment of the show, we're going to read some emails that people are sending us questions about the show, they did that at Miami PI Chronicles@gmail.com. So Oscar, do you have one ready for me? I do. This comes from Marlene from Asheville. She writes in the last episode, Francois talked about the shooting that he caught on camera. Can you tell us about any other scenarios where you were both in a dangerous situation? Well, I'll tell you what, the first one that comes to my mind was I had ran some background checks from some questionable people. And I also am a big fan of the police and the law enforcement. But on that day, because I have ran somebody who was about testifying in a criminal case, the United States Marshal came to my house and at a serious discussion with me as to who I had ran those background checks for. So that scared the crap out of me. I was trying, oh my God, they all have their guns out, what's happening to them? So that was one of the things. I mean, there's been a multitude of the month surveillance, but go ahead, do you have one? I do. I was about 10 years ago, I was working in a city called Boynton Beach. And I remembered I was on a surveillance. I wasn't really in tight, but I did call the police and I let them know my location that I was conducting a surveillance. I was in a blue dodged air van at the time. A few hours into the surveillance, I have a police officer come towards my car. Normally in these situations, what I like to do is roll down the windows or put them down because my windows are so dark and put my hands on the steering wheel. Unfortunately, my van had a broken window, so I couldn't roll it down. So what I did was I opened the door just to let him know, hey, listen, I'm all right. And he kind of freaked out and he goes, close that door. During this time when I opened the door, a cup had fallen that was wedged between my door. And I remember I went to reach to pick it up and this guy drew on me and throwing all sorts of commands. And I was totally shocked because I had called in and he had to avoid these types of situations. I tried to explain to him, hey, listen, you don't understand, I don't care, it starts berating me. And one of us is going home and I guarantee you, it's going to be me and this, man. And then I just, I'm very respectful to the men in blue. It's their have a very difficult job. But I mean, this guy is here making me seem like I did something wrong. I did everything right. I called the department, I checked in. It was a lack of communication on their part. And whenever I hear these stories of police shootings, I always understand because they are under a lot of pressure and on hindsight, I do see how that sudden move of me just going to reach for that cup could have been misinterpreted. So I'm a huge fan of the police, but in that situation, I really thought that I was going to be shot and killed. I just thought of something that you'll remember when we went at the beginning of our career, we went to Cocoa Beach and we served this guy with paper. So now we're driving back and it's a long drive back in South Florida and we're driving on the highway. And we get lit up. We're doing 60, 70 miles per hour. It wasn't that bad. And the cop comes out of his car and he's blocking and he's got his gun out and we're going, why does it have his gun out? What's going on? And then he said, I'm just worried about the snakes out here. He said he was almost hit by a rattlesnake the week before when he stopped somebody. That's why we're both looking at him going and why the gun and he goes rattlesnake store about it. And I do remember though, I definitely remember that. Well I guess we're going to wrap it up for this week and we look forward to everyone listening to us and we want to tell you thank you for your support and please share and follow. Thank you. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] You [BLANK_AUDIO]