Ross Investigators PC, Inc.

(Continued from part 1 of 2)
The staff members based out of Trustify’s opulent Arlington, Virginia Headquarters unfortunately learned the hard way that they would end up working without pay. They must now join the ranks of Trustify’s former landlord, public relations firm and attorneys whose paychecks were backburnered while Boice and Mellon indulged in lavish spending. Boice also owes over 10K in child support backpay. As though the FBI investigating now investigating him for embezzlement wasn't enough.

Of course, Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region are built upon a rich history of boom/bust stories, most of which do not end well. There's the Baby Doe Tabor story and all the prospector's gold sites that eventually worked their way to profitability by building ski resorts and turning caved in mine shafts into high end tourist resorts. 

The intrigue of the venture capitalist "uberizing" the private investigator industry with an app  was astutely expressed by PursutMag Editor-in-Chief, Hal Humphreys [Disclosure: PursuitMag and the Denver Private Investigator Blog are content partners] who is a fan of disruptors and of startups. “Most of them fail. Most of them fail miserably" he also pointed out but, "every once in a while, one hits and changes everything." 

Pursuit published several articles about Trustify and some of the other authors were not as forgiving as it's Editor but it's coverage over time provide a great sense of the former dumpster fire's rise and fall.

The Trustify App, part 1 ​

The DrivenForward blog maintained by Glen Hellman wins for most consistent, persistent and comprehensive coverage of the Trustify fiasco. It contains primary documents as well as a running chart of statuses of lawsuits against Trustify. Hellman was actually pursued by one of Boice's attorneys and posted the notice on his blog. 

My final effort to verify the derelict status of the site’ was to call the 888 number. I dialed and got a busy signal. When was the last time I heard one of those? 

Will the consumer driven demand for a standard hourly with no retainer fee be met by yet another disruptor rendering the private investigator industry as we know it as obsolete as a busy signal?

​Only time will tell. Hopefully savvy investigators as well as savvy tech entrepreneurs will continue learning from the mistakes of their predecessors.  

Bibliography:

Washington Biz Journal - https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/08/22/heres-whats-left-of-trustifys-private-eye-inspired.html

Driven Forward - https://drivenforward.com/former-trustify-employees-awarded-260-thousand-judgement/

Washingtonian - https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/12/09/is-the-blogger-mr-cranky-glen-hellman-out-to-save-dc-tech-industry-or-destroy-it/

PursuitMag - http://pursuitmag.com/a-trustify-postmortem/

​By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger 

If you visit Trustify’s LinkedIn listing you’ll see an announcement that reads: "Trustify has 34 job openings - find the one for you." Positions titled “Marketing Content Copywriter” and “Content Producer” include great benefits. The listings, posted a month ago, also boast of a new and presumably improved mission dedicated to, “democratizing access to private investigation and intelligences services.” Does this mean the Arlington, Virginia based multi-million venture capital backed tech startup once poised to disrupt the private investigator industry is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the dumpster fire of law suits that’s been following its demise?
 

Click on “apply” and get directed to a “This job is not available anymore” notification that was presumably posted and managed by a LinkedIn admin. Perhaps the position was filled? Scroll down to a heartfelt statement by Trustify founders, Danny Boice and Jennifer Mellon. After basking in the rays of their “God given mission” and reiterating several times that they regard employees as “family,” the couple concludes by praying for the opportunity to demonstrate their transparency to prospective employees. 

Boice and Mellon's prayers evidently do not apply to former Trustify employees, Matthew Scott, Elisabeth Nugent, Kevin Wiggins, Stacy Blackburn, Bey Wesley, Matthew Blanchard, Bernadette Vielhaber and Andrew Little who just won a $260,000 judgement against the company for several weeks backpay, lost wages, damages and labor law violations. In addition to the most current coverage, Glen Helman’s Driven Forward blog posts includes a tally of all six of Trustify’s litigants complete with type, status, amount and an outstanding tab of $1,627,206.99.

Click through to Trustify’s derelict website and explore the catacombs of the former landing page. The skeletal remains of a footer note the celebrated and ostracized, “$99/hour” private investigator service with no retainer fee. Boice, his wife (the couple is separated now) and their staff sold PI services to people who wouldn’t ordinarily hire a private detective because the expense was prohibitive. Then private investigators with whom Trustify subcontracted took home $30 of what could be as much as a $99 hourly pay. In the era of the venture capital backed app, why not use the Uber model to make ridesharing more affordable for everyone? (As a freelance writer who lives paycheck to paycheck, I can totally understand the appeal.)
 
 The Occupational Employment Statistics put out by the US Department of Labor put median 2018 hourly rate for private investigators in the United States at $27.50. While the PIs that I know, personally, tend to earn more, this was the average reported by the BLS in 2018. 
 
Many independently employed private detectives can charge higher than the national average of $27 for their services because they have more experience than most of their competitors. Some have journalism degrees and others are former police and military. Some even have law degrees and all this is reflected in the price point.
 
It would be challenging, though not impossible, for a Colorado PI to sustain him or herself if they charged the median hourly wage in a state where even the small town residents pay big bucks for food and shelter. A recent Lending Tree study reported on CBS that Breckinridge, Colorado and Steamboat Springs, Colorado both made the top ten for most expensive towns in the country list. Boulder is the most expensive city in Colorado and with a median income there of $71,540 and with Denver skyrocketing it is not surprising people living and working in these regions need to be charging more and working more hours.

Several Colorado private investigators who were willing to give Trustify a go during their lean times informed me that because the service hadn’t properly vetted clients and provided no reimbursements for travel or database subscriptions, it wasn’t a viable investment of their time and energy. Consequently they stopped using the service to try and find work.
(Part 2 of 2 coming soon) 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger 

Private investigators specializing in legal investigations frequently integrate Google Earth and other forms of aerial imagery into their investigations. A related story broke last night that is being lauded being lauded by publications worldwide as a landmark case because it lead to a case being solved accidentally when a West Palm Beach cold case was unearthed by a discovery made while someone looking at his old neighborhood.

According to the Sheriff's office Facebook page September 10th news release, "the remains were positively identified as William Moldt," after his heavily calcified car was dragged out of the lake it was found in. The accidental Google Earth discovery lead to the skeletal remains of someone who disappeared in 1997. 

See also: are Amazon drones coming for your surveillance gigs? 

At the time of Moldt's 1997 disappearance the gated community was under construction but a little over two decades later, a former resident noticed a vehicle submerged in a lake on his computer screen. Using Google Earth's aerial map of his old neighborhood, he spied the car in the lake and informed a former neighbor and current resident of the community. That neighbor borrowed  another neighbor's drone to more closely investigate.

​They contacted the property owners and then finally, the police who brought in a tow line which they used to bring the remains to Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office for processing. The body was identified as William Earl Moldt who was reported missing in November 1997.

Stories of citizen sleuths uncovering calcified cars using private investigator technologies isn't limited to Google Earth. Last week a child in Vancouver, British Columbia solved a 27 year old cold case this way. 

Storyful's News Intelligence Investigative Journalist Kelly Jones talks Stalk Scan 

Google Earth software which was developed by a CIA backed initiative and eventually acquired by Googlemaps, has been used to solve other cases and The Daily Dot provided accounts of these scenarios of cases solved with Google Earth. You can view their list which is toggled to another crime story, here. 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blog

Denver comes in 11th on the list of private investigator salaries nationwide. Does that mean that if you're a private investigator living in Colorado you should migrate to NYC? Not necessarily . 

Claiming to see salaries "as high as $99,500 and as low as $22,500, the majority of Entry Level Private Investigator salaries currently range between $34,500 (25th percentile) to $46,000 (75th percentile) across the United States" according to Zip Recruiter's national chart dated September 2, 2019. But where are they getting their data? And how many private investigators are they speaking to? "The  average pay range for an Entry Level Private Investigator varies little (about $11,500), which suggests that regardless of location, there are not many opportunities for increased pay or advancement, even with several years of experience" reflects an anonymous analysis on another part of their website. And they may be onto something. 

Putting the data together enables you to compare a private investigator living in New York City to Denver and other major cities in the US. Most can expect an average annual salary of $49,268 as of August 26, 2019 and an average annual pay for an Entry Level Private Investigator in the United States averaging $46,587 a year. Does this mean that the highest average private investigator salary in the country is just $2,681 shy of what the highest earning PIs in the country make? 

Zip Recruiter's post unfortunately, also falls short in providing the number of jobs surveyed. Previous years' Labor Day posts discussing salary pulls data from the United States Census Bureau and from the Bureau of Labor Statistics provide the most comprehensive results however recruitments sites rolling out salary data based on the jobs posted on the site are also useful. Moreover, reviewing and discussing salary with your colleagues is, according to Adam Conover, the best way to bridge the income inequality gap and this is a clip of Conover's rundown if you'd like to know more: 

Back to recruitment site data though: if you're following recruiter sites, they update frequently and tend to provide local as well as national analysis. This makes it worth the effort, despite the fact it's not as comprehensive as government sites or sites using government data. 

Glassdoor's comparisons, which were updated July 29, 2019, list the average base pay at $53,854 but lists entry at $45,318 which is in Zip Recruiter's ballpark. But GlassDoor provides additional options that allow viewers to compare bonuses and see how large firms compare to small firms. Spoiler alert: larger firms pay better. GlassDoor also offers recent anonymously shared salary reports which, although also unverified, provide feedback from someone who was actually employed rather than something a job poster submits.

Could Glassdoor be amalgamating too many listings which range from topics as broad as "Environmental Health Investigator" for the City and County of Denver to "Cyber Coder Fraud Investigative Analysis" for Cyber Coders. Absolutely. Is it nevertheless a viable resource to include in your research? Yes it is. 

Indeed's rundown of PI salaries is the outlier in so far as they actually include the number of salaries submitted: 338. Indeed also provides the unique observations that the average PIs tenure is 1-3 years and hourly averages $23.11 which is a penny away from the Arlington, Virginia average and more than Denver's $21.81 average. 

​Happy Labor Day!! 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger 

In May 2019, the Ethics Committee of the Colorado Bar Association (CBA) issued Formal Opinion 137 to address negative ethical ramifications that Rule 8.4 (c) might have. From it's 2017 announcement, apprehensions about the Rule permitting Colorado lawyers to "advise, direct, or supervise others," ---private investigators are one of the three categories of support affiliates specified in the rule-- to participate in lawful investigative activities involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation. 

​Concern about the Rule's professional --not to mention ethical-- consequences have  prompted anxious conversations and blog posts but Opinion 137 marks Colorado Bar and Ethic's Committee's first official response to 8.4 (c) since the  Colorado Supreme Court amended the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct in 2017.

See also: Chris Wells on Facebook and the Colorado Bar Associations Sock Puppet Prerogative 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger

"What do you charge for your PI services," is a question most of us, at some point or another, will be asked. The person asking, which can be anyone ranging from friend and acquaintance to Facebook group contact, is probably asking because something in their personal life or in the personal life of a family or loved one needs to be resolved.. 

Whether or not you are a licensed private investigator --and in my case, I am not licensed and I do not want to be-- they may also need information that does not require a licensed private investigator to obtain and the question, "how much do you charge for your private investigation services?" is actually conscious or unconscious code for, 'will you help?'

"I'm just looking around for someone to do some background digging. I have to figure out how much it's worth to me to get the info. ;-)" the person responded when I informed her the firm I work for has a $500 minimum retainer for a background investigation. 
 
When she specified she was looking for, "more than an apartment rental, less than a security clearance," I pointed out that myriad online services are available to landlords. They can obtain something that doesn't go very in depth for around $50 online. That is a background "check" as opposed to a background investigation, however. And again, a background investigation starts with a $500 retainer fee. 
 
"That is probably more than I can justify paying for this particular project and more background check than I need," she acknowledged. 

"Alright," I said reiterating that a background investigation is different than a background check and it something you can't just get from a basic online service for a $50 fee. 
 
"Okay, that all sounds good. I suspect it's going to turn out to be more than I'm willing to spend, but I'd be happy to chat with someone about it, and my budget's not nothing," she said. So I wished her well and referred her to the Denver Public Library which offers access to online phone directory and newspaper listings. 

"We often to asked to help find someone (their current phone number, current address, reverse lookup, etc.) or we help someone use something like an inmate locator.  But as far as actually researching the background and history of a person, that's a bit different and we aren't really able to do that very well" said one of Denver's Central Library reference librarians when I asked.  "Our genealogy department, obviously, helped people locate their family and ancestors, but that's also different." 

Hiring a private investigator to do a background investigation is the route you take when you've  exhausted  options like the public library and $50 background checks. 


 
 
 
 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blog 

The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) hasn't provided additional documentation regarding the case that drove them to issue Grand Junction Private Investigator, Jessica Erin Lane a letter of admonishment. Hopefully additional information will be available soon.

See also: Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies issues Admonishment to Grand Junction private investigator after investigator refuses to provide investigation report

Meanwhile, private investigators from all over the country, responded with examples of when, in their practice, they might deny an investigative report to a client who requested it. Many states including the State of Colorado, require private investigators submit reports in order to keep their licenses. A cursory review of the Colorado license requirements confirms this is a requirements that needs to be specified in the contract. Screenshots obtained from the Colorado Secretary of State's Office are are circles in red. 

To start with the basics, Virginia based private investigator, Kimberly Williamson defines report as "a blurb that says 'this is what we did, this is how long it took and here are the next steps.'" She says she the investigation report provides clients with, "some kind of narrative or summary with expense reports." Most cases that are paid for, invoiced and completed follow this formula. 

Williamson once worked "with a guy who offered a significant amount of money for a home address of a vehicle that made him mad during traffic. He said he wanted to send a guy adult toys or some nonsense," and that was a situation that needed to be handled differently. 

Although "work product is the juicy details, photos, or the generated background/address info," it is Virginia state law not to "hand work product to someone whom we discover or suspect of being under a protective order." The same pertains to a client who is under a retraining order or who may be self-injurious. In such circumstances, Williamson explains, the private investigator may still supply the information to the attorney or to the therapist of the client. If the private investigator needs to terminate the contract, the PI will "send a copy of the signed contract with the violation highlighted and a letter advising them that x, y, and z were performed and what led to termination." 

“My client always gets a report, as long as the invoice is paid,” explains Oklahoma City based investigator, Brian Bates when asked about circumstances that would cause a gumshoe to preclude a client from seeing or receiving a final report. "I have very few clients on terms and most provide a retainer. That said, getting a report does not mean the client gets all my work product," he explains. 

For Bates, recording everything is key. "I audio record all my interactions for my benefit. I do not turn those over unless it becomes necessary or relevant to do so. I also keep my own personal notes and I do not turn those over - I use my notes however as a basis for the report I give the client." 

Thanks to recording technologies evolving from the early dictagraph days (pictured above) it is easier than ever before to inconspicuously record a conversation. Bates insists that the "audio recording feature of my Apple Watch is a life saver," saying "no one questions it the way they question a phone or recording pen."

"I also track myself while on a case (car tracker and smart phone tracker) and shoot timestamped photos randomly. Unless required as part of a surveillance job, I do not turn those over," he explains. 

Why then such painstaking efforts to document information that wont even be included in the report? "The main reason I record all interactions is for liability reasons," Bates explains, is that "people lie - a lot. Recordings have saved me from arrest more than once." 

See also: the Denver Private Investigator Blog talks process server safety with Tom Mills 

While there is no known correlation between the Admonishment that the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies issued to the Grand Junction investigator ---case currently remain unknown as no additional supporting documentation has been made available-- and the examples in this article, the report is still a vital part of the job for Bates who says, "my client gets a report, as long as the invoice is paid."

Recordings protect private eyes anytime their side of the story is contested and Bates is emphatic that "people lie - a lot. "Recordings have saved me from arrest more than once. Had the FBI stop me once as I was leaving a town in Oklahoma. All because the person I interviewed, that was involved in a federal case, realized he shouldn’t have talked to me. He called the FBI agent he had been working with and lied and told him I identified myself as a federal agent. I was detained and only released after I was able to play back audio of our meeting - where I clearly gave the man a card and told him I was a private investigator.”

See also: felony menacing charge 

Bates’ example is not dissimilar in what happened to Colorado process server, Tom Mills when he served papers to an off-duty Denver Sheriff’s Deputy in Adams County, Colorado and it was ultimately the video recording he made of of an off-duty Sheriff’s Deputy pointing a gun at him that he used to prove his innocence. 

By Susanna Speier,
Denver Private Investigator Blogger 

Jessica Erin Lane of Grand Junction, Colorado, located in Mesa County received a letter of admonition issued by Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) program director, Mark Browne on January 7, 2019 stating “the director determined that the facts disclosed do not warrant the commencement of formal disciplinary proceedings against your private investigator license. However, the Director has ordered this Letter of Admonition be issued to your pursuant to section 12-58.5 (1), C.R.S.”

See also: Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies issues admonishment to Texas based Colorado private investigator licensee
 
If you'd like to brush up and/or refresh on the latest tweaks to licensing regulations, you'll find the full legalese rundown on the Justia website and Mark Brown's letter specifying the Lane's licensing violations are pasted below.

According to the two bullet points and their parenthetical (but considerably more layman-friendly) summaries, the admonishment is for “failing to complete the contracted investigation and failing to provide report of investigation.”

See also: report writing for Private Investigators 
 
It is unclear from the document obtained why Lane did not complete the investigation and/or produce the report. As Lane never issued a response, the admonishment must remain a stand-alone document of what happened. The segment of the letter, pictured below, also states the admonishment will be available in the public records which is how the Denver Private Investigator Blog obtained it. 

According to her Linkedin profile, Lane has worked for the Defense Investigators Group (DIG) The Robison Group and Marden Investigation Company and has 18 years of experience in investigations and legal fields. "I have built, directed, supervised and managed a successful investigation agency for 10 years," she states in her Linkedin summary. 

Reports are a vital part of an investigation. Especially if it is a legal investigation requiring consistency and clarity to ensure the attorneys, judges and juries are able to connect dots of seemingly disparate trails of evidence and testimonies.

To reiterate, it is unclear from this document why Lane did not complete the investigation by providing her client with a report at the end of the assignment. This particular article, however does not need to end as Lane is welcome to contact and share her side of the story with the Denver Private Investigator Blog so we better understand what the dynamics between her and the client were that lead to the admonishment being issued. We can, of course, be reached through the website and through all of our social media channels which now include Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blog 
​
Ava DuVernay's Netflix series, When They See Us shines light on the vulnerability of young people in  police interrogation rooms by walking us through the stories of the five young men who were wrongfully convicted  after --hours into an interrogation during which they had been denied sleep and food--- they falsely confessed to a crime they did not commit.

According to Anne Marie Moyes, Director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project in Boulder, "28% of the DNA exonerations nationwide involved false confessions."

Of that group of wrongful convictions involving false confessions:

• 49% of the false confessors were 21 years old or younger at the time of arrest
• 33% of the false confessors were 18 years old or younger at the time of arrest
• 10% of the false confessors had mental health or mental capacity issues

See also:  The Colorado Connection to When They See Us 
 

Why would anyone make a false confession, though? According to Saul Kassin, distinguished professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, innocent people who are vulnerable can internalize false confessions. 

When you hear the wrongfully convicted talk about why they waived their rights saying they figured they would eventually be protected by the fact that they are, indeed, innocent. Innocent people sometimes confess under hours of interrogation, however because they are lead to believe additional evidence is on it's way and lead to believe they need to cooperate because additional information will be disclosed. He says people making false confessions saying things like, "I guess I did it" and then start to provide details handed to them during the interrogation. 

Although there are many techniques for interrogation Kassin says the goal of American style interrogation is an accusation of guilt and a refusal to accept denials. Kassin also points out that false confession case interrogations tend to last longer because the interrogators make it more stressful to deny than to confess. Subjects feel overwhelmed and are looking for an expedient way out.

To read the transcript of the discussion or listen to the audio of the interview during which he discusses Korey Wise's false confession, visit the post on their Speaking of Psychology website. He believes raising awareness is an important part of helping to reform a broken system.

There is no shortage of compelling private investigator movies and books available, however,  When They See Us, may have more timely, relevant and important insights to offer people who regularly conduct police interviews and work on legal investigation cases. It is, perhaps a movie that should be seen by all Americans. Those in as well as outside of the private investigator and security industry. 

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blog 

The Korey Wise Innocence Project at University of Colorado, Boulder's Colorado Law School has gotten a lot of calls and emails since the Netflix release of Ava DuVernay drama web television miniseries, "When They See  Us," according to Anne-Marie Mo'syes Director of the Korey Wise Innocence Project. The series is about the five young men from Harlem who were wrongfully convicted, imprisoned and eventually exonerated of a crime committed against a jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989. 

“Not only has there been a strong response to (When They See Us) but a strong response to his story. That’s my sense based on all the different emails and Facebook posts. It says something at the end about his involvement with our project and we’ve had this explosion of interest and comments and messages," Moyes said in a phone interview. 

Korey Wise's attorney lives in Colorado and represented him in the civil suit (against The City of New York) and she played a big role in facilitating his gift to CU Boulder's Innocence Program that represents others who claim they were wrongfully convicted. The final episode of DuVernay's series focuses primarily on Korey Wise's story. The Denver Post also reported the uptick in donations since DuVernay's series was released on Netflix.
 
Wise donated $190,000 to the Innocence Project in 2015 after Wise and the other four after winning a 41 million dollar settlement against the City of New York.