Private Investigator News and Information

GREG RISLING
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - A former Beverly Hills police officer and the ex-wife of actor Keith Carradine pleaded guilty to federal charges in a wiretapping investigation that authorities say involves imprisoned Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano.

Craig Stevens, 45, of Oak Park pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to two counts of wire fraud and four counts of unauthorized access of protected computers to commit fraud.

Stevens, who had worked for the Beverly Hills Police Department since 1982, could face up to 35 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 16.

Sandra Carradine, 58, of Carpenteria pleaded guilty during a closed court hearing Friday to two counts of perjury. Her attorney said Carradine and Pellicano were dating when she hired him to investigate her ex-husband.

She faces up to 10 years in prison. Her sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 25.

Authorities said the guilty pleas were part of an ongoing FBI case involving Pellicano, who is being investigated by a grand jury for possible illegal wiretaps on behalf of lawyers and their clients.

The private detective is scheduled to be released next month from federal prison after completing a 30-month sentence for possessing illegal weapons.

Both the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment Tuesday about the investigation of Pellicano, who has worked for a number of celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Sylvester Stallone.

According to court documents, Carradine admitted she lied to a grand jury in October 2004 when she denied knowing that Pellicano wiretapped her former husband’s phone.

“There wasn’t really a sinister reason behind this,” said her attorney, Peter Knecht. “She was trying to do what was right by her kids. She agreed to plead guilty and accept responsibility.”

Stevens admitted he used Beverly Hills Police Department computers to obtain information from the Department of Motor Vehicles about four people, then sold it to Pellicano, authorities said. He also lied to FBI agents when he denied providing information to Pellicano or receiving payments from him, prosecutors said.

Stevens resigned from the department on Friday. His attorney, Michael Schwartz, did not return a call Tuesday.

Pellicano and a co-defendant have been indicted for allegedly making criminal threats against a Los Angeles Times reporter who was working on a story about actor Steven Seagal and possible links to the Mafia.

Pellicano allegedly hired a man who went to the reporter’s home in April 2002 and placed a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on a car windshield. A sign with the word “stop” was also placed on the windshield, according to court documents.

Units for monitoring vehicles are readily available on the Internet.
By RACHEL STEVENS

Tracking devices, such as the one former Columbia police officer Todd Smith allegedly placed in his ex-girlfriend’s car, are readily available on the Internet and are used for everything from monitoring teenagers’ driving habits to managing shipping fleets.

Police Chief Randy Boehm fired Smith on Dec. 30 after an internal investigation of allegations by Smith’s former girlfriend that the officer had stalked her with telephone calls, letters and a Global Positioning System tracking device that she discovered in her car. The accusations led to Smith’s arrest; Special Prosecutor Mason Gebhardt on Friday charged Smith with a single count of stalking.

Capt. Mike Martin said Smith’s case is the first Columbia police have seen involving the alleged use of a tracking device for stalking. He said he expects advancements in technology will bring an increase in such crimes.

A simple Internet search for “GPS tracking devices” brings up a list of options ranging in price and capability. Some must be installed, while others run on batteries and can simply be placed in a vehicle or attached to the outside with magnets.

There are two main types of GPS tracking devices — real-time and passive. Real-time devices are more expensive and allow users to use the supplier’s Web page to see in real time everywhere the tracked vehicle goes.

Passive units are cheaper and save data that the user later must download using software provided with the product. Some types allow the user to get the information remotely if his or her computer is close to the tracking device. Others require the user to either retrieve the unit or its memory card. Passive units record where the vehicle stopped, how long it was there and how fast it was driven.

What Martin described in an earlier interview is indicative of a passive device. It did not relay data in real time, he said, but “he knew where she was, when she got there and how long she was there. He knew every place she went and where she moved. This is not permitted.”

Wayne Johnson is director of sales for ­Discrete Wireless, a company that sells GPS tracking units for fleet management. He said tracking devices are becoming more popular.

“The market’s fairly new, and the cost of equipment is not conducive to get to the consumer model yet, but it’s coming,” Johnson said. “As scale and demand grow, you get more economies of scale to get to that marketplace.”

Besides helping companies manage fleets by tracking hours, fuel use and productivity, these deviceshave other common uses, Johnson said. They can enable parents to track the driving habits of teenagers and or allow people to track the vehicles of elderly parents to ensure their safety.

Johnson said the devices gather information from the GPS satellite constellation developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. The tracking units must receive signals from at least three satellites to triangulate a point, revealing the location of the receiver in terms of latitude and longitude.

The tracking units sold by Discrete Wireless must be installed and are not the same as what he called “quick-tracker” units that can simply be placed in or attached to the outside of a vehicle. Johnson called this form of tracking “a very gray market.”

“Most of those guys who are getting information that way are pretty shady,” Johnson said.

Although Smith allegedly used a vehicle tracking device to stalk his former girlfriend, Columbia private investigator Ron Rugen said the devices do not deserve a bad name.

“Anything can be used in a wrong manner and abused, and it sounds like this was,” he said. “It is not a bad thing to be in existence as long as it is used within the law.”

Rugen said he has used a tracking device only a few times in instances involving parents concerned about their children. In those cases, he put the devices in vehicles with the owners’ consent. He said he won’t use the technology in other types of cases because he is unsure where the law stands.

“I would rather not use something when I don’t know for sure,” Rugen said. “I like to err on the side of caution.”

Rugen said he thinks the law will become more specific as the devices become more common.

Dawn Parsons, chair of the Criminal Law and Procedure Committee for the Missouri Bar, said that because this technology is relatively new, the law does not specifically outline how to deal with it. She said the legal risks vary with each situation.

“The monitoring device itself is not necessarily per se illegal,” Parsons said. “It’s what you’re doing with it.”

Parsons said she thinks misuse of the devices could be just beginning.

“I think as technology gets better and less expensive and more people get access, I think we’ll see more abuses,” Parsons said.

Although prosecutor Gebhardt said Smith’s alleged use of a tracking device is especially disturbing, he said Friday that it was not the only reason he charged Smith.

“The other things in and of themselves would have been enough for a stalking charge,” Gebhardt said. “It was a pattern of behavior not appropriate for an officer.”

After a life of difficult family relations, a St. Petersburg private eye helps others reunite and rebuild.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published January 4, 2006

The irony is as poignant as it is painful: A young girl emotionally estranged from her mother embarks on a series of poor life choices that brings her three failed marriages with a child from each, no job prospects and no safety net. She doesn’t just overcome these circumstances, but uses them to create a successful business reuniting families and giving others the second chance she has only recently found herself.

“I was the girl on the beach crying,” said Lynn-Marie Carty, a St. Petersburg private investigator and president of Reunite People, which since 2001 has set up more than 1,000 reunions for those who thought they’d never again find their loved ones.

“I didn’t have anything,” the 48-year-old from Massachusetts said. “I didn’t have a dollar. Three kids, and I was worrying about what we would find to eat.”

But she adds: “I wouldn’t trade any of it.”

Carty’s travails started when she got pregnant at 16. She ran away from home and got married, but she was divorced 18 months later and returned to finish high school. Home was no treat, though, because her “mentally challenged” mother had never shown her any affection and wouldn’t even touch her, she said.

She moved to Florida, where she would marry and divorce twice again. She held several odd jobs but nothing fulfilling, though she was model pretty and was once a finalist in the Mrs. Florida pageant.

She reached out to her mother and even arranged for her life-saving brain surgery, but she still has never found the maternal bond she wanted, even though she supports and houses her.

At one point in the mid ’90s, Carty discovered a knack for investigation when she helped with the Babyland lawsuit regarding Royal Palm Cemetery and the disinterment of infant remains as part of a construction project.

She found research and exploring to be a reward, but the dark side of investigating for attorneys was distasteful. Then she saw a Sally Jessy Raphael show about reunions and thought she had found her calling.

“Everybody is searching for the love that might make them complete,” Carty said. Most of those using her services are children that mothers gave up for adoption or fathers who left children behind. She said her life experiences give her a natural empathy for her clients. “I’m able to put myself in their shoes.”

Carty rattles off inspiring stories about fathers who lost track of children after a divorce; people who became suicidal and regained a will to live after finding their roots; and adoptive mothers who helped their children find birth parents.

She is working with a woman from Seminole who, pregnant at 16 like Carty, gave up a daughter for adoption. On Saturday, that mother will meet the adoptive mother in Inverness before meeting her daughter this spring.

Carty has such a record of reunions that she has been a frequent guest on television shows like the one that inspired her in the first place.

She also has a book coming out later this year, A.K.A. Angel P.I., and is in talks with the producers of Extreme Home Makeover about a reality show based on her family. Carty’s three children have also become investigators, and the family works on reunions and more conventional investigations.

Carty’s expertise doesn’t always win out, at least in her own life. Her attempts to reconcile with her mother never worked, which she says helps drive the reunion urge.

She is on good terms with all her ex-husbands, insisting that the marriages were her mistakes because of her “zero self-esteem.” But a stab at researching her genealogy floundered.

“I got rejected by my own family,” she said. It turns out her fair features and mane of blond hair had more to do with a Norwegian ancestry than her Italian background suggests.

Her father, the son of a police detective, was born out of wedlock. But Carty said the detective’s descendants take the view that because there was no marriage, there is no family connection. She says she thinks she inherited the detective’s investigative skills, which are the talents she applied to turn her life around.

“I feel like if everybody in society did what they are good at and volunteered, we could all be angels,” she said. “When you do the right thing, good things happen to you.”

Carty does extensive work on the Internet, scouring databases and posting queries on message boards for the 60 or 70 cases she has active at a time.

Recently, she heard from her own past. A boy who fought for her - and lost - back when she was 16 found her online and will be coming to visit from Massachusetts soon. But even if he doesn’t turn out to be her “Mr. Right,” she said her work makes her thrilled to wake up every morning.

“Now that I’ve found my passion in life, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” she said. “Everyone says, “You’ve got a cool job.’ They’re right. I created it myself.”

by Don Drennon Gala, Ph.D.

There are many theories for the reasons why terrorism has become a major concern for our governments, and for each one of us. Some people blame the President’s foreign policy. Some blame the Iraqi war for the escalation of terrorist threat to the United States. Regardless of the reason for this problem, I believe that we can all agree that the threat is real and we need to be concerned. We need to prevent, as a nation, a repeat of 9/11, or a similar tragic event. So, why is there concern about what the NSA is doing?

A telephone conversation between two people, one in Pakistan and one in Chicago, has been going on for more than 30 minutes. The person overseas tells the person in Chicago that “everything is a go.” He asks this guy in Chicago if the time for the explosion is still the same. He then asks this Chicago man when they will actually be putting things together and begin the attack. The Pakistan caller spends the next several minutes discussing banking arrangements and other contacts in Chicago.

This entire conversation is one-sided. We never hear the target being identified. We never hear the what, when, and where. This is bad for the innocent Americans that are about to be killed as a result of limited intelligence.

What do Americans want? Do they want more security, or do they want the intelligence line of information cut-off? Who explains this short-sightedness to those families who will lose loved ones? When a child no longer has mom or dad at home as a result of a terrorist attack that could have been prevented with the proper information, who will explain this mishap to them?

Obviously, the person who is cheating on their spouse may not be happy that the NSA knows about it. Do they really think the NSA cares? The person that is selling drugs may be upset that their communications is being intercepted by automated means. Some of us believe that the drug problem in America is a cancer needing to be eliminated. People dealing in child pornography may be upset that “Big Brother” knows about their sick perversions, and we can understand why. After all, these people could lose their freedom for 10 to 20 years. Other criminals may have a problem with the NSA knowing of their business dealings as well. We can understand this as well.

To these individuals, we can only say, too bad. When balancing the need to protect American citizens and the rights of wrong doers, the need to protect law abiding citizens has the greatest weight. The only way our government can protect us is to collect as much information they can and to analyze it to determine when and where these threats can be eliminated. If we cripple our law enforcement abilities, and people die, we can only blame ourselves.

One important point needing to be made here is the use of this information. United States citizens have the right to express themselves without being subjected to reprisal. As such, nothing in the U.S. Constitution states that people cannot be monitored. What it does indicate is that the Federal and State governments will not interfere with the lawful communication and protests of the people, and these governments must protect these rights. As such, the information is collected in order to protect U.S. citizens, but the government cannot use extrinsic information for other government use that would give the appearance of interfering with the rights of U.S. citizens.

These concepts are quite different than those presented in the media and press. There is a great difference between the “collection” and the “use” of information. In fact, we have no idea whether or not extrinsic matters are being kept or discarded. This may be a greater policy concern than the collection itself. There should be policy in place that causes information with no intelligence value to be immediately discarded, and with severe penalties for failing to do so.

I could easily jump on this band wagon and let my pen scream, “Abuse!” However, there are other people involved here. There are U.S. citizens that are innocent, that just want to live in peace, that may become victims of terrorism in the future. These potential victims are more likely than not one of our friends, family member, or one of us. Why would we want to protect ourselves, as a nation, any less than that of our home.

The President has seen fit to utilize any and all processes available to him through taxpayers’ support in order to protect us, each one of us, our families, and our friends. Is this not what we would expect of the Commander-in-Chief? We need to make certain that we are protected, and this means by whatever means available to us.

It is not asking too much to have our government officials to make certain that of the information collected that they destroy any and all documentation that has nothing to do with terrorism. If there is a discussion between an international communicator and a person within the United States, and the communication of the individuals prove to be innocent or intellectual interaction, then it is believed appropriate to destroy the communication of the person within the United States. There should be a criminal violation for abuse of these limitations, that is, the failure to destroy innocent communications should lead to criminal prosecution.

If the communication proves to be fruitful, then the government officials should be able to use this information in any manner deemed fit. This would not only be reasonable, it would be considered necessary.

Hopefully, the reader will be inspired to think about the reasons for the NSA surveillance and the need for understanding and tolerance for this process. The reader should also think about the limitations and need for restraint of these government officials in carrying out their duties.

(Dr. Drennon Gala addresses numerous issues in education, delinquency, crime, corrections, and organizational assessment. He is an author, lecturer, freelance writer, former Associate Professor, and presently a federal law enforcement officer with the U.S. Department of Justice. He possesses a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, M.S.Ed. from the University of Rochester, Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, and an M.A. from the University of Central Oklahoma, Department of Sociology. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, or the United States.)

* * *

Whatever Dr. Gala’s knowledge, expertise, or job, it does not give him the right to support and recommend breaking the law. It has been pointed out over and over that the spying and eavesdropping could have been done retroactively, and that it would have been very simple for the administration to get sanction from a judge.

It is surprising that Americans are so complacently accepting this situation as having something to do with their safety. If that is the case, where is the proof? I am surprised that many more Americans are not already up in arms regarding other breaches of American values such as follows: falsifying intelligence to go to war in Iraq; illegally invading Iraq; misleading us about the Niger/Iraq uranium connection; diverting money appropriated for Afghanistan to planning the Iraq war; Using American tax money to pay for war-propaganda in Iraq; authorizing torture and violating the Geneva Convention at Abu Graib and Guantanamo; using inhumane, illegal treatment of detainees; leaking the name of a covert CIA agent’s name; spying on American citizens within the US; and paying Armstrong Williams and others for propaganda in the “No Child Left Behind” matter.

This is only a partial list of injustices by this administration. Where will it all end?

Mildred Perry Miller
Millermaj@aol.com

By RUSS CHOMA
Union Leader Correspondent
Saturday, Dec. 31, 2005

Chester — Selectmen say they will not release a report compiled by two private investigators the board hired earlier this fall.

Board members have yet to say exactly why the private investigators were hired, or what they found, but at Thursday night’s meeting, Selectman Stephen Landau did connect their work to the situation with former administrative assistant Victoria MacLaughlin.

While speaking as a private citizen during the public comment session of Thursday’s meeting, Landau said the $6,000 the investigators billed the town was part of the total cost of the MacLaughlin episode.

According to a copy of a bill submitted to the town by Gianturco Investigations of North Reading, Mass., a number of interviews were conducted between Nov. 9 and Nov. 15 by at least two investigators. The bill details 71 hours of work, including interviews at the Chester town offices and as far away as Franconia, but does not give any specific information about the subject of the investigation.

Earlier in Thursday’s meeting, several residents pressed board members on why the investigators were hired and what they looked into.

Resident Barbara Dolloff told selectmen she wanted the town to move beyond the controversy over MacLaughlin, but without more information about the investigators’ work, she said it would be like “closing the door with a foot in it.”

“I want to know the finding in the P.I.’s report — I helped pay for it, so I feel I should get to see it,” Dolloff said. “Just tell the truth and the moving on will happen.”

Geoffrey Barnett, chairman of the board of selectmen, told Dolloff and others who inquired about the report that the board would not release the report because the town’s attorneys had advised them not to.

“We paid these people good money for a good reason, and when they say ‘Don’t do it,’ we’re not going to do it,” he said. “I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. I don’t write the rules, but I’ve got to play by the rules.”

On Dec. 16, the New Hampshire Union Leader submitted a right-to-know request, asking the town to release the report. The report has not yet been made public and even though state law requires a written reply within five days of a request, one has not been issued.

At Thursday’s meeting, Landau said the report will probably be removed from town records.

“The report has a shelf life, and it’s going to be destroyed at some point after that,” Landau said.

Landau said that unless MacLaughlin or her attorneys ask for it to be made public, the report will be kept out of the public light. Landau said he and other board members have tried to quell the controversy.

“We have tried to remain — I wouldn’t say neutral — but entirely unbiased about it, as far as I’m concerned,” Landau said. “It keeps on coming up, but we’re not the ones bringing it up.”

Later in the meeting, resident Robert Brown said the board’s handling of MacLaughlin’s leave looked like the pursuit of a “personal vendetta” and the use of private investigators seemed like they were trying to find evidence of a crime.

“It was quite frightening to me, frankly, that we were hiring a private investigator entity to chase down evidence of a crime yet to be determined,” he said. “We don’t hire a private police force to start looking under rugs and in trash cans … in hopes of discovering a crime.”

Susteen, Inc., a leader in data communications and mobile computing solutions, today announces the “DataPilot Secure View” product, a cell phone software designed for law enforcement, corporate security, and computer forensics consultants to acquire valuable contact information from seized mobile phones. “Secure View” is the only product of its kind to be included in the GSA schedule allowing the company to sell the product to the U.S. government.

“Secure View,” initially a corporate product, has been reformatted to include only Read, Save and Print options. By excluding any other functions, the risk of accidentally compromising, manipulating or deleting information from the phone is avoided. What is left is a product that allows investigators to acquire important information from mobile phones.

“Secure View” is equipped with a universal cabling system that is valued at $400 in market prices. Over 350 U.S. and Canadian phone models are supported, making DataPilot the utility to support the largest number of cell phone models in the North American market. The product also includes a Live Tech Support line, exclusive to law enforcement and free for one year, which provides a “live-update” to remain updated on the latest phone models.

“DataPilot is one of the best logical analysis tools in my mobile phone lab,” notes a Los Angeles law enforcement veteran. “I wish I would have bought it a year and a half ago; it would have saved me hours of labor-intensive work. ‘DataPilot Secure View’ supports almost all the phones that cross my desk and the IrDA and USB cables are outstanding. I highly recommend this kit to anyone who is processing mobile phones.”

“DataPilot Secure View” is compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000 with SP3 or XP. The system requirements are a 133 MHz processor, 128MB RAM and 30 MB of available disk space. Also needed is 8-bit 800×600 resolution, a USB port and CD-ROM drive. DataPilot Secure View includes one software CD and 12 data cables and it is available to purchase at Susteen’s on-line store, www.datapilot.com for $644.95.

Gumshoes are being replaced by high-tech wizzes, many employed by companies to prevent stealing of intellectual property
BY JAMES BERNSTEIN
STAFF WRITER

December 19, 2005

In the summer of 2003, Rocco Gatta found himself hiding in the deep woods of Vermont, videotaping the comings and goings of a woman whose multimillionaire husband suspected her of cheating on him.

She was.

Two years later, Gatta found himself in a courtroom in Hong Kong, narrating the videotape that showed the woman and her television-repairman lover meeting at her Vermont vacation home, at a trial that was about far more serious actions than two-timing a husband.

She stood accused of poisioning and then bludgeoning her husband in November 2003, in what became known as the Milkshake Murder.

According to prosecutors, Nancy Kissel, 41, had given her husband, Robert Kissel, 40, one of the top investment bankers at Merrill Lynch who was then working and living in Hong Kong, a milkshake laced with Rohypnol (a central nervous system depressant infamous as the date-rape drug), three types of sleeping tablets and an anti-depressant. He passed out, and she bludgeoned him with a lead statuette. She is now serving a life sentence in a Hong Kong prison but has appealed her conviction.

The Kissel case was a shock even for Gatta. The former Nassau narcotics detective-turned-private investigator had been hardened by decades of rough-and-tumble police work - a career in which a loaded revolver once was pointed at his head by a drug suspect.

The suspect pulled the trigger. The gun jammed.

In 1987, Gatta left the Nassau police department for what he expected might be a less-harrowing career as a private eye.

But “you don’t think it’s going to lead to this,” he said of the Kissel case. “Most cases, they hate each other and fight over money and children. But she planned this thing. This wasn’t impulsive.”

Gatta, 59, a white-haired former U.S. Marine who lives on Nassau’s South Shore, said in a recent interview that he’s learned that, in the world of the private eye, little, if anything, can be taken for granted.

Nonetheless - or perhaps because nothing can be taken for granted - growing numbers of former police officers, ex-federal agents and reporters are becoming private eyes. Many have made the move since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; since then, security of all types has become bigger business than ever. American companies lost between $53 billion and $59 billion in proprietary information and intellectual property thefts in 2001, according to the most recent survey by the American Society for Industrial Security. In 1999, the association said, U.S. companies lost more than $45 billion from such thefts.

Allstate is one of the Fortune 500 companies that are increasingly making use of private investigators. It said that in late November, for instance, it used private investigators to compile information for a $3.4-million insurance fraud lawsuit against a psychological testing service that had a post office box in Mineola.

Computer literacy a must

Today’s private investigators are likely to be highly computer literate and even speak several languages and understand foreign currency.

Gone, both private eyes and security industry experts say, are the days of the trench-coated, fedora-wearing investigator, who always had a cigarette in his mouth - yes, it was almost always a he - and a line on a sure-bet horse.

“These days, there’s no smoking in our office,” said Francis Shea, president of Melville-based Alpha Group, an investigative agency that hired Gatta to spy on Nancy Kissel. “We look for a more educated individual and somebody who can sit in a boardroom instead of a bar,” said Shea, who spent 15 years as a New York City police officer before starting the firm.

“I think [private investigators] have a long way to go because many of them are still saddled with that old image,” said Vincent Henry, also once a city cop and now a professor of homeland security at the Southampton campus of Long Island University. “But in the last decade, there have been a lot of changes” in the industry. Technology and the Internet are now as much a part of the job as the old Yellow Pages and notepad, he said.

“There’s been a professionalization,” Henry said.

And there’s certainly more people on the job.

Kroll Inc. of Manhattan, now one of the country’s largest investigative firms, has about 3,600 employees worldwide, up from 300 as recently as 1997, said Jeremy Kroll, the company’s managing director and son of the founder, Jules Kroll.

A ‘mainstream’ occupation

“It’s a much more legitimate, mainstream corporate service” that agencies are providing these days, Jeremy Kroll said. “That’s very much reflective of the people providing the service. There’s a surge in patriotism, not just here but in other countries. For a period of time, people believed security and intelligence was a place they could make a difference.”

According to PI Magazine, a leading industry publication in Freehold, N.J., there are now about 60,000 licensed private investigators in the United States, about 29,930 of them in New York State, a 14.5 percent rise since 2000.

On Long Island, there are 811 licensed investigators, up from 695 in 2000. The New York State Department of State licenses private eyes. To obtain a license, one must first pass a written test, mostly related to law-enforcement issues, and have worked for a private investigator for three years.

At Summit Security Services of Uniondale, recent hires include Patrick Melia, a highly decorated former New York City police officer, and Tom Valery, a former federal investigator who worked to help convict Michael Swango, a physician serving three life sentences for killing three patients at the Northport VA Medical Center in 1993.

Industry sources say the pay for private sleuths has improved significantly. About 30 years ago, one could count on about $50 a day, with expenses, if he was lucky. Now, industry sources say, entry-level investigators earn about $40,000 annually; those with 10 or 15 years’ experience can make $80,000 to $120,000, and senior level investigators, $120,000 to $1 million or more a year.

Jimmie Mesis, PI Magazine’s editor in chief, said an estimated 500 to 1,000 new licenses are handed out each month in the United States. The number issued in New York State so far this year has risen by about 200 since last year.

Mesis estimates the industry’s annual sales at about $600 million. And, because of technological innovations, the industry has become global.

“The local gumshoe is now no longer local,” he said. “He’s doing work in Switzerland or China or anywhere else in the world.”

And, Mesis said, women are becoming more and more of a presence. About 15 percent of private investigators in the country are women, he said, up from 2 percent or 3 percent five years ago.

A woman who made a switch

One of those is Vicki Multer Diamond, 37, of Plainview, a former prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Diamond works for Fortress Global Investigations & Security in Great Neck. She said she made the switch from the courtroom to the corporate office in 2000 because she likes investigations. But it’s a job that can be unpredictable.

“There are times I’m on the phone with the kids in the background,” said Diamond, the mother of two.

Jim Mulvaney of Long Beach left the newspaper business almost a decade ago - he had been a reporter at Newsday and, subsequently, at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif., where he formed an investigative team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for uncovering an embryo theft scandal at a fertility clinic. He is now managing director at Tactical Intelligence Services, which has offices in Long Beach and Manhattan.

Mulvaney found that the world of the private eye was a familiar one. “We’re paid to find and analyze information,” Mulvaney said. “In the [newspaper] days, we wanted to know which politician was cheating. Now, we want to know which husband is cheating,” he said with a laugh. The bulk of his work, he said, involves fraud cases and protection of brands and intellectual property.

A former FBI agent

One of Long Island’s best-known private eyes is John Good, a partner in the Babylon firm of Lawn, Mullen & Good, who spent 30 years as an FBI agent, retiring in 1986 as supervisor of the Hauppauge office.

Good’s reputation was built in the late 1970s, when he masterminded the FBI’s ABSCAM operation, a sting that led to the convictions of seven U.S. congressmen and one U.S. senator for taking bribes. Now 69, Good says he is part investigator and part business executive, a role to which he is still adapting.

“It’s a challenge,” Good acknowledged recently. “Sometimes, we’re up half the night writing proposals” for potential clients, he said. “I’ve done well, but I’m not a millionaire.”

But few in the business get really wealthy, said Gatta, the private investigator on the Kissel murder case.

Money is often not the goal, anyway. “This has got to be in your blood,” Gatta said. “I like solving things. I like saying, ‘I caught you.’”

MELBOURNE has been revealed as a hanky-panky hotspot as suspicious husbands and wives hire private detectives in record numbers to spy on their spouses.

Private eyes are being paid thousands of dollars a week to trail unsuspecting partners and catch them in secret trysts with their lovers.

Private detective and former policeman Steve Murray said infidelity was booming in Melbourne. There is a one-third increase in clients hiring him to out love cheats compared with previous years.

He said most of his agency’s spy cases have confirmed clients’ fears of a spouse’s bedroom shenanigans with someone else’s wife or husband.

One man spent $11,500 having his wife followed when she walked out on him. Investigators discovered she had a secret policeman lover.

“It’s going on everywhere,” Mr Murray said.

Another private detective, Charles Rahim, said his agency’s infidelity cases have also jumped by at least a third this year.

He said people were also queuing to have their partners take lie-detector tests to prove their fidelity. Up to 70 per cent of men failed the test.

“It’s so big now, this cheating, it’s unbelievable,” he said.

Mr Murray said: “People are more aware of things – they’re able to check text messages on mobile phones.

“I don’t think we’re as stupid as we used to be.”

Mr Murray, who specialises in infidelity cases, said three-quarters of those contacting private eyes were women. Most clients were aged 35 to 50.

He said men were more likely to be cheating, but also were more likely to follow two-timing wives and girlfriends themselves.

He said Christmas was a danger time for cheating, as boozy office parties fuelled many illicit liaisons.

Mr Murray said deleting all voice or text messages from a mobile phone was a classic sign of cheating.

“You go to check your husband’s phone and it’s got no messages – even the sweet ones that you’ve been sending him – because he has to delete them all,” he said.

“The other classic sign is when the phone rings and he goes into the other room to take the call or goes outside.

“It’s telling you he doesn’t want you to hear that phone conversation.”

Other possible signs of an affair include moodiness, wanting more or less sex than usual at home, wanting to try new things, and accusing the other person of being paranoid.

Relationships Australia senior counsellor Rosalie Pattenden said infidelity affected one-third of couples.

But she said television shows such as Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City were more likely to help people spot cheating spouses than encourage copy-cat affairs.

“People are being more informed of the warning signs. When they see it on television, it makes them think,” she said.

“That’s when they’re more likely to hire a private detective.”

If appearances are to be believed

By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 22 December 2005, 22:19
A MEMO SEEN by the INQUIRER and which appears to be from the CEO of Guidance Software, John Colbert, purports that credit card numbers and names were extracted from the firm, prompting a security scare.

Guidance Software - motto: The Leader in Computer Forensics and Incident Response Solutions, appears to have sent out a letter to its customers dated December 13th.

We contacted the UK wing of the company early this morning for a comment on the purported memo and were referred to head office, in California. We have contacted California but are still waiting for a response at press time.

The memo seen by the INQ said that on December the 7th last, Guidance discovered a security breach of its electronic records. It, said the memo, quickly investigated the incident and discovered that last month a hacker had penetrated its systems. The memo continues that the database contained something like 3,800 people’s numbers.

If the memo we have seen is to be believed, it referred the matter to the US Secret Service, which has started its investigations.

Guidance said in the purported memorandum that it will cooperate fully with the relevant authorities. It has deleted all of its customer records, if the memorandum the INQ has seen is to be believed.

“This event,” according to the purported memo we saw, is “extremely troubling”. But Guidance is confident that the intrusion has been “terminated”. The firm is reviewing its procedures. But as the firm hasn’t got back to us yet, perhaps the memo we’ve seen is not real at all.

By DEANNA BOYD
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

Four men working with a reality TV show aimed at exposing infidelity were indicted Thursday on criminal charges stemming from the filmed confrontation of a woman outside an Arlington fitness center over her relationship with a Fort Worth police captain.

A Tarrant County grand jury indicted Joey Greco, the host of Cheaters, and Hunter Carson, the episode’s director, on charges of assault with bodily injury, unlawful restraint and hindering apprehension.

Walter Earl Woods, 36, and Thomas Daniel Gibbons, 19, security guards contracted by Cheaters, were indicted on charges of assault with bodily injury and unlawful restraint.

The four men did not return messages left through Bobby Goldstein, creator and executive producer of the Dallas-based show.

The charges stem from the May 4 encounter between Rafael Gutierrez Jr., 41, and his estranged wife, Maria Gutierrez, outside the Bally’s Fitness Center at 2306 Collins St., where she worked.

A private investigator hired by Rafael Gutierrez had filmed Maria Gutierrez and Capt. Duane Paul engaged in sexual conduct in an unmarked city vehicle at Vandergriff Park on three occasions. With a Cheaters TV crew of about a dozen employees in tow, Rafael Gutierrez confronted Maria Gutierrez about her alleged affair with Paul.

The indictments allege that all four men were a party to an assault on Maria Gutierrez when one of the security guards hit her in the leg with his own leg as he tried to restrain her.

In addition, the indictments charge that Greco, 45, and Carson, 29, hindered apprehension by providing Rafael Gutierrez with a means of leaving the scene before officers arrived, despite learning that he had a protective order against him.

Goldstein called the charges “just nuts” and joked, “I’m hiring Denny Crane from Boston Legal.”

“I’ve watched the tape from every angle, every camera, and it looks like someone there is trying to get their names in the paper,” he said.

Goldstein called the criminal charges a first for the television show, which airs on the WB Network.

“Only in Cowtown!” he said.

All the charges are Class A misdemeanors, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

Sean Colston, chief of the family violence unit of the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, said arrest warrants will be issued for the four men.

Excerpts of the confrontation and the private investigator’s footage from the park were shown to the media during a news conference by Cheaters in May.

In the footage, Maria Gutierrez can be seen talking on a cellphone when she is surprised by her husband and the TV crew. Arlington police have said she was talking with a Grand Prairie police investigator about repeated problems with Rafael Gutierrez.

With her husband hovering over her and yelling at her in English and Spanish, Maria Gutierrez tried to go back into the fitness center but was blocked by the Cheaters security guards.

A co-worker eventually helped her get back inside.

At the time, Rafael Gutierrez was awaiting trial on accusations that he had assaulted Maria Gutierrez twice in February in Grand Prairie, and a protective order prohibited him from going to his wife’s workplace.

He was later arrested for violating that protective order — a third-degree felony because he is also accused of assaulting her there. Court records show that Rafael Gutierrez was indicted Thursday.

The two previous assault charges are still pending.

Rafael Gutierrez did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Goldstein told reporters during the news conference in May that his crew members were unaware of the protective order against Gutierrez until they were filming the confrontation.

He has said the show did not feel that Gutierrez was a threat to his wife at any time.

Fort Worth police investigated Paul’s actions. In September, Paul was suspended for 90 days and demoted from captain to lieutenant.
Deanna Boyd, (817) 390-7655 dboyd@star-telegram.com

Retired Det. Michael Gaynor says 36-year-old convict is serving sentence for murder he didn’t commit
Monday, December 12, 2005
By REGINALD PATRICK
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER

Fernando Bermudez may be a real-life version of the title character in the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie The Wrong Man.

Retired Staten Island detective Michael Gaynor and others say the 36-year-old Washington Heights man is behind bars in upstate’s Shawangunk Correctional Facility doing a 20-years to life stretch for a murder he didn’t commit.

Bermudez was convicted of gunning down 18-year-old Raymond (Dred) Blount of Manhattan outside a Greenwich Village dance club on Aug. 4, 1991.

Gaynor, a private investigator with offices at 37 New Dorp Plaza, insists there’s strong evidence somebody else was the shooter.

He notes that the five people who identified Bermudez as the killer in 1991 from a photograph given to them by the police have since all recanted at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing in late 2002.

But to no avail. The judge who presided at Bermudez’ trial — John A. K. Bradley of Manhattan Supreme Court — doesn’t believe them.

And District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is standing by his prosecutor, Gaynor said.

I’m absolutely convinced this guy is innocent and has to be released, said Gaynor, who runs East Coast Detectives, Ltd, about Bermudez.

So Gaynor, who retired from the NYPD in 1990, just keeps plugging away.

Barry Kenyon, Bermudez’s lawyer, hired him back in 1991 to snoop around.

I got exactly one paycheck — for $500, Gaynor said. But I believe in this so much I’ve been working pro-bono ever since then. I just think this guy got railroaded.

Tomorrow, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Committee to Free Fernando Bermudez, a vocal group of friends and supporters, will rally at One Hogan Place in Lower Manhattan.

COURT TV

On Wednesday, at 8 p.m., the case will be profiled in a one-hour special on the Court TV series The Investigators. Associate producer Greg Kanaan said the program, entitled The Wrong Man? Mistaken Identity? will focus on what he described as glaring flaws in the case.

Scott Christianson, a former state criminal justice official, has written a book that cites the Bermudez case — Innocent: Wrongful Conviction Cases.

Gaynor blames this miscarriage of justice on sloppy and incomplete detective work as well as overzealous conduct on the part of the prosecutor and inexperience on the part of the defense attorney.

Ironically, it was another Staten Islander who oversaw the Bermudez investigation, building a case that Gaynor charges was suspect from the start.

Daniel Massanova, 44, of Richmond, a homicide detective with Manhattan’s 6th Precinct, was only interested in clearing this case and getting a pat on the back, not finding the real culprit, according to Gaynor.

He claims Massanova pressured witnesses into fingering Bermudez. All but one witness told me that he [Massanova] was very aggressive and they felt some pressure, Gaynor said.

Massanova is now facing assault, drunken driving and other charges stemming from a head-on collision in New Dorp last year that left two women seriously injured.

Massanova, who is now assigned to desk duty, could face up to seven years behind bars and dismissal from the police force if convicted.

New Dorp attorney Eric Nelson, who is representing Massanova, said he knew nothing about the Bermudez case, adding that his client did not want to comment on the matter.

The NYPD has also declined comment.

In the case, witnesses have told the court they were either pressured or tricked into identifying Bermudez as the shooter, according to Gaynor.

‘WOOL LOU’

A 20-year veteran of the NYPD, Gaynor said he early on learned the identity of Wool Lou, the man he believes to have been the actual shooter.

I gave Massanova Wool Lou’s name, address and phone number and advised him that Wool Lou left town right after the murder, Gaynor told the Advance.

He said Wool Lou has been criss-crossing the country.

I was able to get a photograph of ‘Wool Lou.’ I put a photo array together consisting of ‘Wool Lou,’ Bermudez and four other males of similar description. I showed the array to the two other witnesses. They both agreed that ‘Wool Lou’ looked more like the shooter that Bermudez.

From what Gaynor understands the real culprit is not ready to admit anything, though he has been interviewed by Court TV.

Gaynor said Bermudez was with three credible witnesses at the time of the murder. He said one of the witnesses was threatened by police when he came forward as an alibi witness.

The private eye claimed that police, at times have tried to hamper his investigation.

He also claimed Bermudez passed an independent lie detector test on Rikers Island several years back.

Gaynor said Bermudez’ attorney — the man who hired the private eye to look into the case — might have been overmatched in the courtroom.

Barry Kenyon was an immigration lawyer, Gaynor said. Having him represent Bermudez in a murder case was like hiring a podiatrist to perform brain surgery.

Reginald Patrick is a news reporter for the Advance. He may be reached at patrick@siadvance.com

Most Americans carry cell phones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset. Tracing a Cell phone

In recent years, law enforcement officials have turned to cellular technology as a tool for easily and secretly monitoring the movements of suspects as they occur. But this kind of surveillance - which investigators have been able to conduct with easily obtained court orders - has now come under tougher legal scrutiny. In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cell phone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing “probable cause” to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants.
The rulings, issued by magistrate judges in New York, Texas and Maryland, underscore the growing debate over privacy rights and government surveillance in the digital age.
With mobile phones becoming as prevalent as conventional phones (there are 195 million cellular subscribers in this country), wireless companies are starting to exploit the phones’ tracking abilities. For example, companies are marketing services that turn phones into even more precise global positioning devices for driving or allowing parents to track the whereabouts of their children through the handsets.
Not surprisingly, law enforcement agencies want to exploit this technology, too - which means more courts are bound to wrestle with what legal standard applies when government agents ask to conduct such surveillance.
Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on. Even if the phone is not in use it is communicating with cell phone tower sites, and the wireless provider keeps track of the phone’s position as it travels. The operators have said that they turn over location information when presented with a court order to do so.
The recent rulings by the magistrates, who are appointed by a majority of the federal district judges in a given court, do not bind other courts. But they could significantly curtail access to cell location data if other jurisdictions adopt the same reasoning. (The government’s requests in the three cases, with their details, were sealed because they involve investigations still under way.)
“It can have a major negative impact,” said Clifford S. Fishman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and a professor at the Catholic University of America’s law school in Washington. “If I’m on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime, or, worse, might have a hostage, real-time knowledge of where this person is could be a matter of life or death.”
Prosecutors argue that having such information is crucial to finding suspects, corroborating their whereabouts with witness accounts, or helping build a case for a wiretap on the phone - especially now that technology gives criminals greater tools for evading law enforcement.
The government has routinely used records of cell phone calls and caller locations to show where a suspect was at a particular time, with access to those records obtainable under a lower legal standard. (Wireless operators keep cell phone location records for varying lengths of time, from several months to years.)
But it is unclear how often prosecutors have asked courts for the right to obtain cell-tracking data as a suspect is moving. And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests.
Legal experts say that such live tracking has tended to happen in drug-trafficking cases. In a 2003 Ohio case, for example, federal drug agents used cell tracking data to arrest and convict two men on drug charges.
Mr. Fishman said he believed that the number of requests had become more prevalent in the last two years - and the requests have often been granted with a stroke of a magistrate’s pen.
Prosecutors, while acknowledging that they have to get a court order before obtaining real-time cell-site data, argue that the relevant standard is found in a 1994 amendment to the 1986 Stored Communications Act, a law that governs some aspects of cell phone surveillance.

By Jose Jesus Zaragoza

SOUTH BAY — They came in the veil of darkness looking for a quick refueling and left in handcuffs. According to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, two would-be fuel thieves were caught red-handed by a private investigator as they made their way to a 3,000-gallon fuel tank to stock up on free fuel.

Possibly inspired by two successful hits last month, police say the duo tried their chances again, this time overlooking a nearby car watching their every move.

According to detectives, the arrest is simply the latest in a line of captures aimed at reducing similar types of theft in farms throughout the area.

The thefts have plagued local farms for years.

In the past year, Okeelanta itself has lost 9,000 gallons to sneaky thieves who make their way to the fueling stations when no one is looking. Other farms near South Bay and several between West Palm Beach and Belle Glade have experienced similar crimes.

Sugar Farms counted itself as one more of the victims, until recently.

Responding to the thefts, Sugar Farms put the sheriff’s office on alert, hiring an investigator to come in at night and stake out the area for criminals.

On Nov. 30, the extra vigilance paid off.

That’s when detectives say a 1998 Kenworth Semi pulled onto the Sugar Farms property, about 19 miles south of South Bay on Hwy. 27. Heading straight to the 3,000-gallon capacity tank, the rig pulled up in complete darkness.

Detectives say the two were ready to fill up the rig with the red fuel when they spotted the investigator’s car nearby. Then they fled, turning north on Hwy. 27, toward South Bay.

Deputies caught up with the two before they got away, placing Jose Dia Gonzalez, 29, and Rafael Vazquez Diaz, 33, both of Miami, under arrest for the initial charge of trespassing. They didn’t manage to take any fuel with them. According to the sheriff’s office, the state attorney will be seeking to increase those charges to grand theft.

The criminals utilize custom equipment that continues to impress detectives. One arrest recently turned up a compendium of hoses, cranks and containers by one group, which was clearly ready for the job. The team of criminals siphoned 300 gallons in a matter of mere minutes with the equipment — a feat detectives could hardly believe.

“It was like they had their own little fire department,” said Detective Michael Fincannon, who used the equipment to pump the fuel back into the tank, surprised at how quickly the gear refueled the tank.

The sheriff’s office monitors the situation. Through some investigative work, detectives with the sheriff’s AG crimes unit say they believe there is a network of thieves involved. Taking with them hundreds of gallons, they turn around and sell the fuel at maybe a dollar a gallon to dump truck drivers and others who prefer the cheap fuel over paying two or three dollars per gallon of fuel.

“I’m sure there’s a little clique in Miami,” said Detective Fincannon. “They know where they can get diesel for a dollar.”

Businesses are utilizing methods of discouraging thieves to steal the fuel, though none has worked very well, detectives say. Locking up the fuel stations only guarantees that somebody will break through the locks to gain access and other methods don’t have much more success.

With a limited force covering such a wide-reaching area, it becomes difficult to catch the thieves at work, but detectives are hopeful that surveillance equipment and good old-fashioned vigilance will lead to more arrests and hopefully a decrease in crime.

If anything, the Miami connection might have caught wind of the arrests.

That’s a good thing, according to Detective Fincannon, who admits that, short of flooding the area with police, catching criminals is an almost impossible task. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” he said.

06 December 2005 13:36

Stephen Hayes has first-hand experience of how to identify fraudulent sickness claims

January can be a hard month to get through. The glitz of Christmas is over and summer is a long way away – and this can bring out the worst in people. Surveillance research shows that sickness claims are more often found to be dishonest in January than in any other month.

With an ever-deteriorating compensation culture throughout society, HR managers are increasingly aware of employees who are on long-term sick leave.

They have to consider the possibility that staff could be dishonestly abusing a caring employer, without forgetting that they could be dealing with a loyal employee in a difficult situation. So how can you tell?

Don’t write off the igea of using a commercial private detective agency as a fanciful idea from the movies – it can be an effective method of exposing false claims of sickness or confirming that an employee is ill.

Handle with care
Investigating your employees is a sensitive matter and it should be handled professionally and on well-grounded indications that something might be inaccurate. A healthy suspicion might save your company a lot of money.

Dishonesty comes in many forms and can include simple fabrications such as a falling accident at work, which can then translate into a long-term sickness claim. Over the past 12 months there has been press coverage of filmed evidence of so-called paraplegics playing golf, relatives stealing from one another and even one ‘employee of the month’ working covertly for a competitor.

But it is not always an excuse to take extra holiday. Spurious claims are often made to hide the fact that the individual is taking casual paid employment elsewhere.

How do investigations work?
Investigators need to be subtle but persistent in their approach, to avoid upsetting honest employees.

With fast cars and hidden cameras, surveillance operatives are trained about court procedures and how to produce filmed exhibits. An effective surveillance exercise involves interchanging vehicles and pedestrian personnel to get a clear film of the subject.

Following any investigation the employer will receive a written report detailing every aspect witnessed, and the film corroborating this. Legally, the content cannot be disputed and the operatives cannot be accused of bias towards their client, since the camera does not lie. Such evidence is often used in court or at employment tribunals.

Stephen Hayes is an independent surveillance consultant at Quantum Enquiries and Surveillance

German man fired from job for smoking

BERLIN, Dec. 3 (UPI) — A German man is fighting his employers’ decision to fire him for violating a voluntary no-smoking policy that rewarded him for giving up cigarettes.

Sandro Beier was terminated by Laserline after a private detective the company hired caught him smoking in his backyard, the Telegraph of London reports.

The company offers a monthly bonus of about $117 to employees who sign the no-smoking pledge.

Babett Deuse, operations and risk management supervisor at Laserline, said Beier’s home smoking was equivalent to lying and defrauding the company.

Beier said he smokes only on rare occasions when he’s stressed out.

His attorney criticized the company for spying at their employees’ homes.

An employment tribunal will rule on the legitimacy of the firing next week.

Investigator Follows Spouse, Documents Infidelity

POSTED: 12:35 pm EST December 1, 2005

GRANDVIEW, Ohio — Infidelity can be a reality in any relationship, NBC 4’s Mike Bowersock reported.

For some, picture evidence is the final item that ends a marriage.

Dean Boerger runs Boerger Investigative Services in Grandview.

“We had a business man whose wife suspected when he left state to come to Columbus, Ohio, to check on his businesses, had a local girlfriend,” Boerger said.

Boerger runs Boerger Investigative Services in Grandview.

For about $1,000 he’ll follow a client’s spouse with a camera and wait for that moment that could prove infidelity.

Boerger uses a variety of devices, including a pen camera.

“We use (the pen camera) if we have to go into bar situations,” Boerger said. “We document, we videotape all their activity, when they’re in the public view, when they’re in a public place. We have the equipment to be able to view and videotape, (which) documents their activities.”

Statistics of cheating spouses run all over the board, with some estimates as high as 60 percent, Bowersock reported.

The National Opinion Research Center in Chicago said that as many as 21 percent of all men and 11 percent of all women have committed adultery.

“You kind of wonder why are they working so late. One night I decided I’d drive by to see if he was really there and his car wasn’t there,” said a Columbus woman who did not want to be identified.

She said the classic signs of infidelity were there, but she didn’t want to believe her husband was cheating until she saw it on tape.

“I can’t even describe the … you’ve put that much of your life into a relationship and been through so much over a period of time, and to think it didn’t mean as much to the other person,” the woman said.

Boerger said he’s providing a his clients with a service, and when someone thinks his or her significant other is with another, there’s a good chance, they are.

“In most cases, I’d say nine times out of 10, there is some kind of activity going on,” Boerger said.

Some of the classic signs of cheating are working late, late-night phone calls, a lack of sexual interest, renewed sexual interest and lost wedding rings.

CHICAGO The push is on to get a convicted killer a new trial. Attorneys for Alstory Simon believe their client was framed and plan to petition the courts Thursday.

It was the Anthony Porter case that triggered then Gov. George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty.

Porter was released in 1999 after a Milwaukee man, Alstory Simon, confessed to a private investigator retained by Northwestern University, that Simon, not Porter, killed two people in Washington Park back in 1982.

“I just pulled it up and started shooting,” Simon said in his confession.

But now, two Chicago area attorneys, Jim Sotos and Terry Ekl, contend that Simon was coerced and pressured into that confession and that Simon was not the killer.

“People working on Anthony Porter’s behalf framed Alstory Simon for a crime he did not commit, with fabricated, false, and flimsy evidence,” Sotos said.

“I would not be involved with Alstory Simon unless I felt he was innocent and an injustice had occurred,” Ekl said.

Sotos and Ekl say that veteran private investigator Paul Ciolino made several promises or money and leniency to Simon to persuade him to confess. Ciolino disagrees.

“The only promise I made to him was that I would try to make sure he didn’t get the death penalty,” Ciolino said.

Ciolino denies that he did anything improper.

“I don’t have any rules. The Supreme Court says I can lie, cheat, and do anything I can to get him to say whatever I want him to say. The Chicago Police Department is a master at that. So is every other police department,” Ciolino said.

Simon’s estranged wife, Inez, told Northwestern’s Project Innocence in 1999 that she witnessed her husband kill the two people in Washington Park in 1982. One year later she implicated him again.

But in a videotaped statement taped earlier this month by investigators working for Sotos and Ekl, Inez Simon, in failing health, says that she was offered money in 1999 to say that her husband was the killer. Now she recants that version and claims her husband was innocent all along.

Professor David Protess of the Northwestern University Project Innocence denied that neither he nor his staff made any promises of compensation to Inez Simon or her family. He said there is no question about Alstory Simon’s guilt.

Lawyers Sotos and Ekl will request the court vacate the conviction of Simon, who’s serving a 37-and-a-half-year sentence in Danville.

Winnett, GA
11/22/2005

By Leslie Wiggins
Staff Writer
leslie.wiggins@gwinnettdailypost.com

LAWRENCEVILLE — The family of Leslie Marva Adams, a 40-year-old Lilburn woman reported missing last month under suspicious circumstances, has just hired T.J. Ward, the private investigator in the Natalee Holloway case, to help them bring her home.
Ward spoke with Alberta Adams, Leslie Adams’ sister, early Monday morning to begin formulating a plan of action.
“We know the police are overwhelmed with work, and I can get information faster,” Ward said. “Also, sometimes people like to talk to someone who is unrelated to the law enforcement.”
Part of the new plan is to have a fluent Spanish speaker on Ward’s team re-interview Adams’ neighbors, as many of them only speak Spanish.
“I think if a non-law enforcement agent approaches them and can communicate in their language we may be able to find something,” Ward said.
Ward, who is offering his services pro-bono, will also be working with Tracy Seargent, president of K9 Search and Rescue Specialists Inc. The company offers dogs that specialize in finding missing people, either alive or dead. Her dogs are adept tracking a person even if they have been missing for more than a month. Adams was reported missing Oct. 25.
Oftentimes not finding a missing person’s track is as important as finding one, Seargent said.
“I worked a case where the family was convinced she was in this 25-acre area,” she said. “We searched the area and I told them the dogs didn’t find anything. They were still convinced, though, that she was there. Later (the missing girl) wound up being two counties away.”
No specific location has been designated yet, but later this week Seargent and Ward will take the dogs looking for Adams.
Alayne Adams, Leslie Adams’ cousin, also spoke briefly with Ward on Monday.
“I’m very impressed, and I’m very grateful that he would be willing to help us,” she said. “We’re hoping he can get us some answers.”
Ward said he intends to work with Gwinnett police on the Adams case.
“I am working parallel with the law,” he said. “If we have info, we will hand it over to the Gwinnett police immediately.”
Anyone with information regarding Leslie Adams’ whereabouts is asked to call Detective Marcus Head at 770-513-5300.

Rockaways, Randolph snoop on illegal enrollees

BY LAURA BRUNO
DAILY RECORD

Private investigators are on the prowl, staking out bus stops and conducting home surveillance, for at least three Morris County public school districts cracking down on students illegally attending their schools.

School boards in Rockaway, Rockaway Township and Randolph recently hired professional help to expose out-of-district students illegally occupying seats that cost the public schools thousands of dollars.

Faced with space constraints and residents questioning hefty property tax bills, school officials said they owe it to taxpayers to get tough.

“We felt we needed all the weapons we can use,”said Arthur Travlos, Rockaway Township’s interim superintendent.

Since October, Rockaway Township’s investigator has ferreted out six illegal students — amounting to a $63,000 savings. The cost to educate a student in the district is $10,500.

“I totally support it,”said Donna Ricciardi, a Rockaway Township mother with two children attending the public schools. “We have such high taxes, and it’s not fair that we’re supporting students that belong in another district.”

Rumors have abounded for years, Ricciardi said, and she’s glad the K-8 district is taking strong action. It’s not fair to the students who do live in town, she said.

What if, during assemblies and special events, students singled out for participation weren’t township residents, she asked. The students who live in town might have been robbed of a good experience, Ricciardi said.

Rockaway Twp constraints

In addition to financial concerns, Rockaway Township also is struggling with space constraints.

The district could see an influx of 400 new students in the township with two new housing development approved for construction, Travlos said. Even without the new students, space in the district is cramped, he said.

“Our schools are overcrowded as is,” said Frank Giarratano, president of Rockaway Township’s school board. “We’ve been talking about how to handle the population and, if we’re going to the public for a referendum, we need to do everything possible first to ensure the children we have are our children.”

In late September, the township school board approved hiring Jeff Oster, a Mine Hill private investigator who employs four detectives. The board hired Oster’s firm on an hourly basis, not to exceed a total of $8,000. The district does not have the time, resources or expertise to do the job itself, officials said.

Back tuition

Within the past two months, the district received 30 leads. Of those, six students were identified by Oster’s firm as illegal. Two attended the middle school and four were in the elementary schools. Although the parents were offered the option of paying $10,500-a-year tuition to the district, all declined and removed their children, Travlos said.

Oster, a former Mine Hill police officer, said the families he busted knew they were wrong. Often, it’s a family that moved out of town, but didn’t relocate their children to the new school district. They use their old address and drop their children off at the bus stop. Or, children will live part of the week with relatives who live in town.

“They’re very upset, they cry and say they want to keep their child in the school system, but that’s not my call,”Oster said, describing the typical reaction when confronting a family.

Rockaway’s K-8 district also hired Oster last week at $35 an hour, since the borough has heard more complaints from residents, Superintendent Emil Suarez said.

In the past, Suarez has conducted his own investigations when suspicions arose. But with the number of tips increasing, he doesn’t have the time to camp out at people’s homes. Last year, he received a half-a-dozen tips. So far this year, he’s already gotten three.

Last year, Suarez discovered a family that enrolled with one child in his school and an older sibling in the Morris Hills Regional School District. The older sibling had special education needs and Morris Hills was paying the tuition for an out-of-district placement, he said.

Meanwhile, the family didn’t live in any of the towns that make up the regional district.

“It’s well worth it,” Suarez said. “If we spend $500 and we find out a student isn’t living in our district, in a way we’re saving taxpayers $9,000.”

In their zeal to find offenders, some New Jersey school districts have even offered rewards for tips that lead to successful cases, said Mike Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. Districts have offered up to $500 for a good tip, Yaple said.

None of the three Morris districts are considering rewards, but they are open to the idea of recouping back tuition. Rockaway and Randolph administrators said they have not ruled out that possibility if a case comes to light. In Rockaway Township, Travlos said, depending on the situation, the district may request back tuition, but has not sought it from the six families recently discovered.

Former coach

Randolph has a history of seeking back tuition in cases of fraud. The district tightened its registration procedures in 1992 when football coach and athletic director John Bauer Jr. was found to be living in his Netcong home, not a Randolph apartment.

Initially, the board determined Bauer owed about $27,070 in back tuition for his two children attending the high school. After a legal battle, the board settled for $7,724. One year later, another high-profile case uncovered a Morris Plains family sending their son to Randolph High School for three years. That family eventually agreed to pay $16,500 in back tuition.

Within the past two years, the Randolph board began receiving numerous complaints about suspicious cases, said Christine Carey, Randolph’s current school board president. Residents were calling with tips and were persistent in following up to hear the outcome.

This summer, the board hired a retired Morris County police officer to conduct investigations for $60 an hour. So far, no one has been identified, but several cases are pending, officials said.

“I think this is the best way to go,” Carey said. “It’s not something we can ignore. People pay high property taxes and they want to be sure everyone is contributing.”