Background Investigations

Since the beginning of civilization, there have been people who look to take the short cut and lie, deceive, cheat and take advantage of others. This is especially true when there is a large incentive, such as financial gain or personal/professional power.

Fortunately for the rest of us, there is a way to combat this behavior. The best way is to preempt the fraudulent activity by performing due diligence on the person of interest. Fraudsters, scammers, and cheats are not made overnight. They usually have a long history of varying levels of deception across numerous aspects of their life: professional, personal, legal, and educational.

We are often hired to circumvent this behavior and to eliminate the risk of our client becoming a victim. The best way is usually to have a background investigation performed on the individual or business, prior to any significant commitment by our client.

We pride ourselves on conducting the most thorough background Investigations on both people and businesses. While some of our techniques are proprietary and developed over years of investigating, we also utilize a combination of confidential resources, private, government-level subscription databases, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) techniques, social/professional media research, deep web searches, courthouse research, personal interviews, and at times, surveillance and other real-time data retrieval techniques. Additionally, we maintain access to various government records, court files, police reports, UCC and business filings, secretary of state records and tax information.

Some of the more common background investigations we perform

• Litigation and pre-litigation. Investigations into a potential subject of a lawsuit, or the involved parties and witnesses. Often used to discredit the dishonest.
• Due diligence. Typically these investigations are for corporate or business clients, and consist of verifying the experience and credentials of the principals involved in any given deal, merger, or acquisition. These sometimes include investigating the private lives of subjects to find out about any possible criminal or risky behaviors that could harm the proposed venture.
• Political Investigations. These cases are typically called “opposition research” and are designed to dig into a political candidate’s past actions and statements to find any potential leverage points for our client.
• Asset Searches. Full asset searches will locate bank accounts, financial institutions, balances, real property, and other assets at the state, regional, national and international levels.
• Dating and Premarital. As online dating has exploded in popularity, so has the number of fraudulent online accounts and scammers. Con artists the world over are involved with gaining the confidence of unsuspecting and emotionally vulnerable singles and then requesting “loans” or “advances.” The emotional and financial damage to the victims can be staggering.
• Pre-employment. It is always a wise move to hire us to review and verify information, education, job experience and other details that an applicant supplies on a job application or resume. We can uncover facts left off the application and investigate the applicant’s truthfulness and character.
• Tenant Screening. Any smart landlord that knows how expensive the wrong tenant can be knows to hire a professional to examine the perspective tenant’s financial, residential, employment and litigation history. It’s money well spent up front.
• Nanny or Elderly Caretaker screening. As our population ages, many of our older citizens become more vulnerable and need daily assistance from caretakers. The potential for fraud is very real. We are often hired to review the reputations and regulatory records of nursing home agencies, as well as the specific employees that are assigned to a particular patient.

We work closely with our client in all these cases in order to answer the questions that are relevant to the purpose of the investigation. Special attention is always given to areas where there is a strong history, and therefore, likelihood of fraud.

Do not wait until it is too late. So many of our clients come to us after the damage has been done. While we can often mitigate the damage, you are always better off letting us help you avoid it altogether.

To Learn More

For more information on how we can conduct personal and business Background Investigations in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, please contact DeWitt Detective Agency for a free case review.