One day we were approached by a large cleaning company that was contracted to clean numerous hospitals throughout the country. Managers in one of the hospitals were quite suspicious of the actions of some of their employees. Although all of the workers seemed to have ’swiped in and out’ with their ID cards on the times that they were allocated to work, there was a lack of staff and in particular the amount of cleaning that was being done.  As it was a very large hospital, when workers were sent out to clean it was hard to find them again until they returned to ’swipe out’ to leave for home. Naturally the managers were suspicious that the employees were working together to cover each others backs, allowing each other to leave work without the manager’s consent and ’swiping’ each others ID cards to make it look like the employee was still in the building when they were actually at home for several hours while getting paid for work they were not doing.

The company employed us to go on undercover surveillance and find out what was going on behind the scenes. Our first actions were to send one of our agents in as a supervisor to spy on employees. This proved quite difficult as a majority of the workers were of many different nationalities and would speak to each other in different languages. It was also hard for our agent to ’mingle’ with the workers as he was a newcomer and they did not know how much they could trust him. Our agent followed numerous employees sneaking out and going to pubs and bookmakers. After a month working undercover and using different equipment including advanced voice recording equipment we captured the evidence the company needed to take down the fraudulent employees who were, as first thought, covering for each other while taking full days off. Not only that but another one of the supervisors was in on the act and was allowing this to happen. This supervisor was turning a blind eye towards this fraud. In fact if a cleaner wanted the day off he would demand £15 to keep quite and allow the employee to go.  

Our agent said it was a tough job, mostly due to the fact that he had to try and keep employees in line whilst trying to watch certain individuals that did not trust him. One nasty cleaner even threw rubbish from a bin in the ladies toilets in his face on the last day of the job. He said it was the nicest way they could say thank you and good bye.

We were instructed to carry out a surveillance of the activities of a well known person who was eligedly holidaying alone with friends on a luxurious yacht based on the south coast of Turkey. The only way this could be accomplished was for the agents to charter a much smaller yacht to observe the activities of the people on board. It turned out to be the perfect surveillance vehicle in as much as it was completely unobtrusive with all the other yachts moored in idealic bays. Also taking photographs was not a problem as everybody seemed to be photographing eachother, although the subject of enquiry was unaware that our agents were using telephoto equipment and could see the pimples on his girlfriends bottom. Needless to say a positive result was obtained for the client and neither of the agents were heard to complain about the long hours of surveillance both on board their boat and in the local restaurants. What might be called the perfect assignment.

We were approached by the wife of a high flying London banker. She came to us very upset that one night her husband of 26 years told her that he did not love her anymore and that he was moving out. Naturally she was suspicious that something else was going on with another woman that she was unaware of so she instructed us to set up a surveillance on her husband’s new apartment in Knightsbridge, London.

After a weekend of surveillance we were quite disheartened when we saw that the subject was very ‘boring’ and did not leave his apartment the whole weekend. Not only that but there was also no sign of any women or men that could potentially be seen as having an affair with the subject of enquiry.

During the surveillance on Monday morning our agents followed the subject on his route to work. After following him for 10 minutes our agents realised that he was not making the same journey that he normally does. Before our agents knew it they were sitting on a train half way through the Channel Tunnel. We knew we were on to something after we telephoned his place of work and his Secretary told us that Mr ******** would not be in today and would be back tomorrow.

Our agents followed the subject off the train and watched him make his way to a posh apartment in Paris City centre. After waiting for around one hour the subject emerged arm in arm with an attractive blonde woman. We followed them to a Coffee shop not far from the apartment where our agents were able to get many valuable photographs of the couple holding hands and touching each other quite intimately.

When we reported the news back to our client she was very satisfied with the job well done and was strangely pleased that her predictions were correct.

Insurance companies suffer fraud at the best of times. Unfortunately for them it gets worse in a recession and even more so in a deep recession which is bad news for them but good news for the many Private Investigators who deal in this area of investigation. In fact insurance fraud is as diverse as the types of insurance policies that are available to the public and can really be classified in two ways, as either hard fraud or soft fraud. Soft fraud is far more common than hard fraud.

One of the most common forms of soft insurance fraud is in fact the exaggeration of injuries sustained in an accident. Someone who has suffered genuine injuries may exaggerate their extent, the effect on their ability to work and of course the length of time it takes them to recover. These exaggerations are often made with the sole intention of receiving a larger sum of money.

Hard fraud however, occurs when someone deliberately plans or invents a loss such as a collision, vehicle and equipment theft, and in fact in extreme cases, arson in order to receive a payment for damages. An art collector for instance, who insures a high value piece and then says that it has been ’stolen’, claiming the money for themselves and keeping the art piece in the process. Criminal gangs are often involved in hard fraud schemes, many involving cars that are in fact stolen to order. Even life insurance is not exempt from fraud (read ‘A fraudulent insurance claim’ in our blog). This demonstrates the extent of deception that some people will use to defraud insurance companies.

Nationwide Investigations were approached by a client in London asking to carry out a trace for her maternal parents. Our client had been adopted at birth and had never seen or heard from her true mother or father.  She had tried searching for her parents in many ways herself but this always ended in disappointment.  After making numerous enquiries and searching many databases and other sources throughout four different countries, Nationwide Investigations discovered that the client’s parents were actually living just two doors away from the client. The client had known the couple for over ten years and they were very good friends. They would often have dinner together and on one occasion had even booked holidays to the same destination. The couple regularly acted as babysitters for the client’s children and treated them as if “they were family”!

Until Nationwide Investigations became involved, no-one had even suspected the possibility of any family link.

To find out more about tracing adopted children or biological parents click here.

A firm of solicitors was looking for an established Private Investigator in London and opened a case with Nationwide Investigations to gather evidence for the defence in a murder enquiry. Nationwide Investigations were told by the defendant that he had been wrongly identified by the police.

He had refused to co-operate with the police because he had been cheating on his wife with another woman, a prostitute in fact, and he was afraid of the consequences at home. The man had met with this lady in a bar in London City centre and booked into a hotel in the early hours of the morning. When he finally confessed to the police, they were unable to locate the woman and therefore did not believe his story.

Nationwide Investigations traced the woman to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and she agreed to return with them to London to make a statement to the police.

Nationwide Investigation’s client was released and the police re-opened the case. The real murderer was later arrested, charged and is currently serving a life sentence.

And – Nationwide Investigation’s client later married his lady of the night!

To find out more about how Nationwide Investigations can help trace people click here.

A popular London insurance company became suspicious when a client complained that his wife had been electrocuted while ironing clothes during a visit to her Mother in Pakistan. The man told this insurance company that he had not seen or heard from his wife in over two weeks. He was apparently very distraught when his Mother-in-law telephoned him to say that his wife had an accident. She told him that his wife was mopping the floor and then stopped to do the ironing. Whilst doing the ironing she accidentally dropped the iron into the mop bucket and electrocuted herself. Everyone who heard this story found this very strange- not least because the couple had taken out a large insurance policy on her life the previous year.

Nationwide Investigations sent an investigator to Pakistan and set up a surveillance on the man’s Mother-in-law’s home. The agent discovered that the man’s wife was not dead. She had been photographed brushing the driveway and doing shopping in the market. The lady was obviously still alive and her death certificate had been forged. When the insurance company received the agent’s report they were not surprised but were very pleased with the work Nationwide Investigators had done. The man was taken to court and with the help of Nationwide Investigations was charged with conspiracy to defraud the insurance company of £250,000.

To find out more about how Nationwide Investigations could help you with suspected fraudulent insurance claims click here.

Nationwide Investigations was asked to investigate the apparent loss of equipment from a photographic wholesalers based in London. All stock controls appeared to be in order and security controls were first class. The company did not seem to be able to pin point exactly how some of their stock seemed to be disappearing so they approached the highly recommended Nationwide Investigations in London to take on the case.

Nationwide Investigations set up two operations. One agent went on undercover surveillance to watch staff working in the client’s warehouse who might have the means to steal stock in such a way that it could not be traced. Meanwhile Nationwide Investigations computer fraud investigation team looked at the stock control and who had been accessing the stock and orders. Subsequently Nationwide Investigators discovered that a 13-year-old had been remotely hacking into the company’s stock control system, ordering equipment and having it delivered to his address. He was also marking it SAMPLE NO CHARGE.

All the equipment was later returned to the company in its original packaging, never having been opened. When the boy was asked why he was doing this he said that he was bored and thought it was funny that he was receiving these goods and no-one knew anything about it. That all changed once Nationwide Investigations got involved.

To find out more about how Nationwide Investigations can help you with any suspected computer fraud and/or theft from your company call us on 0800 181 383.

An insurance company in Manchester contacted Nationwide Investigations regarding a lady who was claiming £750,000 in a personal injury case. She had slipped on wet floor in her workplace injurying her knee. The lady was absent from work for months and put a claim in against the company. She insisted that after her fall she was unable to walk and that the company was to blame. Nationwide Investigations put an agent on the case to do a surveillance on her to see what she would get up to and whether or not her claims were true. After a couple of days and never catching sight of the subject the agent on the job made enquiries with neighbours. One of the neighbours was very friendly with the lady and was able to tell our agent that she was on holiday in Greece. Our agent was told exactly where she was staying and what date her flight back was. Two days later our agent arrived at the same appartment complex that the lady was staying at. This enabled him to get some very valuable photographs and video footage of the subject running on the beach, diving into the complex swimming pool and dancing on a table in a bar. The subject had no idea that she was being watched and was very surprised when this evidence was used to have her case thrown out of court.