Ross Investigators PC, Inc.

Colorado’s private eye association is holding an online conference next month.
 
The Professional Private Investigator Association of Colorado (PPIAC) says the Rocky Mountain Investigator Conference promises education, vendors, networking and a “virtual cocktail hour” when it takes place on Zoom on October 2 and 3.
 
The conference costs $99 for PPIAC members and $129 for guests.
 
Speakers include:
 
Edward Ajaeb, of Nighthawk Strategies, who will talk about online and social media investigations.
 
John Hodo, of All Things Investigative, who will say why being a great investigator doesn’t guarantee success.
 
Matt Spairer, of Satellite Investigators, who will give up 10 tips of how to take great accident site photos.
 
Lt. Sam McGhee, of Aurora Police Department, who will explain how to prepare for active shooters in the workplace. 
 
Jennifer Brown, of J. Brown Legal Investigators, who will talk about new innovations regarding genealogy have helped investigators.
 
James Nanos and Nicole Cusanelli, of PI Magazine and PI Gear, will demonstrate the latest gear to make investigations more effective. 
 
JP Moore, assistant regulation counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court, will talk about ethics and go through complaints about private eyes.
 
To sign up for the conference go to, https://ppiac.org

​Private investigators in Colorado must continue to carry their licenses for another year despite the fact Governor Jared Polis recently vetoed a bill, effectively killing off licensing for PIs. Jill Sarmo, a Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) spokeswoman, responded to Simon Crittle's questions below. 

1) Are licenses valid through to next June? Or should PIs discard them now?

Licenses are valid through Aug. 31, 2021, when the one-year windup period expires.

2) If they are no longer valid, will DORA be offering refunds?

Private investigator 1 and 2 licenses are currently set to expire on May 31, 2021. While no policy is presently set on potential refunds, the possibility exists that the expiration date will be extended through the end of the windup period. Consistent with fee setting authority the division will utilize existing funding to administer the program through the wind up date, and does not anticipate additional fees, although the expiration date may necessarily be extended as part of the wind up process.  

3) Do PIs have to maintain surety bonds through September? Next June?

Surety bonds are required through the entirety of licensure, which currently would end on Aug. 31, 2021.

4) Is DORA pleased the governor vetoed the bill given DORA opposed it?

Governor Polis cited COPRRR’s (Colorado Office of Policy, Research & Regulatory Reform) Sunset review of this program in his letter vetoing House Bill 1207. Neither the office nor the department will comment further.

5) What do you say to critics such as the Profession Private Investigators Association of Colorado who say consumers should “beware” as they are no longer protected by unscrupulous PIs?

Sunset is a statutorily mandated, data driven process. The data verify that while prior to licensing there may have been a thought that the public could be financially harmed by not regulating PIs, the research by COPRRR did not find that harm occurs. The data illustrate that while the number of licenses issued to PIs has increased from zero to nearly 900 during the time licensing has existed, disciplinary actions against licensed individuals are virtually nonexistent. When discipline has been taken, the infractions have not been directly associated with the harming of a consumer. This verifies the conclusions of five sunrise reviews that found the likelihood that a consumer would be harmed by a PI was minimal, and does not meet the threshold required for an occupational licensure program in a state where we endeavor to maintain only data and consumer protection-driven regulatory programs.

At the same time as licensing for private investigators (PI) in Colorado is being abolished, Colorado Springs police officers have faced disciplinary actions, in part, for conducting off-duty investigations without have PI licenses.

Nine Colorado Springs police officers took part in off-duty operations that included placing trackers on vehicles, mounting a secret camera to monitor a house in El Paso County, digging through trash and following people.

The disciplinary action, first revealed publicly by the Colorado Springs Independent, came after officers were found to be working for iXero LLC, a private security business owned by Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell. 

Five of the nine officers were reassigned to patrol duties. They also faced suspensions. The most severe, 60 hours (about $3,000) in lost pay, was against one officer who recruited other officers for the private investigative work.

The officers are alleged to have used Colorado Springs Police Department phones, computers and cameras, and some carried their department-issued weapons and badges.

One officer is even alleged to tried to goad a “target” into ranting disparaging remarks about President Donald Trump.

The activities were a violation of CSPD policies, including a ban on use of police equipment for private purposes and a mandate that officers receive permission in advance for outside work.

Deputies from the El Paso Contry Sheriff’s Office are also alleged to have done off-duty work for iXero.

Internal affairs investigators suggested some actions by the law enforcement officers might have violated state laws against trespassing and conducting investigations without a private investigator’s license.

However, last month, Governor Jared Polis decided to veto a bill, which would have continued the requirement that private investigators in Colorado be licensed.

The governor’s veto ends Colorado’s 9-year-old PI licensing regime as his signature was needed to extend existing regulations for another five years.
 
In vetoing the bill, Governor Polis, who last year vetoed three other unrelated licensing bills, said “licensing is often not superior to other forms of consumer protection.”

Jason Mikesell said: “My private business has no relationship to the Teller County Sheriff’s Office.” 

​He also said he takes no responsibility for the jeopardy in which officers found themselves by working for him, and that no laws were broken.
 
iXero, which is based in Woodland Park, describes itself as the “world's premiere security provider” and “brings together the best and most experienced security professionals from the military, law enforcement, and cyber security fields to design unparalleled security solutions for any applications.”

The founder and chief executive of Trustify, the online platform connecting clients to a network of private investigators, has been charged with fraudulently offering and selling more than $18.5 million in securities to 90 corporate and individual investors. 

Daniel Boice misrepresented Trustify as a fast-growing startup with thousands of investigators and robust revenues to corporate clients, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which announced parallel actions against Boice and the company recently.
 
The SEC said the Arlington, Virginia-based company falsely inflated its financial performance and the number of investigators it had on its roster, and then shut its doors when it was unable to pay its employees and vendors. 
 
“As alleged in our complaint, Boice and Trustify lied to investors about their failing business to give the appearance of a thriving technology startup, while misappropriating investor funds to support an extravagant lifestyle,” said Kelly L. Gibson, Director of the SEC’s Philadelphia Regional Office.
 
“The scheme resulted in millions of dollars in investors losses, and the SEC will do all it can to hold the defendants accountable.” 
 
The charges follow the news Trustify went bankrupt last year. Just two years prior the company moved into a plush new office and was heralded by the Virginia governor’s office for its plan to create 184 new jobs in Arlington.
 
The SEC seeks permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties from Boice. A former Trustify executive, Jennifer Mellon, Boice's wife, has also been charged by the SEC for receiving fraudulent funds.

One New York investment firm invested twice in Trustify. In 2017, it invested $4.75 million after receiving allegedly fraudulent financial statements. In 2018, it invested an additional $2 million in a “Series B” fundraising round after receiving emails that purported to confirm investments made by other banks. The confirmation email was actually sent by Boice, who used a fraudulent email handle to mimic another’s account, the Justice Department found. 
 
Instead, the authorities said, Boice used about $8 million of funds support his and his then-wife’s own extravagant lifestyle. The money was allegedly used for private jet charters, vacations, a luxury car, jewelry, and mortgage payments. Another $500,000 also allegedly went to his own consulting company, GoLean DC.

Founded in 2015, Trustify, Inc. described itself the first technology platform to connect clients across the United States to the only nationwide network of highly trained, vetted private investigators. In 2016, Washington Business Journal named the company one of its Startups of the Week, and Trustify got a lot of attention for its forward-thinking business model.
 
But then the company stopped paying its bills and quickly disintegrated.
 
Virginia-based Private Investigator John Morse of Morse Investigation Services explained, “They had little to no desire to get in compliance, and they imploded from corporate culture that they bred. It’s as much about delivering client expectations as the final product, and I don't think they were successful at either.”

Jim Carrey (aka Ace Ventura) isn’t part of this story, but it does, ah, involve a famous pet detective.

Self-described “missing pet expert” Karin Tarqwyn is hot on the trail of Alexandra, a beloved support dog to a young woman in Iowa whose mother recently died.

Alexandra disappeared from her home in Sioux City just after noon on July 10, soon after being startled by a loud noise.

The adorable pet has been an emotional support for her owner, Josey Carroll, whose relatives say has been going through a tough time.

"Her father died in 2012. She had just turned 11-years-old. He had an aggressive lung cancer,” said Jamiee Beaubien, Josey's Aunt. 

“And in April of this year, sadly her mom passed away. She's suffered so many losses now, she needs her dog home."

So the family has turned to Tarqwyn, who says she’s the most recognized pet expert in North America, to help locate Alexandra.

“Since 2005, she has worked full time assisting pet owners in the location and recovery of their missing pets,” says Tarqwyn’s website.

“Working with a team of pet detectives, Tarqwyn's focus is on missing and lost dogs and cats with a particular interest in the process and techniques necessary for the recovery of missing dogs that maybe shy, timid, aloof, reserved or skittish.”

On Wednesday, Tarqwyn and Alexandra’s family spent the entire day tracking the missing dog's scent in the Morningside area.

"It takes a village, especially for a situation like Alexandra,” Tarqwyn told Siouxland News. 

“She is acting very feral right now, so she is not going to allow someone she does not know to approach, she may not even let her owners approach.

"Basically, it's gonna be someone saying 'I saw this dog,' we are either gonna get there with the family and hope that she will come to them. And sometimes, in recovery efforts, it requires trapping."

Tarqwyn says she'll continue to help the family until Alexandra is found.

As an expert on missing pets, Tarqwyn has appeared on CNN, Animal Planet, the Today Show, People, PBS and Dog Fancy.
 
In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Jim Carrey is tasked with finding the abducted dolphin mascot of the Miami Dolphins football team.  

By Simon Crittle
 
A decision by Governor Jared Polis to veto a bill, which would have continued the requirement that private investigators in Colorado be licensed, has been met with anger by the bill’s proponents.

Issuing his veto, effectively killing off PI licensing, Governor Polis said "licensing rarely serves to protect the public from harm, and instead usually served incumbent license-holders as a barrier for entry for new competition including many retired officers of the peace.”
 
But under the headline, “Consumer BEWARE! Colorado now one of only 5 states that DO NOT require a PI to be licensed!” Andrea Orozco, president of the Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado wrote, “Governor Polis with the swipe of a pen repealed licensing in Colorado.”
 
“Background checks, surety bonds and demonstrating a knowledge of the laws are no longer in place to protect the public, consumers and subjects of investigations.”

Rep. Jovan Melton, an Aurora Democrat and main sponsor of House Bill 1207 – Sunset Regulation of Private Investigators – said he thought the governor’s veto would hurt the state’s private investigator industry.

“I don’t think the governor made a good decision on this,” Melton told the Colorado Sun. “I think he chose to protect his staff over the people of Colorado.”

Melton was referring to staff working at the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA), which administers PI licensing and vehemently opposed the bill. Last year DORA issued a scathing report which said licensing in Colorado was unnecessary as complaints against PIs were “virtually non-existent.”   

“That to me shows the program is working the way it should be,” Melton said. 

Melton said not having a licensing regime in Colorado meant private investigators could find it difficult to get insured.

The governor’s veto ends Colorado’s 9-year-old PI licensing regime as his signature was needed to extend existing regulations for another five years.
 
In vetoing the bill, Governor Polis, who last year vetoed three other unrelated licensing bills, said “licensing is often not superior to other forms of consumer protection.”
 
“Too often it is used to protect existing professionals within an occupation against competition from newcomers entering that occupation,” said the governor in a letter explaining his reasoning. 

"Licensing in the United States has at times prevented traditionally economically disadvantaged people from having the ability to access occupations."
 
Governor Polis noted that the PI licensing regime didn’t require continuing education or any “real test” of competency and instead required only an “open-book” jurisprudence exam. 

By Simon Crittle

​Of all the genres to have captured the screens of popular imagination, private eyes have dominated the airwaves like few others. The PIs of film and television have allowed us to escape into places where rules and convention mattered as little to the stars as the female characters who doted on them. The formula of gritty male protagonist, with a vice and imperfect past, reluctantly yet righteously on the hunt for the ugly truth, it seems is timeless. It’s as if Magnum, P.I. is in fact the same character as Sherlock Holmes, only with a mustache and an American-sized portion of ego.

So reliable is the private investigator to binge-worthy success, HBO has rebooted one of the best-known names of black-and-white. Perry Mason, however, is no longer the criminal defense lawyer of the 1950s. Instead the character invented by author Erle Stanley Gardner is a Depression-era private eye played by Matthew Rhys, the Welsh actor best known for his role in the TV series, The Americans.

Set in Los Angeles and beautifully shot, the miniseries begins, as most of its genre do, with a crime. A couple are on the phone with the kidnapper of their baby, a suitcase full of ransom money at the ready. They leave the money and rush to their baby’s location only to find him dead and mutilated. The gruesome murder becomes a media sensation and Mason, a hard-bitten alcoholic and World War I veteran is, of course, the only person brash enough to take case.

Perry Mason has garnered positive if mixed reviews. Sean T. Collins of the New York Times says, “corruption, torture, murder, full-frontal nudity, foul mouths, a dead baby: Perry Mason boasts the full complement of HBO’s genre-revisionist techniques. But Rhys is the glue holding it all together. I can’t recall the last time I saw a lead performance this embodied, for lack of a better word; Rhys’s every glance, expression and gesture seems made of weariness the way Abraham Lincoln’s cabin was made out of logs.”
​
Joshua Rivera of the Verge is less flattering when he says the show is a gorgeous exercise in style over substance. “Perry Mason is a detective story that’s strangely reluctant to go all-in on being a mystery,” says Rivera. “While it is concerned with one long case — the ransom and subsequent grotesque murder of an infant — that case’s twists and turns are meandering and muddy, as the effort to trace the ways a horrific murder ripples through every aspect of the community begins to feel more labored than natural or revealing.”
 
Rebecca Nicholson of the Guardian, however, is almost all-in for Perry when she says the show is promising enough to stick with. “As a series, it takes itself desperately seriously. The episodes are called chapters. Men glower from beneath their brimmed hats, and there is a lot of intense smoking, characters furrowing their brows and dragging on cigarettes as if breathing their last breath.” Nicholson concludes she can’t wait to see how Mason cracks the case in coming episodes, yet while Perry Mason “does not yet feel particularly comfortable in its own skin, there is clearly plenty more to come.”

A new law permanently allows Coloradans to have documents notarized remotely, reversing the long-standing practice of requiring people to be in a notary’s physical presence.

The Remote Notaries Protect Privacy law, signed by Governor Jared Polis last week, continues emergency rules put in place amid the coronavirus pandemic which allowed people to have documents notorized remotely using “audio-visual communication.”

The new law extends those rules through December 31, 2020. In the meantime, the Secretary of State’s office – which administers notary services in Colorado – will develop, build and certify permanent remote notary systems which will take effect on December 31, 2020.

“This legislation provides certainty to Colorado’s people and businesses that remote notary services will continue to be available in the future,” says Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State.

The rules for remote notorization say that:

• You can only have a document or record remotely notorized if you are located remotely and both you and the notary are located within Colorado when the "notarial act" takes place.
• You have to be identified by the notary over real-time audio-visual communication either through presenting government issued identification or by actually knowing the notary and/or presiding witness personally.
• After the notary performs the notorial act you must transmit a copy of the document either by fax, email or other electronic means to the notary on the same day.
• You cannot have a will notorized remotely accept under certain circumstances, and you cannot have a record notorized remotely that relates to the electoral process.
• No individual or entity involved in the remote notorial act, inclucing videoconferencing companies, are allowed to transfer or sell, or offer to transfer or sell, information relating to the individuals involved. 

The passage of the new law follows an executive order issued by Governor Polis on March 30 that ordered the temporary suspension of the personal appearance requirement before notarial officers due to the presence of coronavirus in Colorado.
 
To implement the executive order, Secretary Griswold issued emergency rules which outlined the procedures and requirements for remote notarization.
 
The move to allow remote notorization in Colorado came in consultation with the Governor’s office, stakeholders and the legal community.