David Kearns of Expert Investigations describes work as a commercial investigator to Mark Rowe.
That work ranges from listening in on a motorway service station conversation, to doing surveillance from inside a building container for a week.
A plc’s share value had dropped, a new MD had come in, and there were concerns about a chief officer. You didn’t know where he was in the working day. Something was not quite right. Hence, the outside commercial investigators were called in, to conduct surveillance. On the first day – the man having by coincidence called in sick – "he’s travelled to the other side of the country, meeting a former employee, meeting at a service station with the client’s competitor and a former banker," David Kearns recalls. The surveillance team established the men were looking at setting up a company to compete with the client. "Here we have gross misconduct," David adds, "Even if he hadn’t been ‘sick’, he shouldn’t have the meeting, so they [the client] have him on two counts. So they were able to deal with him via the [client company’s] disciplinary process."
We are sitting in the meeting room at the Institute of Directors in the centre of Birmingham, the décor all calm browns and creams, coffee on the IoD from one of those posh machines in the corner. Several pairs are seated at tables, talking quietly, presumably about business. David Kearns’ Expert Investigations is based in Coventry and has recently opened an office in Temple Row in Birmingham city centre. To begin the meeting, I mention a remark by fraud investigator and consultant Caroline Waddicor at a recent Reliance Security seminar, reported in the August issue of the magazine: that managers, when they come across fraud or some other wrong-doing, fall into the trap of trying to investigate it themselves, and make a mess: ‘Everybody thinks they’re Inspector Morse.’ David Kearns agrees. But later in the conversation, after David goes through what his team does, and some cases, I raise the point that also applies to consultants, coming in as advisers; is there an obstacle to an investigator called in from outside? That the security department or whoever has called in the investigators may feel defensive, quite apart from feeling they have been at fault for the wrong-doing occurring in the first place? David counters: "We are bringing in something they haven’t got. Skills they haven’t got, and work alongside them, building on evidence they already have." It may be impractical, he adds, for a company to have an (expensive) surveillance team. Instead, a client can call on the investigators when needed, for example to do data-mining of telephones or computers. A client may seek someone impractical, so there is no come-back, no accusation that the client has had something concocted to move an individual on. David understands that people may be reluctant to give information because they may be criticised for it, or their inadequacies may be exposed. That is not necessarily a negative, David adds; if people are learning, it may be turned into a positive. Equally, David goes on, you may have somebody within a security department who has been highlighting to their senior management that they [security] need specific skills, training, or resources, but the department has been continually turned down. In other words, the incoming investigators may be there as assistants to the security department’s case.
And security and risk departments these days have much to do, from risk assessing to locking at night. Which brings us to where David Kearns began the meeting, talking about the need for the employer to do things properly, to gather evidence, and preserve it, so that if necessary it can be presented in civil or criminal court. CCTV is an excellent tool, if used and recorded correctly. CCTV can be evidence, but also old-fashioned detective work; data from swipe cards if people have been into areas where they shouldn’t be, or at times they shouldn’t; crime pattern analysis, forensics, hand-writing analysis, fingerprints, static observation, whether from an observation post or a vehicle. David says: "There might be a surveillance team, although often the most expensive resource, is actually the most cost-effective, because a human resource can adapt to what unfolds in front of them; if you have a technical facility it can be limited. So if you are dealing with a subject who has stolen product, and they go to another location, if the product then is moved to another place, your [human] resource can adapt to that, and gather evidence as they go." Or, someone can work undercover, whether to investigate blue collar or white collar theft or other wrong-doing – perhaps false absenteeism, or something intangible maybe, such as making false accounts, or moving cash in accounts, by computer. The security department may call the investigators in, or HR [human resources] may seek advice.
He gives the example of a finance director, suspended by his company on full pay because of suspicions of wrong-doing. The investigators took possession of his office, his laptop, and mobile phone, and did observation of his address; and carried out various background checks. "We managed to prove he had taken a £250,000 payment from a sub-contractor; in other words, a good old-fashioned back-hander. He was also receiving payment from another company." As David sums up: "Anything can and will be stolen." An engineering company had machine tools, about to be scrapped, stolen. From surveillance and computer investigation, the investigators had evidence that the firm doing the scrapping was only doing a small amount. The manifest was faxed to an associate, asking what amount the associate wanted; and only the amount that the associate did not want, was scrapped. The unscrapped tools were driven away and sold on the Continent. Apart from the loss of money from less scrap, the machine tool company was affecting the market place to its cost.
Another example, from a 24-hour warehouse: an anonymous note told of thefts. But how to put investigators in the right place, to gather evidence, undercover? CCTV cameras would stand out; so would an observation vehicle; people will notice the unusual. Hence the investigators’ builder’s container, 30 foot long, was taken into the rear yard. The warehouse ops man made a cover story why the container was there; the container was locked, and staff got used to it being there. At 4am on a Monday, the former military men with such surveillance experience went into the container. "We locked them in there and we left them in there until 6am the following Sunday." The investigators inside the container that week filmed how the thefts were done, and found out other health and safety, and line management, breaches. Staff as a result were dismissed. The container, David adds, has been used in housing cases, in ‘virtual police no-go areas’, the sort where police cars get bottles thrown at them or fireworks fired. Again, investigators will stay in the container for perhaps five days, filming crimes, so that the authorities can then seek, for example, Crasbos [criminal anti-social behaviour orders].
On the more purely employment side, there may be what David calls ‘subversive individuals’ in an organisation, or espionage, or breach of contract or covenant by middle or senior managers – such as leaving the employer only to set up on their own or work for a competitor, though the employee may be bound by a covenant or contract not to work for a rival in a given industry for a given time. Or, a client who goes to a solicitor for advice may be directed to the private investigator, for evidence-gathering according to correct procedures. Or, members of David Kearns’ team may work for councils or housing associations. A male and female investigator posing as new tenants gather evidence of anti-social behaviour, using covert cameras inside a house to record drug-dealing or other crime outside. Or the investigators will move into a void, Sitex-screened property in the night, having put in bore-holes, and will sit in the house for five to 14 days, ‘no-one knows they are there, filming activity in the street’.
What if, while you are inside the builder’s container, you want to do a pee?! You go in a jerry-can, was the answer. In the surveillance vehicle, you use what David terms your ‘preferred method’. More seriously, that you cannot compromise your cover by stepping out of the vehicle to go to a flush loo, suggests that you have to have stamina, an aptitude for being in the same place for days, weeks? A saying of David’s: "The right people with the right skills with the right equipment will produce the right results." Equally, someone with an aptitude for surveillance may not have such an aptitude for interviewing people; or the other way round.
To ask more about doing surveillance, acting under-cover, I put a question in the form of a story. In 2005 I was watching the Australian cricket team, at Leicester. In the pavilion I saw the cricketer Glenn McGrath at a table, being interviewed, it turned out, by several Australian journalists . I sat at the next table and eavesdropped. Thinking now of that case of the manager talking to people he shouldn’t have at a motorway service station, when the investigators recorded the conversation by sitting at the next table; is it difficult, to act natural? "Not really," David says briskly. "It’s a craft. You build a cover story into everything you do. So for example. If I wanted to sit next to somebody and overhear their conversation, say at a hotel reception, it’s pointless somebody going in totally scruffy; so the team all wear different clothes; someone will come in with a collar and tie, and a briefcase, with a covert camera and audio recording; you will get some papers out as if you are working, making phone calls, and that’s natural for the environment you are in." Provided you’re plausible, you can be in that environment for a long time, David suggests. He adds: "People have this misconception that anybody can do surveillance and that it is snaking along behind somebody in a car. You will get caught." We’re back, to return to David’s phrase, to the need for the right equipment; you don’t pull out a camcorder and film in the street. It is not plausible: "Whereas I could be talking to you now with a covert camera in my tie and you would be none the wiser." And whereas police doing surveillance of criminals or terrorists may face people aware they may be under surveillance, and who may carry out counter-surveillance, in commerce the average employee is not aware they are under surveillance. Again, there is the TV perception of an investigator – David dislikes the phrase ‘private eye’ – in a pair of sunglasses leaning against a wall. Rather, David adds, investigators may carry props in the boot of their car, so that they can pose as people doing a road traffic survey. Or a pair of dark sunglasses, and a white stick. Or with a jerry-can (hopefully not, I thought later, holding anything brought out of the builder’s container!) so that someone can stand by the road, as if waiting for a lift. Or, a dirty blanket so that by scruffing your hair, putting dirt on your face, and with a piece of cardboard with an appeal, you’re a beggar who can blend into a town centre. "If you are on a very rough estate, it’s pointless being there in a shirt and tie." It may be, David says, that an investigator has to do surveillance from inside a hedge. Besides a camouflage jacket, you put on what David calls a ‘chameleon suit’ that goes over whatever you are wearing. He sums up: "We come back to the right people, right skills, right result; but it’s very much a craft."
That prompts a question that can crop up not just for private security work, but any walk of life; can these investigator skills be taught, or are they skills you either have or don’t have? David pauses. "You have to like it," he answers first. Some who do it may be quiet; others gregarious. "Whether you can teach somebody to be extremely good at it, I don’t know; I am just fortunate that I can recruit the people who are good at it." That said, some points are straightforward; if you want to hear somebody’s conversation, stand behind them. David smiles and says: "You have to be good at telling fibs; and they have to be plausible; lifestyle criminals do it, they will walk into places, with a jacket and tie, and pinch credit cards from a jacket hanging up."
The Expert Investigations brochure speaks of executive protection, whether in case of kidnap , or for safe passages, or chauffeuring. David elaborates; that could mean moving or disposing of a product. For instance, there may be counterfeit products seized, that the legitimate product firm wants to be rid of. Another service might be security for a bank’s AGM, or, with a sister company, looking after high-profile people, by former SAS men, David says, who have done the SIA close protection course. Again, David distances himself from what you can call the TV perception of close protection; it is not big guys with dark sunglasses pushing people out of the way, making noise. "A lot of it is in the preparation. Because you want to prevent a confrontation; if you are doing a route, for example, from A to B; you will look at potential choke points, after you have look at the level of threat."
As for the SIA and the delayed licensing of private investigators, David says: "We hope it [the PI sector] becomes licensed very soon, because there are a lot of people purporting to be investigators without the skills; someone will set themselves up and have clients, and that’s very, very dangerous, because they [the investigators] are dealing with evidence." And with that we are leaving the room, through the swing doors and onto Victoria Square in Birmingham (think the rusting Iron Man statue and the ‘Floozy in the Jacuzzi’ statue). David and I shake hands and part and in no time we have each blended in.
About David Kearns
The MD of Expert Investigations has a police background. He is a member of the Association of British Investigators.
