What do you do when you don’t know if you can trust someone in your life?
The wayward spouse is by far the most obvious and cliché example —for good reason. But there are also business associates, a new boyfriend, employees and even childcare workers who might raise your hackles.
There are lots of avenues to pursue when searching for information, especially in the United States where public records are much more accessible than in Canada. However this can produce outdated or incomplete information, so proceed with caution.
If you suspect illegal activity, your options are limited here, but you can take comfort that your personal information is safe from prying eyes.
Can I search criminal records?
Not in Canada. Criminal record checks can be conducted by police services, companies that perform name-based checks, and accredited fingerprinting companies. If you hire a company to do a name-based check, you should know first that not all police services contribute to these data banks, and that they may not share all their information, says the RCMP.
What about sex offender registries?
In Canada, the public does not have access to the National Sex Offender Registry. It is accessible to police, and contains contact information for people convicted of designated sex offences.
Last year in Ontario, the government released a database of sex offenders by postal code after a Supreme Court ruling ordered them to do so, but it doesn’t contain names.
Can I run a credit report on someone else?
No, not in Canada. You can check your own credit report, but not somebody else’s. If you need one for a job or a rental, they may ask you to do it yourself, or fill out a form giving a third party permission.
Depending on what you’re looking to uncover, try all of the social media angles, as there are still people who aren’t aware of privacy settings on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the host of others. Of course, what you’re seeing there may be a fabricated image far removed from reality.
Once you’ve exhausted those options, it might be time to hire a professional.
We spoke with Themi Gitersos, Chief investigator at Elemental PI in Ottawa about the private investigative work he does.
What is the most common request you get?
“By far, the single biggest thing I do is find people. So either i’m looking for a parent, I’m looking for a child, for a witness for something that’s occurring in court, finding people for whatever purpose is probably 50 per cent of what I do. Usually it’s lawyers or private individuals looking for family, estranged family or adopted or biological parents.
Those are pretty frequent but the government will ask me to locate people as well. Sometimes they need clarification on something that happened 30 years ago and they’ve lost track of the person.”
Is the stereotype of the PI snooping in the bushes wrong?
“Well, I’m not going to say I don’t do that, I definitely do that… if you’re wondering what someone is currently doing, surveillance is the only way to find out current activity.
Clients [come] from various levels of government, law firms, major corporations to private individuals. I might be going out to do an employee misconduct investigation - is it a city employee plowing driveways with city equipment? It could be infidelity, which is the first thing people usually think of when they think of a private investigator. Maybe one in 10 cases involve infidelity.”
Do people look for answers they might regret?
Oh yeah, all the time. The big one would be infidelity. They don’t want to find the bad thing, but that’s what happens.
Are they usually right to be suspicious?
Not always, there’s a lot of very untrusting people out there. They might have been burned before, and they’re just not willing to trust. But around 70 per cent of the time they’re right.
Has the Internet changed your business?
“Everything that I look at, for the most part, is open source. So, there’s nothing that blocks people from doing it, but the trick is really putting it all together. The information is there, but good luck sorting it. It can be very difficult.
You’ll see on Facebook, every once in a while you’ll see one of those things ‘I’ve spent 20 years looking for my brother, please pass this along.’ Instead go out, spend $500 to get a private investigator to do it and you’ll have it by the end of the week.
There’s a lot of data out there, but not knowing how to search it and how to query it properly is what really limits people.”
How ‘private’ are private investigators?
The client will also guide me on what I can and can’t do. Sometimes investigations are very open, where I’m taking to people and taking notes and setting up interviews. Most often though, it’s discreet, so I can’t go asking around. So either I don’t ask at all and I just sit on the fringes or I’ll watch instead and make surveillance if it’s applicable, or just look at things online.
What is your typical day?
I spend a lot of time at the courthouse, at the library, archives, sometimes I’m on the street doing surveillance. Right now I have six cases on the go, two are surveillance cases, four are research.
What does it cost to hire a PI?
The fee range is generally $60 to $150 per hour. That’s a large variance, but there’s a lot of different kinds of investigators. A fire investigator would charge quite high because they’re very specialized and there’s only a few of them.
Usually the $60 guys, they end up lumping quite a bit of money on top afterwards. I charge a flat rate, I just prefer it that way —and got sick of doing the math at the end of a case. It depends on experience, on your niche in the market.
What should potential clients do before they call you?
“I had someone call once, she wanted to find her father and I quoted her a price, and she didn’t have enough and she got offended.
But then she looked on Canada 411 and found someone. So she’s telling me ‘oh is this all you do? It isn’t very hard’.
“Look, I expect people to look at Canada 411 before they call me.”