Private Investigators

Growing up, Ashley Wardlow was the type of kid who always had to get to the bottom of a mystery.

WARDLOW: I investigated everything. My brother stole something out the refrigerator one time. It was mine. And I remember trying to use tape to lift his fingerprint off the refrigerator so that I could then see if it matched the fingerprint on my empty bottle. I knew it was him.

Today, she makes a living out of detective work, as a licensed private investigator.

WARDLOW: Aside from being a very good nosy person, a private investigator is going to go out and get you the answers that you need to questions that police may not get involved in because it’s not a crime. We go out, we get the dirt, the grime, the good stuff, the bad stuff — you name it, we get it.

Most of us have a pre-conceived idea of what private investigators do all day. Maybe you’ve read about their exploits in a paperback thriller, or watched their daring pursuits in a TV show.

WARDLOW: Yeah, it’s definitely laughable. We cannot jump out of the helicopter and get you the evidence that you need. We cannot go and hold our breath under water for eight hours. I’m sorry. We’re not mermaids. Yeah, people ask us to do some stuff and it’s like humanly impossible. They don’t understand that that’s on TV. This is real life.

For Wardlow, a typical week is a little more subdued. It often involves sitting around in a car for hours at a time, or piecing together a trail of evidence from social media posts. But, that’s not to say that the job is dull.

WARDLOW: I’m very good at disguising. I will change my hair, I will throw on a wig, I will put on the fat suit. Like, you won’t even know it’s me.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: private investigators.

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If you’re the victim of a crime like a robbery or an assault, you can call the police. They’ll file a report and will investigate the case for you. But there are all kinds of smaller, non-criminal things that people and companies want to investigate — things that the police generally don’t spend time on. That’s where private investigators like Ashley Wardlow come in.

WARDLOW: We have the manpower to actually go out. We’re going to sit and do surveillance for 12, 14, 16 hours. Everything’s not a crime, but people still deserve answers.

Private detective, private eye, private investigator, or simply just P.I. — all of these terms are used to describe someone who offers sleuthing services to private clients for a fee. The concept first came about in France in 1833. That’s when an ex-convict named Eugène-François Vidocq started an agency that promised to investigate personal affairs, like infidelity and missing relatives.

In the 1850s, The Pinkerton National Detective Agency introduced the industry at scale in the United States. The organization foiled an assisination attempt of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, tracked down outlaws in the Wild West and busted unions on the behalf of industrialists. Today, there are around 39,000 private investigators in America. A lot of them have a background in law enforcement or the armed services.

WARDLOW: I see a lot of ex-military and actually a lot of ex-police officers. They’ve retired and they don’t want to sit around. So they come out and get back in the field doing P.I. work. I decided I did not want to take the route to be a cop first because it would take a long time to be promoted to a detective. So in my head, I’m like, how can I not have to wait so long. And the P.I. route is what I decided to do.

In most states, PIs must be licensed. They can then strike out on their own as independent contractors, or join a firm. Wardlow took the latter route. She’s the chief operating officer at Nathans Investigations in Florida. The company has investigators all over the state and works on around 1,000 cases every year.

WARDLOW: If you think of it we probably offer it. We get the cases where people call in about infidelity, worker’s compensation, fraud, romance scams.

Wardlow and her team work with all kinds of clients. Sometimes, it’s an insurance company that wants to know if a person claiming to be injured is really injured.

WARDLOW: If they call us and say, “Hey, this person shouldn’t be doing any exercise, they hurt their back at work.” And — this has happened — we go out and we see that you’re at the basketball court playing just as good as Michael Jordan.

Other times, it’s a divorce attorney looking to dig up dirt on someone avoiding alimony payments.

WARDLOW: It may be someone trying to hide the fact that they have another job, or they have assets somewhere else. If you have a hidden boat somewhere docked, I’m pretty sure the other person is going to want to know about that. They want a piece of that boat, okay. That should be presented in court because everything has to be taken into account.

They’re even hired by corporations to investigate rogue former employees.

WARDLOW: We have people contact us and say, “Hey, I have someone who may be violating a competitor’s agreement,” — something along those lines. And it’s up to us to go out and see if this person has another company started with similarities to the first company.

CROCKETT: How about missing people? Are you ever hired to track down, like, a long-lost relative?    

WARDLOW: Yes. Sometimes family members will call and say, “Hey, I have a relative, he’s homeless. We don’t know where he is, but every so often he calls from this gas station or this 7-Eleven.” So, we’ll use details like that to kind of canvas the area. And we don’t want to alert people, if they don’t want to be found, but we were lucky enough in a couple of cases where we did find a missing person and make contact with his family.

But at Nathans, the largest share of calls — around 25 percent — come from people who suspect that their partner is being unfaithful.

WARDLOW: We don’t go out hoping to find someone cheating. Because I’m a hopeless romantic. I want people’s relationships to work out. But at the end of the day I have a job to do, and that’s to get you the answers you need, no matter how hard it is to tell you.

When one of these calls comes in, the first thing Wardlow does is vet the client. She’ll often run a background check to make sure they’re not a known stalker or abuser.

WARDLOW: We have declined a number of cases because our gut is telling us this person’s fishy or they have a sketchy background.

Once a client is cleared, Wardlow will start by asking for details on their romantic partner.

WARDLOW: You definitely need someone’s schedule, what their typical routine is. We ask for pictures, vehicle information. We ask for their social media so that we can see the type of things that they post. They’ll say, “Hey, this is this person’s work schedule. I think they’re leaving after work and meeting up with someone at the gym.” They kind of need to give you a starting point.

PIs don’t enjoy the same legal authority as police detectives. Cops can get search warrants, use force, and, in some cases, tap phone lines. PIs have to follow the same laws as any other citizen.

WARDLOW: We often tell the client where we may run into, you know, like a stalemate. We can’t go any farther than this part right here of the investigation.

CROCKETT: What are some things that maybe you’re asked to do but you can’t do?

WARDLOW: Look through windows, scale the walls. We’ve been asked to go into certain places that we can’t go because there’s something called “expectation of privacy.” We’ve been asked to go into places and we have to tell the client, “Listen, we can’t go there. We can’t record inside the bathroom. Just because we see someone through a window, we can’t record them. You cannot film someone in their home.”

CROCKETT: How often would you say a client asks you to break the law?

WARDLOW: All the time. All the time. Some people are aware and they want us to cross those lines — and we’re not going to do it.

That can’t be said of all private eyes. The profession doesn’t exactly have the cleanest reputation. PIs have been busted for illegally hacking into email servers, threatening investigation subjects, paying bribes to cops for information, and even stealing money from clients. But Wardlow says Nathans Investigations goes by the book.

WARDLOW: We don’t cross the legal lines but if you call with the craziest request and it’s something that we can legally do? If it will give you some peace of mind we will do it.

So, how exactly does a private investigator go about solving a case? And how much do they charge for their services? That’s coming up.

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After a private investigator like Ashley Wardlow takes a case, the process usually begins with a day or two of old-fashioned surveillance. Maybe the client shares that her husband has been taking an extra two hours at the gym. The investigator will hop in a car — often an inconspicuous rental — and stake out the gym parking lot.

WARDLOW: Even if you think it’s just gonna be a 4-hour case, you kind of have to be prepared to be in your car all day. You can hope that there’s a nearby bathroom. Something small to snack on. You cannot sleep. When you sleep, you lose the subject. And you have to have a full tank of gas because you don’t want to run out of gas while you’re tailing somebody. We have to look for intersections that may allow us to, you know, park a little distance away from the target house to where we can still see them, but they won’t necessarily pay too much attention to us. We’ll lift our hood up and look like we have a car issue just so that the neighbors don’t get too suspicious. We ride around with disguises in our car, even if we’re not necessarily working a case, because we never know if we are going to get a call. Definitely hat, baseball caps, glasses, all of those things. I would always have a construction vest in my car. I would have some gym clothes in case I needed to go into a gym to watch someone. I would always have a pair of heels and a nice dress, because Miami, right? You have to be ready. And a swimsuit, okay? Because we would go by the poolside sometimes to watch people.

All the while, the investigator has to be furtively capturing any suspicious behavior.

WARDLOW: You’re supposed to look like you’re taking a selfie when you’re recording someone. You’re supposed to make faces, you’re supposed to smile and act like you’re on FaceTime.

Most private investigators are responsible for providing their own equipment. There are a number of specialty websites, like Detective Store, PI Gear, and The PI Guy. You can buy $2,000-dollar night vision binoculars and surveillance cameras disguised as key fobs and coffee cups.

WARDLOW: Nowadays, the equipment is so much more enhanced. Years ago, you would be lucky to get a pen with the camera, and the quality wouldn’t be the best. They have literally come out with so many things. And I have to say, the Ray-Ban glasses with the camera where you can talk to the glasses —

CROCKETT: The Meta glasses?

WARDLOW: Yes, yes! Those are amazing.

CROCKETT: I’m not sure that’s the market Mark Zuckerberg had in mind.

WARDLOW: Well, all the P.I.s said thank you.

Surveillance work can be a bit like wildlife photography. You sit around for 12 hours to get that one majestic shot. But every now and again, Wardlow will get lucky earlier than planned.

WARDLOW: So, a gentleman calls in and he is suspicious that his wife is possibly having an affair. He wanted almost a week worth of surveillance because he really felt that something was going on. Around the last day, she left work early. She went to her man’s house, okay. And I was very surprised by this because she has a great life. Big house, big, beautiful family. And she was over in the trailer park.

CROCKETT: And how far do you go to confirm that there’s infidelity in a case like that?

WARDLOW: Well, for her, they were caught outside. The guy was topless, and they both were smoking cigarettes, and he went in for it.

CROCKETT: Okay, there were clear signs.

WARDLOW: The sign was when he gave her a smooch and squeezed her behind. We call it the golden ticket.

Like any job, there are also times when things go wrong. The worst-case scenario is being found out. If a P.I. parks in the same spot too long, neighbors might become suspicious and call the cops. Wardlow says the police usually leave her alone when she discloses she’s a private investigator working within the bounds of the law. But it’s a much bigger deal when the person she’s trailing catches onto her.

WARDLOW: Some people are paranoid. So they’re always watching. Every P.I. has been found out before.

CROCKETT: And what happens when someone you’re staking identifies you?

WARDLOW: It’s really up to the client how they want to proceed. We will always make suggestions and let them know, “Hey, you may want to stop for a week.” We can always switch the investigator. So there’s a different person, there’s a different vehicle. To my surprise, I did have a client that said, “Hey, I know that she knows she’s being followed. I don’t care. Stay on her.” And at this point it became “The Fast and the Furious.” Like, I remember trying to keep up with this lady, driving through Florida. I mean, she is drifting through the streets, cutting the red lights and everything.

High-speed surveillance isn’t a part of every job. These days, a lot of Wardlow’s cases can be handled using digital tools.

WARDLOW: We love social media. Some people, they like to post everything that they do, every place that they go. Sometimes it turns into like a boasting thing, right? They wanna show people, “I have money, so guess what — I’m staying at the Mondrian.”    Every move they make — you know, “Hey, we’re going to South Beach tonight.” And I’m like, “You know what? Me too!” I actually solved a scamming case using a picture from someone’s CashApp profile. That picture was actually linked to a social media profile. So, yeah — any type of digital footprint that someone leaves we are going to go on the hunt for it.

So how much will hiring a private investigator run you? Wardlow says Nathans charges $125 to $150 an hour. That covers the firm’s overhead costs, like marketing, admin work, and the many tanks of gas required to tail people all day. It also covers the salary of the investigator who works the case. Nathans pays its P.I.s around $40 an hour — higher than the industry median of $25. An investigation can take anywhere from a few hours to months, depending on the nature of the case. So, the final bill can vary.

WARDLOW: I would say, at minimum, maybe about $700, And it definitely can get into the thousands if it’s a great number of surveillance days, or if we had to go someplace that was not expected. The worker’s comp — those are pretty quick to solve because these people, most of the time, they’re not supposed to be doing anything and they’re outside literally doing everything. The infidelity cases, those take a little longer. People are sporadic because they don’t want to get caught. So they are switching up the schedule and we have to go out sometimes for weeks at a time.

One tough thing about the job is knowing when to call off an investigation.

WARDLOW: If it’s been a week and we haven’t gotten anything, we will sit down with the client and say, “Hey, nothing has happened. We have not seen any activity.” And if that client is still adamant at that point that something’s going on, we’ll tell them, “Listen, let’s take a break. And then pick this back up. Because even though it didn’t happen this week, it is very possible that something’s going on.” So, it’s really the right-time-right-place type of thing.

Wardlow estimates that a client’s suspicion of wrongdoing turns out to be right around 80 percent of the time. But regardless of the outcome, the investigator will write up all of their findings and deliver a report to the client at the end of the service.

In the movies, you’ll often see a P.I. slip a manila folder across the table with some compromising black and white photos inside. In real life, it’s typically a digital folder with an hour-by-hour breakdown of observations, and video footage. Generally, information that’s obtained legally can be used in court by the client.

WARDLOW: We don’t necessarily call the police and let them know, hey, this person is doing X, Y, and Z. It’s up to the client, but at least they have the evidence that they need from a licensed agency.

A private investigator’s job is usually done when they hand over the file. They’re paid to find answers — not take action on the outcome of an investigation. But for Ashley Wardlow, the work doesn’t end when she finishes up for the day.

WARDLOW: I am the friend that everybody calls, the family member that everybody calls. My mom probably isn’t happy, but I do research and background checks on anyone that she thinks she’s going to date. I’m going to find out everything. And I mean everything.

For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett.

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This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson and Dalvin Aboagye. And thanks to listeners Kerry and Jeremie Laval for suggesting this topic. If you have an idea for an episode, feel free to email us at everydaythings@freakonomics.com. Our inbox is always open. All right, until next week.

CROCKETT: What do you do if you have to, like, pee or something?

WARDLOW: There are things on Amazon.