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Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Private Investigators Investigating suspected cheating. There's a story in the
Hero Today about a woman called Allie Marsh. She became
a private investigator at the age of fifty, sitting up
her own agency. She charges, get this, one hundred and
ninety two bucks an hour, and most of her work
is investigating potential cheatish, So.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
That's not too bad. Is one hundred and ninety two
dollars an hour? It's good wicket to be a private eye.
I guess you're sitting in front of a lot of houses,
taking photographs, following people around and stuff. It sounds quite
quite like a glamorous career to me. Yeah, sounds pretty
megn and Pi. It sounds like the life that's probably
more glamorous than kicking Chloe Swarbrick out of Parliament. Maybe
Jerry Browne would want to do this for one hundred
(00:55):
ninety two dollars an hour.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hey, it's good money. And if you sit around eating
donuts or you know, having liaisons with nice looking ladies.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Why did you bring up sitting around eating donuts? After
I said Jerry Brownley.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
No reason, no reason. Who doesn't like a donut? One
hundred eighty eighty. If you are a private investigator, what
is involved in the work that you do? How much
of it is investigating suspected cheatas within a relationship. I
imagine there's a lot of private investigators that would do
the old trackdown family members as well. That would be
a messive part of it.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah. And with a private investigate, do you need to
have a license? What qualifications do you have to be
have to be a private investigator in New Zealand? Is
it a good way to make money?
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And have you used a private investigator?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh? Eight, one hundred eighty ten eighty is the number
to call. And I'll tell you what right now, we
do actually have a private investigator who's called in and
his name's Dion and he's on the line.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Get a d on, Holy go there you go, bloody good,
thanks Dion. So how long have you been a private
investigator for?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Yeah? Look since I was eighteen, so nineteen eighty seven,
which kind of makes us feel particularly old today.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
So because a lot of private investigators are ex police officers.
But you went straight into it. After school, did you
don I.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Was the exception really to the rule. I had an
opportunity to work with a private investigation company and security
consultancy and I basically managed to work with a couple
of pioneers, if you like, for the PI industry, and
specifically they hired me to do some jobs and from
there I've remained in the industry for ceva years.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And what qualifications did you have to get to become
a private investigator when you're eighteen?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah, it's probably a very good question, really. So I
was fortunate enough that the Royal News here and Police
College had an investigation skills course, so I did that.
I also did a certified fraud Examiner's certification, which unfortunately
is now expired. And plus there was lots and lots
of on the job training with former police detectives, police officers,
(03:02):
and basically they just put me under the wing and
I did some specific tasks for them which I could
get away a lot more than they could because they
all look like they've been in the police and I hadn't.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
What do you mean by that? I see they were recognizable,
they had big mustaches or whatever.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
You see them at the street and go he's probably
been a police officer science, you got it?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, And so what would most of your work encompass now,
din Is it a bit of a mix or is
it lean heavily towards the investigating infidelity look.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
I operates the Neil Group otherwise known as TG, and
of course I'm going to tell you that you should
go to TG dot NZ for some information. But the
services that we provide around private investigations does vary, and
we do get involved with fraud and theft investigations, work
place investigations. We do find missing people and the case
(04:01):
only just yesterday we reconnected someone that was some very
very good news from an inheritance. So the work is varied.
And if you go back to infidelity, which I think
is part of your question, I guess you know, the
cheating partner scenario, it only probably represents a very small
percentage of what we do. A lot of what we
do now is obtaining evidence. We do a lot of
(04:23):
work with law firms, we do a lot of work
with some businesses, small medium enterprises and an occasionally the
odd government agency.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So are you're spending a bit of time sitting in
cars doing stakeouts and the kind of private eye work
that we see on televisions and movies and such.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Well, you've got to get used to sitting on your own,
remaining really observant, and you've got to be able to
remain focused. And so yes, you do spend a lot
of time and nothing happens, and then all of a
sudden you could have a moment of excitement. It can
only last seconds or a minute.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
So you're following cars a couple of cars behind, and
all those kind of things are those skills that you
go learn and training or those skills that you learn
in the job over the years.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Look, I was again, I was very lucky, like in
the late eighties to be able to get that skill
set and to be able to be trained in surveillance
and to be able to be trained into intelligence gathering
and investigations by some of the most amazing people from
the private investigation industry and sadly to have passed away now,
(05:31):
But you know, I would never have been able to
get into this industry without those two particular gentlemen, and
the support of a great group of ex detectives and
police officers is too many to name, but they've really
helped me along the way, and they've remained in contact
with me. And you know, it's just one of those
industries that it really is just it's quite rewarding, and
(05:55):
I could never imagine doing anything else now. And I
have worked part time and full time, and I've had
other careers, and I've actually done it all my days off.
For example, I've tried to leave a couple of times,
but I found myself always coming back.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Have you, you know, to use the Hollywood term, have
you ever been made while you're on a job that
someone spotted you and realized what you were doing?
Speaker 4 (06:16):
There are people that are surveillance savvy, if you like.
There are people that do have reason to continue to
look over their shoulder. You got there are you know,
there are some message that you can use to ensure
that you're not detected. And that is one of the
most important things in terms of doing a good surveillance
job is obviously not being seen, not being you know,
(06:39):
you know, somebody having a look at you and going,
why is that car keep following us? Et cetera. So look,
we use different kinds of vehicles, we have different ways
that we carry out surveillance. Probably in my early days,
you know, we were doing a lot of work for
the government agency around insurance forward, and you know, that's
kind of where I cut my teeth, and I'm sure
(07:00):
probably back then I was made if you like, A
couple of times otherwise, sometimes we're looking at people that
are anti social or maybe have criminal connection, and some
of those people are always looking over their shoulder.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And so that sort of bigs a question, doesn't it.
What's as a job is at a high risk occupation.
I imagine being found out by one of these kind
of antisocial types might be risky for your personal safety.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, look, it can be. It really depends on the
nature of the assignment that you're doing at the time.
You know, we do everything from process serving, which is
the service of legal documents, to motor vehicle repositions, to
field visits, which is like a door knock and reconnecting
our clients with their client. So you know, it used
to be called a debtor visit, but now we're kind
(07:47):
of you know, payment arrangements. It really depends on the
nature of the job. Sometimes a motor vehicle reposition or
serving a legal document, or even if field visit can
go wrong very very quickly because some of the people
that we're dealing with now maybe not as balanced as
what they used to be. So we are very cautious
when we approach any property anyhow, because yeah, there is
(08:09):
a certain amount of risk involve for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Is being a private investigator? Well, what's a better way
to ask us? I don't have a better way. Is
it a good paying job? Does it pay? Okay?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Sometimes it's a bit like being a real estate agent.
You know, things are when things are growth are great
and when they're not, they're really not. And there are
a lot of private investigators in New Zealand. You know,
some specialize in particular investigation work, some are generalists, and
some people only last a year or two, not even that,
(08:43):
and they and they go back and they and they
try something else. But it is well paying depending on
the type of assignment that you're doing. I'm being very
careful around that.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, yeah, which is fair enough to dion. So for
someone that might be on the receiving end of being investigated,
and then there must be privacy issues that come into
play in that side of things, because if someone's content
did you and they suspect there's fraud or cheating, infidelity,
and they're wrong and you don't find any of that evidence.
(09:16):
Imagine the person on receiving and if they find out
can get pretty angry about that.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
But they can I think in particular workplace investigation, So
the typical employee theft, if you like, where we get
called in to gather evidence, talk to people in that workplace,
and we're basically we're doing a lot of intelligence gathering.
We're gathering evidence, and we're putting a case together so
that someone other than the investigator will go and interview
(09:43):
the personal people that are responsible for a fraud or
a theft in a workplace. We like to separate ourselves.
So you have a private investigator that does the work
in the background, that does the surveillance, does the investigation work,
does you know a lot of you know, the intelligence
gathering and the evidence that's required, And then we have
a super private investigator that will use that information and
(10:05):
they will be probably interviewer one or two people typically
what we would suggest as the offender. They will also
do some witness statements and maybe talk to other employees.
So this sometimes there's whistleblowers inside companies and sometimes that
is the reasons for why private investigators are employed. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So you know what led us to the story was
Ali Marsh, who's become a private investigator at fifty. Is
it a job that you would recommend to people? I mean,
there's a lot of people losing their jobs at the moment.
Is it a profession that you would recommend to others?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I would, but I would probably be cautious right now
around around that because there are a lot of private
investigators and like I said before, it's a bit like
being a real estate agent, so you can't always guarantee
your income. But what we like to do, like at
the Nail Group, we also have Proceeded, which is a
processive and company, so we like to diversify, guess in
(11:08):
terms of one part of the business, like proceed might
be incredibly busy, which it often is doing serving documents.
On the other side of the Mail Group, we also
do security consultancy work, so we also provide some high
level security and personal protection. So when you look at
our website you'll see that what we do various because
it has to Sometimes private investigation work might be really
(11:32):
you know, I guess slow, then we'll get an assignment
and it might be a major sift or Ford investigation,
and it will take a lot of resources, and you know,
you might get two or three private investigators on that job.
When that's not happening, we're outseerving documents, we're repossessing cars,
we're finding missing people, We're doing door knocks, field visits.
(11:52):
That sort of thing fascinating.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And this might sound an odd question, but a lot
of texts coming through with listen you might not want
to answer it. But do you work for sir Peter Jackson?
Speaker 4 (12:03):
I can't really comment about the clients that we work with.
I would like to be able.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
To do that nicely said, spoken like a proper p
I you've you've got the training.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Do you work for Jamie Oliver.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
We'll keep going down the list until you say.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Yesterday, I was going to say, we can you know,
we can carry on like this all day? Yeah, yeah, Look, look,
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about private investigators, and
it is one of those things I guess, you know,
you know, like any teenager, I was pretty impressed by
megland p I sure wasn't it. Well yeah, and I
(12:38):
certainly haven't managed to own a Ferrari just quite yet.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
But well, to be fair, that belonged to Robin Masters.
He was just borrowing it. But yeah, I get your point.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, that's a very yeah, this is a very good point.
So I look, I'm going to continue down this journey.
My business will only grow and it was, it will
develop probably into some more specific fields and we're kind
of we're looking at that right now about how we
can best, you know, I guess add some real value
to New Zealand business during some really tough times for businesses.
(13:10):
So a lot of what we do, we even we
even do it a reduced fee just to help business
owners out right now when they've got a problem in
side your business.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Really good to check with you, Dan all the very
best part of the TNG Group, the Neil Group.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
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