People Are Sharing The Reasons They Hired A Private Investigator And It Is Wild

Posted by u/barcodez1:

When I met my wife, she seemed to have a normal modern family. Two moms, two dads. Over time it became apparent her stepdad wasn’t around much. Holidays, birthdays, you name it, he’d pop in to say hi, grab a nap, whatever, then take off again.

My wife’s family thought this was normal, just the way it had always been since they were teenagers. He claimed to have a job following FedEx trucks around the state to prevent theft and drug trafficking. But I thought it strange and started making jokes about him having another family.

Well, I guess it got my sister-in-law thinking because she gets a favor from the PI at her law firm. Sure enough, he has not two but THREE wives around the state, and five other (step)children between them.

My sister-in-law breaks the news to her mother who immediately changes the locks and files for divorce. They never speak again. Cold turkey. Divorce is even uncontested. As a FU they also send the report to his other wives.

Posted by u/Liberi_Fatali561:

I used to work for an insurance defense firm years ago. Best PI story I have is where we hired one to tail a guy who was suing our client for an injury that wasn’t entirely our client’s fault. The guy was refusing to settle, and was insisting on going to trial even though we offered a fair sum that would’ve paid his medical bills. The PI we hired got some good pics that showed the plaintiff was nowhere near as “injured” as he claimed, but the crown jewel of the photos was one where the guy was walking on a pier with a woman who wasn’t his wife. Had his hand on her a** and everything.

Later in a deposition, the attorney slid the picture to the plaintiff and said something like “Mr. Smith (obviously not his real name), who is the woman in this picture? We would like to schedule a deposition with her as well.” The guy went ghost white and told his attorney he wanted to settle.

At least he was smart enough to realize that if his wife found out the other woman was gonna be deposed, he was gonna have to get a family law attorney as well, because the divorce papers would soon follow.

Posted by u/marburusu:

My good friend was only raised by her mom growing up, who would always tell her that her father had walked out on them when she was a baby and that he had never wanted anything to do with her. My friend took it really hard and struggled through her entire childhood believing in that... but then a couple of years ago she hired a private investigator to see if they could find him again.

Well, they did, and it turned out what her mother told her was a lie; her dad is seriously one of the sweetest snd soft-hearted guys I’ve ever met. He left because my friend’s mom forced him out when he uncovered her infidelity. I guess he wasn’t actually her dad, because her mom cheated on him while they were together, but he loved her like she was his own and has only avoided contacting her because her mom convinced him he legally has no rights to her child— and, even worse, she threatened to accuse him of [abusing] my friend when she was a baby if he reached out anyway.

Thankfully my friend is an adult now and has moved out from her mom’s house, and she can have the relationship with her dad that she always wanted. It just sucks that she had to go through the effort of hiring a PI to achieve that.

Posted by u/bada**mum:

My story is a little different, I had a PI investigate me!

About 6 years ago I became very ill with a variety of issues, that left me really quite poorly. I was an optician and so using my hands with arthritis was just never going to be a plan. So I applied for (U.K.) disability support. I sailed through, and started receiving a monthly amount.

Now, fast forward a few years. I then start getting restless at home so I retrain into a job that doesn’t involve my hands. I stop receiving money, except for the benefit you can get while you work (I use it for paying a better automatic car off). Well, my very nasty mother’s friend saw me start work and called the benefits office, assuming I was still claiming. Unfortunately, she exaggerated and told them I was living a normal life and even running daily.

So the benefits office filmed and watched me. They thought they had an “Aha! Gotcha!” moment. Their PI provided photos of me walking unaided.

When I sat in the meeting, with a lot of smug fraud officers and my solicitor, I felt sick to my stomach. I really couldn’t work out what was going on, They were trying to make it look like I had been running and jogging, but I knew I walked never any further than five meters to my car. Anyway. Solicitor pointed out the photos were screenshots of a video.

Asked for the videos. Videos were of me.. struggling to walk.

One of them I rest on my car before opening my door. Another I was going into a supermarket and had replaced my cane with the trolley to lean on. You get the picture.

So, the fraud team basically said “Ooops” and I never heard from them again.

I spend a lot of my time trying to appear “normal” and it bit me in the a**. And never trust these “fraud” TV shows now either.

Posted by u/SimonSaysx:

My grandmother's first "boyfriend" after my grandfather died said he was a retired cop and a veteran. They enjoyed dancing to country music together, and bought a new car, in her name though, even though she can't drive anymore.

My uncles hired a PI. Turns out, that old b*stard had a habit of shacking up with widows and bleeding them dry. (The boyfriend not the PI).

Posted by u/antisocialoctopus:

My mother's dad walked out on mom, my aunt, and my grandmother when mom was just five. A few years later, my grandmother died of a grand mal seizure. Mom was taken in by her grandparents, but she always wondered why her dad left and what became of him. In her 40s, she saved up a bit and hired a PI to track him down. Turns out he moved over time from Pittsburg to California where he wound up in prison for armed robbery and so e other violent crimes. He died in San Quentin penitentiary.

I think mom got a lot of closure out of that. She was able to see that life would have most likely been even worse had he stayed. At least living with her grandparents, she was loved and raised to fulfill her potential.