2 weeks Ago By BuzzFeed
1. Warning: This post mentions human trafficking, child abuse, and child sexual assault. Private investigators have an incredibly unique job where they exist in a gray zone in which they exist as civilians but act like detectives.
In TV and movies, P.I.s are sly .
They move through the shadows to gain intel, whether investigating their clients' former business partners or cheating spouses. In a recent Reddit deep dive, I came across this post in the r/AskReddit sub where one user invited private investigators to share some of their wildest cases . A lot of them sounded like disturbing plots out of a true crime series, but many others were just as absurd.
Below is a combination that will give you chills, leave you confused, and perhaps, encourage a bit of laughter. Note: Some responses were also taken from here , here , here , here , here , and here . 2.
"We had a case years ago where two best friends ran a bar in a border town. One guy was a hard-working, professional business person. The other was not, and was running drugs through the bar for the drug cartel.
" "The good guy discovered what his friend was up to and confronted him. Next thing you know, the good guy was found dead on his balcony with a gun in his hand, but the scene appeared staged to look like a suicide. The good guy's mom knew it wasn't a suicide and begged us to help her prove it.
We sent a P.I. down there to do some digging, but my boss started receiving calls on his personal cell, warning us to back off.
We could not jeopardize the safety of our investigator, so we turned everything we had over to the police and withdrew from the case. I felt so bad for his mom. He was her only child.
" – u/Least-Reason-4109 3. "Got hired by a woman who thought her husband was cheating. I followed him for a few days, but instead of meeting someone, he kept going to this abandoned house in the woods every other night.
" – u/Dexsport_Fam 4. "My company sometimes does paternity investigations and DNA testing. We had a case where a woman with a newborn baby filed for child support, and the man disputed that it was his.
We tested them all. He wasn't the father, she wasn't the mother. The latter part was surprising, so we reached out to the lawyers since we wanted to rule out a sample error (accidental or otherwise) or medical stuff like surrogate pregnancy or chimerism.
We were eventually informed that the mother's medical records contained no evidence she'd ever been pregnant. The creepy part is that no one had any idea where she'd gotten the baby, or who the real parents were." – u/ThadisJones 5.
"With most homicides, you can kinda do the math; the money, power, betrayal, humiliation. But torture is always so bonkers. I saw a kid a couple of years ago where the mom put wires under her kid's nails.
Those cases sit with me for a while." – u/iremovebrains 6. "The BEST case I was part of involved a security guard my firm hired to do night watch on an electronics store.
I was part of a small firm that, at the time, provided security guards and private investigators. One night, we get a call from the guard. He’d had the shit kicked out of him, been tied to chair, escaped, and called the cops and the office to report a robbery at the store.
Three attackers managed to pry the back door open and subdue the guard and proceeded to rob the place of about a $100k worth of shit. The guard told a compelling story and looked like shit." "It took the police all of two days to track down the stolen stuff.
The thieves weren’t being very careful when it came to offloading the goods. They turned out to be the guard’s brother and cousins, and it was our guard's brilliant idea for them to come and rob the place and make it look like an armed robbery. What a goddamn idiot.
We still laugh about it. It must have been one of those thoughts that sounded brilliant and sophisticated in his own head, only to have the epiphany that it was moronic hit him with same Mack Truck-like intensity a little later on.It was unusual to have such a dumb movie heist plot happen with people I worked with.
" – u/Shart_Gremlin 7. "I wasn't a detective, but I worked as a skip tracer for a credit card bank in the early 2000s. I was a bill collector, basically, but because of my ability to track down people who had 'skipped out' on their debts, I was put on a 'task force' to go after accounts that exclusively had zero contact information.
" "My favorite one was when I tracked down a guy in the middle of South America doing his religious mission. He had access to a phone for one hour a day per week. My job was to call around and get information on how to reach him — at the time, I was in my early 20s, and as long as I didn't break FDCPA, the bank let me do my thing.
When I got the guy on the phone, he was flabbergasted that I'd tracked him down. He wanted to know how, so I told him. I called his mom, who told me about the mission he was on.
Then, when I called again, instead of asking which church he was through, I found a local church and said, 'Oh, he went down there through [SUCH AND SUCH] church, right?' Oh no, not that one. It was [OTHER CHURCH]. 'OH OF COURSE! [OTHER CHURCH]! That was with pastor Smith! No? Oh, Pastor Davis!' Then, called [OTHER CHURCH] and asked for Pastor Davis.
I explained that I'd just talked to his mom, and she suggested I talk to him to get a phone number. Pastor Davis supplied me with the phone number and the day and hour the debtor would be there. It took me a couple of tries, but I eventually got him on the phone.
He gave me permission to talk to his parents regarding the debt. I called them, explained what was up, and they worked out a payment arrangement. I think he owed less than $10k to the bank, which was on the low end of accounts I worked.
" – u/sm1ttysm1t 8. "The job was outsourced by another agency. It was for that evening, giving us only three or four hours to get ready (an important detail, as it meant we did not have time to screen the job and get all the details we'd normally ask for).
The brief was that the client suspected her husband was having an affair with a coworker (he worked at a hotel in a capacity I don't recall)." "We sent two agents to monitor him at work, requiring several hours of effort, all the while putting more on the expenses tab as the team had to keep buying drinks to avoid raising suspicion. The client would phone for updates every 20 minutes despite being told not to make contact and that a full report would be issued in short order.
The agents managed to tail the individual until the end of his shift (seeing nothing unusual) and discreetly followed him home, deciding to give the client a ring and confirm the address he'd come to was his house and not the coworker he was allegedly cheating with. The client evaded the question and demanded that the team return to the hotel. Confused and irritated, the agents went back.
They were greeted by the sight of the client scrambling out of a bush, binoculars in hand, directly opposite the hotel, where, judging from the state of her clothes, she had seemingly been most of the evening. Given how dark it was, there was no way she could have seen anything even with the binoculars. Furious, the agents questioned her, and it turned out the man they'd been watching wasn't her husband but rather someone she'd been sleeping with casually who was no longer returning her calls.
Stern words were had (and management even talked about bringing in police) and we blacklisted her. She did, however, pay promptly and in full." – u/mrhelmand 9.
"Actual P.I. here, but the only case that comes to mind was a woman who hired us because she thought her husband was cheating.
He was going out at night, being cagey about where he was going, and just generally acting weird. Turns out he was just going to a hookah bar and hanging out there for hours, then going home. No women, just him.
I guess he needed some me time." – u/yourlittlebirdie 10. "Took a job in California following this guy who'd been creeping around this lady's house.
Followed him and ended up in a warehouse right outside LA, where he met a group of men." "I decided to follow them as they left in a van and ended up going on an adventure that ended in Utah. Most people would've stopped well before that, but it was billable time, and my gut told me something weird was going on.
It was early morning the next day, and I ended up having to break off following them as they pulled off the highway and into the hills, and there was no way to follow right away. As soon as the sun was up, I followed the van's trail for about 30 minutes and ended up at a cement shack in the middle of nowhere. I hid my car around a bend and took my camera to take photos of the outside of the building.
I stayed for most of the day before anything happened, but finally, the first guy and his companions came stumbling out, the first guy obviously intoxicated but dragging a rope as the group headed to the van. Then, the first kid comes dragging out. Hands bound to the rope and covered in filth.
The rope continues as 10 kids are eventually hurried out in a chain gang and thrown into the van. I wasn't shocked, but I was disgusted, and the entire time I was snapping photos with my Nikon, trying to get clear photos of not just the men but the children. I waited until they left, then drove as fast as possible to the sheriff's office and presented my findings.
The group was found and eventually led to the apprehension of some very prominent people in the world of human trafficking. I always think it's strange how one seemingly odd stalker's mistake managed to bring down an entire ring of traffickers. I ended up eating most of my expenses, but I consider it one of my life's achievements, so it balances out.
" – u/BaschRozon 11. "I was a P.I.
for about eight years. I mostly worked injury cases for insurance companies, but I did work for one company that did everything other than insurance for a while." "I once had to locate a man experiencing homelessness so I could basically give him $300k.
He had been maliciously charged, probably the best way to put it, for a crime he did not commit. Basically, he was railroaded. He got half the money, and his attorney held the rest.
Then his house burned down, so he was homeless. I spent three nights a week for a month searching for this guy. I must have handed out more business cards and photos then than in my entire career.
Finally, I got a random phone call, and it was him. Never found out if he got his shit together or not. I had another where the guy was on work comp for some injury.
High-paying job, construction manager or some such. While on WC, he was working at another company, doing the same thing, two hours away. While I caught him working that other job, I also caught him cheating on his wife.
Like, 'having sex in the backseat of her car/his truck midday in a parking lot' cheating on his wife. I never had to go to a hearing for that one, but I would have died to be a fly on the wall for that mediation." – u/ZenithRepairman 12.
"Called the cops on like the drunkest driver ever. We followed the driver around as he went in circles for a while. The cops eventually caught up to us and arrested the guy when he stopped at a gas station to puke his guts out in the parking lot.
" "Joke's on the cops, I guess, because Mr. Drunk ended up puking in their backseat. I can't promise that Mr.
Drunk would've killed somebody if he hadn't gotten arrested, but I like to think I made a small contribution to society's overall wellbeing that night." – u/OhYeahThrowItAway 13. "My dad had a bailiff/collection agency/P.
I. business. Most of the work he did was skip tracing, cheating spouses, and insurance fraud.
I was 16 and he had me do a 'stakeout.' The lady came out of her door and waved at me, then gave me the finger. I sucked at it, obviously.
" "Once my dad had me go to this guy's house (in the middle of nowhere) to see if he was faking an injury. I knocked on the door and he said he was coming. He took about three minutes to get to the door, and he was really visibly injured.
I was supposed to ask if 'insert hurt guy's name here' was home (because I had no reason to be there). Then I was supposed to apologize because I was looking for a friend with the same name, but my age. I felt awful.
The insurance company paid out really quickly." –u /FakeAsFakeCanBe 14. "I’ve talked to child molesters, murderers, rapists, domestic abusers, animal abusers.
..you name it.
I go over all the most minute details with them. 'Yeah, you stabbed your wife. How many times? Where? Show me how.
How long? What motion? How much force were you using?' Blah blah blah. I’ve talked to child predators and discussed all their motivations and their past and how they did what they did, how many times, and every excruciating detail down to where and how they finished and what they did with it. I’ve heard it all.
" "But for me? This chick who worked with kids that got caught with a shit ton of the most sadistic child sexual abuse images you could imagine. It wasn’t even the child sexual abuse images that creeped me out. In my line of work, you get used to hearing about it.
It was the dark, sadistic, twisted, gleeful conversations she had with her online buddy discussing how watching newborns, infants, toddlers and little kids squirm in torture as they were being sexually destroyed turned them on, and then discussing/planning how they wanted to find a kid of their own — and specific kids in their families they had an eye on —to do that shit to. Together. I know you're wondering: probation.
" – u/Twenty_twenty4 15. "The saddest case we had was a stunning 24 to 26-year-old woman whose 60ish-year-old accountant husband was suspected of sleeping with his secretary (who looked like she'd fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down)." "The client hired us to follow him on a night he was 'working late'.
Sure enough he and the secretary left the office on time and went to a bar together. After a few drinks they retired to her car and we got some pretty damning footage of them shagging in the backseat (classy!). We gave the footage and report to the client, who promptly burst into tears and paid the $1,800 or so invoice.
The saddest part of the story is that she came back four times. Each time he was caught literally with his pants down. At the secretary's house, shagging in the car, shagging in the office with the blinds open in the middle of the day — you name it.
After about $15k worth of invoices, we actually sat down with her and explained we were going to stop taking her work. It was just cruel to keep taking her money to show her footage of her husband banging his ugly ass bimbo over and over and over. We never saw her again.
I hope she took him for all he was worth." – u/AviMin 16. "P.
I. for five years. I had a few exciting, not necessarily strange cases.
One incident was a coach who was sleeping with one of the female players. One of the benched players hired me to document the coach for sleeping with one of the starters on the team..
.they were careful with how they arranged their meetings, and it took me a bit to document it, but I ultimately got the information." "Fast forward a week later, and the papers are reporting the coach has resigned to work in the family business.
Fast forward another week, and the story broke with all the evidence I'd collected (I was not named in the story, as I had requested not to be). Another case was my quickest (two hours). Picked up surveillance after the subject had dinner with his wife at Applebee's, followed him to a hospital parking garage, and he went in to visit his mother.
I stayed to monitor the vehicle, and another one showed up. The subject exited the hospital and jumped into the other vehicle..
.I then recorded him getting a blowjob. Case opened and closed in two hours.
I have many, many more stories...
some funny, some really sad (I specialized in father's rights cases)." – u/philds2nuts If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.
CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages..
