The principal of the Institute of Professional Investigators talks about her work as an investigator and representing the investigator sector – as it tries to shed a Sam Spade image that persists in the media and public.
Mark Rowe reports.
Turning into the business park where Nicola Amsel has her offices, a Turkish airliner flies low overhead, wheels down. The setting is appropriate. The world comes to nearby Manchester Airport; and Nicola Amsel’s work from her Heald Green offices can take in anywhere in the world. Beforehand I would have bet that her background was the law; or if not, the police. In fact, she’s a linguist: "I didn’t choose investigation, it chose me. I didn’t want to be a bi-lingual secretary, I wanted something with a career and a security consultancy firm in London was looking for somebody with my languages." She notices at this point that I am taking shorthand and adds: "I used to do that as well." She goes on: "It was an independent security consultancy and out of that, because investigation grows out of breaches of security, they had started this investigative business, and they were specialising in intellectual property (IP); and they were involved in a very large counterfeiting case involving Scotch whisky. I can say that, because it’s been published. And it was a huge international case and it went on for about four years. They needed somebody with my languages, which at that time were French and Italian. Originally I started as a PA but I knew there was a possibility of moving up the career ladder and indeed that was what happened. I started with that firm in 1981 and I sort of grew with the company, became operations manager and eventually director and we merged with another company in 1988 that was purely investigative. They wanted to expand their investigative capabilities into the intellectual property arena. And I stayed with the merged firm until the end of 1993." She then came to Manchester and set up Amsel and Co, in February 1994.
She has always worked in IP, an area she particularly enjoys, and one that offers the chance of using her foreign languages. As she explains, a company’s brand can be global, and the protection of a brand against infringers, such as counterfeiters, in a global market, must be global too.
"I will give you an idea of the work we do; a lot of the work is looking at the use of trademarks, if a UK trademark has been on the register for five years, but has not been used, it can be revoked for non-use." Amsel & Co’s task may be to investigate the market-place, to find out if a particular trademark has been used, in the UK, European Union, Japan, America, Australia, ‘pretty much anywhere, frankly’. Then there might be ‘passing off’ work, that is, a product that looks like someone else’s product, in other words, one is trying to pass itself off as the other. Nicola’s company also provides a ‘discreet negotiating facility for the purchase of domain names and the assignment of trademarks’. The company will carry out test purchases, if a client suspects that a (rival) product is counterfeit, or infringing a patent. As for patent infringements that Amsel & Co will look at, it could be a small piece of a product, or an entire product; or a process, or software. It might involve tracing the inventor from 30 years before.
I ask about the test purchase, imagining high street purchases for loss prevention purposes. In the IP field, a test purchase might be from a retailer, but it could be from a wholesaler, or manufacturer, in the UK or China or anywhere, of anything from clothing, kitchen and bathroom fittings, beds, furniture, pharmaceuticals, drink, ‘anything, honestly, anything’. In a test purchase, the investigator is looking for clues to the source of supply; asking questions, to elicit information … without giving the game away? "Absolutely!" Nicola says. And not giving the game away, keeping things confidential, is also paramount when the client is instructing the investigator, she adds: "There is a French expression, ‘secret of three is secret of everyone’. In other words if more than two people know, forget it. You really do need to keep it to the very minimum. A very common problem for intellectual property investigators is that you get perhaps a salesman and with all the best intentions spots a counterfeit product and says, hey! Where did you get that? We get called in when the waters have been muddied."
I ask about an earlier point of Nicola’s; her background in foreign languages. Private security people are hardly the only Britons to, you could argue, lack foreign language skills or inclinations. As the joke goes, the Englishman’s second language is to talk English slowly and loudly.
Nicola answers with the point that if you are working with a colleague in Spain, Italy, France or Germany; speaking and understanding those languages, and the nuances, the slight nuances, is needed. And above all in investigations? I add. Nicola agrees; because the work of investigation has to be admissable in a court; and you have to work within the legislation of each country. Data protection law, for example, can vary from country to country, and is different in the United States, Nicola says. You have to be aware, she adds, that evidence obtained in a foreign country is admissable in a UK court. This brings Nicola onto Security Industry Authority licences for the private investigator sector, which for her is a case of the sooner the better. It would mean for example an end to the former police officer now a private detective ringing a friend who is still a serving police officer to ask the name of a vehicle’s owner. The former police officer might think nothing of it; but it is against the law, and such a data protection law breach would mean the detective having his SIA licence revoked.
In an email beforehand, I had wanted one topic of conversation to be the IPI, and on a personal level why she – after a busy working day – wants to put in the sometimes thankless work for an industry association. Is it to put something back? She quotes from my email about the public perception of private investigators as Miss Marples or Rosemary and Thyme. Nicola gives another fictional private detective (and when you think about it, there are so, so many): Sam Spade, the ‘dirty mac brigade’. The effort is to give the credibility; if you are a member of the IPI you have satisfied criteria; you have been in the sector for a continuous time, of at least three years; there are stages of membership; exam qualifications: "We are saying we are a professional body, to show the outside world that we are a profession." And Nicola is aware that as the first woman principal of the IPI, she might raise the profile of the institute and the job of investigator. "And I do really believe that it is a profession and it takes years and years of experience, education, training; this isn’t something you can just walk off the streets and decide, ‘I’m going to be an investigator’. You never stop learning, I don’t stop learning, I have been in this business now 26 years and I still don’t stop learning, you have to have an open mind."
What of the general media? She wrote to a national newspaper saying that licensing could not come soon enough, after publicity about interception of telecommunications. She has been in other national newspapers; on the Radio 4 PM news programme; in a Sunday Times supplement; and in a guide for armed forces leavers heading for ‘civvy street’. She reports an attitude from media interviewers (and bear in mind that these are supposed to be more educated people) that investigators ‘lurk’ and wear a Humphrey Bogart mac. Yet while we must not forget the street work, field work, site visits, the reality as Nicola says is that much of an investigator’s work is done at a computer: "A lot of an investigator’s time nowadays is spent on the internet. An investigator is fundamentally a collector of information," whether it is investigation into fraud, money laundering, tracing, or intellectual property work. "A good investigator needs to know where to look, who to ask, how to find something, where to go and how to talk to people; not necessarily in that order. These are the qualities; and attention to detail is absolutely vital."
I throw in the old debate about, if there is a call for an investigation, or indeed any number of things, whether a security manager should stay in-house or outsource. Life is about horses for courses, Nicola begins by saying. "I understand that investigation arises out of breaches of security and there are certain areas for example that it is possible to be handled [in-house by a head of security] but when you have got a situation where somebody let us say a former employee is either starting to spread nasty rumours or is setting up in business with a very similar name … it’s knowing where you feel comfortable with your area of expertise and knowing when to say, ‘it’s outside my remit, I need help, it isn’t something I know enough about’."
For example if a fashion house’s internal security manager does a first investigation on why designs are coming onto the streets before they ought to. Then the manager may go to an intellectual property specialist, for test purchasing, to find where the designs have come from. Lawyers can then move in and seek damages. Nicola’s advice to a security manager in doubt: seek advice. After an initial meeting of perhaps half an hour, the security manager can gain an idea of what is involved, and costs, and go back to whoever in his organisation controls the budget. On the other hand, the investigator of such a case will need the knowledge of the security manager about the organisation. Nicola adds: "We are not there to steal their [security manager’s] thunder … it’s absolutely team work, more often than not, leads to a very good result."
Technology is changing all the time, for an investigator as for a security manager, Nicola says. For an investigator, it may be new websites, new databases, and (less speedy, this) new legislation. The IPI hopes to provide a series of distance learning courses, in tracing, intellectual property, perhaps surveillance, the institute finding that members prefer training on-line to do when they can, rather than take a day off work or out of a weekend. In any walk of life, to put it politely, there can be conflict between associations and groups in the same field. The IPI and the Association of British Investigators can point to investigators who are members of each; and on regulation and meeting the SIA there has been a history of ABI and IPI working together, while representing their different memberships. The conversation goes on to something else that the IPI or other investigator associations can work for, one of those topics that crops up among investigators, but not in public as often as you might think: in a word, money. In more than one word, how to charge the right rate for a job. Many investigators are former police officers, or have had some other first career, and a pension. To be a private investigator is, for them, perhaps a part-time job, a hobby, something they do not live and die by. Hence, to put it bluntly, they drive down prices for everybody else, because insurers and other buyers of investigator services know all this. Before the blood pressure rises of readers who are former police officers who are full-blooded private investigators, I should add the comment of one, that investigators by themselves would set cut-throat prices against each other.
But anyway, to what Nicola has to say. There are those whose entire income depends on the rate that they charge; and those who supplement an existing income: "There is a huge range in the fees charged, and it can go from as little as £25 an hour to £150 an hour, it is that broad. I am not going to discuss our fees, but that is the sort of range you are looking at; even more than £150 an hour, sometimes. It is unfortunate, because you have a lot of pressure on things like the fees charged for process serving, debt collection, accident and injury claims."
Assuming that SIA licences come in for private investigators – and given that the risk impact assessment is promised for the summer, the licence might come next year or the year after – the hope is, as come to think of it the hope was for other licenced sectors, that prices will rise, because those with a licence have gone through training, have met some standard, gained a qualification through an accredited body. Nicola adds that the IPI would look at providing training with a recognised accreditating exams body. But for now, until that SIA document in the summer, all is in the air.
To repeat, nothing stands still. The IPI is looking at replacing a print newsletter with an on-line one, and an on-line notice board, available to members only. Nicola ends with advice for readers who are looking for an investigator; just as you would not hire a murder lawyer if you wanted a divorce, so you should make sure an investigator is a specialist for your problem. The IPI website www.ipi.org.uk in the members directory section allows you to search for ten areas of expertise from (in alphabetical order) accident investigation to tracing; besides a search by name or region. The meeting done, I hand over my visitor’s badge at reception and take the side door rather than the revolving door which after all these years I still find too forbidding, given the choice. Outside it is drizzling; it is after all Manchester.
