The Benefits to Hiring a Private Investigative Firm for Criminal and Civil Cases – Thomas Ruskin Speaking at the ABA Family Law Section CLE Conference

When we talk about a private investigative firm, what are the benefits to hiring a private investigative firm over a licensed individual?

The benefits of a private investigative firm:

• Are always licensed bonded and insured.
• Available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
• We have a full complement of investigators who can perform civil as well as criminal investigations.

We started in one case, a tremendous case out of New York State, where the husband was arrested.  He was returning the kids as per legal and custody visitation, on a Sunday. He brings the kids back to the mother’s apartment at about 1:10 in the afternoon. He returns the kids.  One of the kids had forgotten something at his apartment five blocks away.  He ran back with the kids and comes back around 1:23 in the afternoon and returns the kids. No event or special occurrence had happened.

That night at 8:12 in the evening, she calls the N.Y.P.D. and she reports that her husband, seven hours before, had assaulted her. That he had grabbed her face and punched her in the eye. She had slight swelling and redness by the side of her eye when the N.Y.P.D. was there, they took a couple of photos.

We were brought into the case shortly thereafter to investigate the criminal side. What happened is that this case blew up, it’s a very well known case of Mehos vs Mehos.

We were brought in on the criminal side.  Eventually we proved, on the Friday before the alleged assault, she had botox injections and juvederm.  That was the mark on her face where he supposedly grabbed her. The markings and the redness underneath her eye had been caused over two days after bad dermatologist injected her with botox.

Needless to say, this turned into a custody battle.  What came out of this case, the criminal side, was a total civil investigation into her drug and alcohol use.  We ended up surveilling her for countless numbers of days to show that she was manipulating the drug system.  She was going to different drug stores with different prescriptions with different doctors.

Eventually she lost custody of her children and are now living out of state. The judge was so appalled by some of the behavior of this woman they gave full custody to the father. The father is now living with the kids back in his home state of Texas.

Assembling Your Divorce Team

Three ways Computer Forensics Can Help Your Divorce Case

When should you do a computer forensics investigation in a divorce case? When you have a feeling that your spouse or soon-to-be ex-spouse is up to something on a family computer, when you notice that your spouse or soon-to-be has been spending an inordinate amount of time on the family computer, you notice strange web activity, or emails and other activities seem to be getting erased.

Before or during your divorce, it may help to have computer forensics investigation performed on your computer.

Computer forensics is the specialized practice of investigating computer media for the purpose of discovering and analyzing available, deleted, or “hidden” information that may serve as useful evidence in a legal matter.

Marital Assets
Whether it’s hiding income or spending marital assets, computer forensics can help show the misappropriation of marital funds. At the CMP Group, we have seen the great lengths people will go to hide or spend marital funds, such as a recent post about hiding marital funds in Bitcoin.

Forensic computer examination could help obtain evidence to show bank account numbers that were previously unknown to transfer funds, shell companies, or accounting files that could be used later as a lead to recover assets.

Infidelity
Even with the advent of “no-fault divorce” states (divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party), showing that your spouse cheated may help if you have a cheating clause in your pre-nuptial or post-nuptial agreement.

Couples who choose to include an infidelity clause in their pre/post-nuptial are, more or less, agreeing that if one party has an extramarital affair, he or she will have to pay the aggrieved spouse with some sort of financial award.

Emails, pictures, purchases, bank accounts, contacts and communications recovered by a computer forensics investigator may help you make your case.

Illegal Activities
If you have your suspicions that your spouse (or soon to be ex-spouse) is involved in illegal activities that may jeopardize you, the family and shared assets, you may want to find out and use it in your divorce or child custody case.

For drug abuse cases for example: by indexing the internet history, it could be easily found if your spouse was purchasing un-prescribed narcotics or illegal drugs online using the deep dark web.

When are you not allowed to do computer forensics?
You may not perform computer forensics on another person’s private computer or devices unless you have permissible use.

Family computers that you, your spouse or children share may have a forensics investigation and evaluation performed on them.

Intellectual Property Theft Investigations

Everything is started with an idea.  Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs as well as branding symbols, names and images.

Intellectual property (IP) is protected by US patents copyright and trademarks which enables people to earn recognition and/or financial benefit from what they have created.

The four main types of intellectual property are:

• Patents 
  For inventions – new and improved products and processes that are capable of industrial application.
• Trademarks
  For brand identity – of goods and services allowing distinctions to be made between different traders.
• Designs for product appearance
  Of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colors, shape, texture or materials of the product itself or its ornamentation.
• Copyright for material
  Literary and artistic material, music, films, sound recordings and broadcasts, including software and multimedia.

As always, in every industry, there are thieves.  Like the saying goes, copying is the highest form of flattery.  Chances are, if someone is trying to steal your idea, it must be a good one.

What should you do if someone steals, copies or uses your intellectual property?

You should seek legal counsel immediately.  If you were smart you should have gotten a patent, trade mark or copyright (depending on the medium).

One of the first steps, usually, is sending them a “Cease and Desist” letter which informs the user that the work is yours and that if it’s not taken down within a certain period of time, you will take legal action.

This is usually where we come in.  Private investigators at the CMP Group conduct IP investigations in a number of ways.

• Forensics accounting

• Computer forensics (aiding with electronic discovery)

• Surveillance

• Undercover Work