Unless you can provide clear leads, the police are unlikely to prioritize your case. That’s just one reason to get a PI on the job.
Don’t wait for the police department to follow up on your report. Hire a PI to investigate your case. A PI can work your case up to the point police can do their job. Your PI will also look into the culprit to find out how you can go about being compensated for your losses. An investigation with your goals at its core will yield better results for you when it comes to a conclusion.
Countless clients have come to me stumped as to why the police haven’t investigated their case.
We’ve all been told that if we file police reports, the next step is an investigation. This is not the case. In fact, piles of criminal incident reports are not investigated every year.
The fact of the matter is that busy police departments have to prioritize their caseload. One way for a victim to get their case at the top of the list is to hire a private investigator to investigate the backgrounds of the suspects and circumstances so the police detectives can concentrate on issuing subpoenas for corroborating evidence. They want to present complete cases to the state attorney’s office for prosecution. Financial fraud cases are especially tedious and require specialized skills, and thus take a lot of time to bring to fruition. Simultaneously, a private investigator will normally look for the funds of the criminal activity so that the victim will have the possibility of being compensated at the end of the case. A police detective is more concerned with an arrest and a successful prosecution.
Cases of financial fraud require a particularly specialized investigation because to find a clear solution to these cases you will need to be able to place the culprit at the computer used to carry out the crime. Con artists have global reach from a single computer and hide behind software that obscures their location. Investigating this kind of case requires ISP and IP information, physical surveillance, and much more. The police will not pursue these cases unless you take the initiative to conduct the first part of the investigation.
That’s where your PI comes in. We can do the first half of the work and present the case to the police department where you filed the report. Oftentimes it takes a little pushing on our part to get the ball rolling on their end, but in most cases, if we can provide clear leads, they will investigate your case.
Recently, my firm carried out a case involving a con artist who hacked my client’s online business. She was able to get a hold of legitimate accounts and then change them to her email address and phone number to lock the legitimate users out and use the accounts to carry out her scams. She then put in stolen credit card information using legitimate accounts and proceeded to sell bogus goods, services, and travel packages via social media, blogs, and chat lines. A report was filed and the police did nothing.
The company hired us to investigate the case when the police dropped the ball. We completed the investigation and handed it over to law enforcement officials. They still have done nothing, and it’s going to take some pushing on our part to get them to finish it.
The hard truth is the police have to prioritize their caseload and thus cannot always be counted on to investigate your case. To get the results you need, you must take matters into your own hands. If your police report has fallen by the wayside, contact me at Mignolet@bellsouth.net for a consultation on how to best proceed.