Trust is an important part of any client - supplier relatioship, perhaps more so in our industry than any other due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence we handle.
We pride ourselves on completing our client objectives quickly and effectively, exceeding their expectations and delivering a service that we feel truly represents our ethos of Honesty, Integrity and Quality.
But let's be realistic: we are as human as you and are not immune to delays. It is at this stage that we rely on the trust of our clients: trust in us as Agents and trust in Black Cat as an agency. If this trust begins to slip, one can soon begin to feel isolated as a client and 'left out in the cold' with regard to what we have offered.
Recently, a case came in to the office that was almost entirely intelligence based. What this effectively means is that the huge majority of the work involved was to take place behind a desk rather than in the field behind the lens of a camera.
In cases of this nature, one cannot always rely on the information required by the client coming forth on a specific date as the information we can obtain is from sources outside of our control, who, as do we, have their own deadlines to meet away from the work they do for us.
It is at this time that the groundwork we put in to all of our cases, the total commitment we have to all of our clients and the reputation we have worked hard to build in our industry comes into play. If you can trust us to do what we say we will do, we will always deliver. If you cant, we are not the agency for you.
Sent from my BlackBerry 8800 ® wireless device.
A note from Agent A's wife
When I met my husband, who I think you all know as Agent A I had no idea what he did for a living. To be honest, I thought he was in sales and this guise continued for about nine months into our relationship before I discovered the truth. In a way, I suppose I knew subconciously that he wasn’t being entirely truthfull with me about his life but ironically, there were more occasions where I suspected him of cheating rather than spying!
Because of this, I have no problem with what he currently does with Black Cat Investigations, In a way, I feel prouder of him now than I ever did before as I honestly believe that what the Agency does is incredibly noble. Having been cheated on before in a previous relationship, I know that if I had had the means to employ him or one of the team to find out the truth for me, I would have done. As a prospective ‘cheatee’ (!) the worst part for me was the not knowing. The going to work and not being able to concentrate, the watching of TV shows with my partner that touched on infidelity and both sitting there in silence with an atmosphere like blamanch! If, at the time, someone had offered to take all of that away and replace it with answers I would have jumped at the chance.
What of the late nights and periods away from home? To be honest, it doesn’t make that much difference to the quality of our relationship. Agent A is here more often during the day now than he ever was before and whilst we have no concept of a weekend as he works many of them, we simply have our two day break at some other point midweek (which is great for shopping as everyone else is at work!)
Anyway, the real rewards come after he has worked a night Operation as I can wake him up in the morning and present my pitch to him for those new birkenstocks I simply must have…normally, he is too tired to argue and by the time he realises what I have bought, the receipt has magically vanished….
What can we say?!
Black Cat Investigations deal with facts. We let the evidence we collect speak for itself rather than giving a personal opinion of what we think of a situation. This way, our clients are never misled by what they could misconstrue from us and we can remain distant enough from an Operation so as not to offer what could be a biased result (everyone is innocent until proven guilty remember?!)
That said, sometimes we encounter a situation whereupon our client is being so abused by his or her spouse that it is simply impossible not to take a view on what he or she really ought to do. Changing the names, places and specific details of the case, I would like to share on such Operation with you….
Over two years ago, a client came to us fearing that her husband may be cheating on her. Working over 14 hours per day, the onus was on her to cover the bills for the marital home as her husband claimed he was unable to work and thus, unable to contribute. Coming home each day, she would find that all four beds in their property appeared to have been used although it was just her and her husband residing there. After leaving this anomaly unaswered for over six months, she finally contacted us to shed some light on her suspicions.
The Black Cat team went into the property with her while her husband was out for the day and set up some covert audio visual recording devices in prime locations around the home: Lightswitches, plug sockets, clocks, lampshades even the old television in the master bedroom with the intention of finding out what was happening in her home while she worked.
All of the devices installed worked on a wireless frequency meaning that provided we were within 300 feet of the property, we would be able to monitor actvity from a van we had parked up around the corner. So, the following day, the surveillance begun. Two of us sat in the back of the van out of sight of the property, monitoring all sound and video coming from the installed devices.
It wasn’t long before the first of four visitors that day entered the house, only as we watched the scene unfold before us it became apparent that these people werent visiting him, they were working from the house.
Unbelievably, it transpired as we compiled a dosier of movements over the next three days that the husband was in fact ‘renting’ rooms out to local prostitutes while his wife worked during the day and early evening. They in turn were allowing clients to visit them throughout the day. The husbands payment for this arrangement? Lets just say he was paid ‘in kind’ and not in cash.
So, if we go back to the idea of not taking a view on a situtation, you can see how and why we broke the golden rule on this occasion as every now and then, we come across people who are going so far beyond simple infidelity that it becomes a joy to hand over the evidence to a client and know that she is going to finally kick him into touch.
If only we had left one camera in the house to watch the look on his face as she played the DVD that evening…..
In the words of a cheater....
Black Cat Investigations do not seek to destroy relationships and nor do we consider what we do a contributory facture to the breakdown of such. On the contrary, we believe that if used correctly, our services can help couples to look into what has caused one party to commit infidelity and start to repair the damage that such actions cause, after all, if we can force the truth out on the table people know what they are dealing with and can take steps accordingly.
Being in this business as long as we have, we have come to realise that infidelity isnt the cause of a bad marriage or relationship, but is just another symptom of such and thus, if it is just another symptom, isnt this something that can be treated?
In order to look into this further, we need to look at it from the point of view of someone who has cheated and try to identify what led them to do it in the first place. Tania* came to us after we have captured her husband Tony* on film having an affair with a co-worked. Tania knew that her marriage was at crisis point when she phoned us, though wanted to know why Tony chose to cheat on her rather than trying to talk to her about it so that they could get things back on track. Offering to mediate this discussion, both parties came into the Black Cat offices. This is what Tony had to say:
“Tania and I had been having problems for the last couple of years. When we met in 2001, we were both in great jobs earning good money and could pretty much do whatever we wanted to do. We had two holidays a year, ate out two or three evenings a week and had a great circle of friends around us that we socialised with on a regular basis. In 2005, our first child arrived, and while on the surface things looked great, it was hard as we had to put the holidays on hold and eating out or getting drunk together became a thing of the past.
James* was great, don’t get me wrong. He slept through the night after the first couple of months and compared to some of our friends who also had kids, we were having it reasonbaly easy. But in terms of spending time alone with Tania…zero. There wasn’t a set day that I can put my finger on when things changed, but over time, we became more like brother and sister than husband and wife and everyday could be broken down into a list of chores that needed to be done. Washing, cooking, cleaning, ironing. Me and Tania were effectivley put on the back burners while life continued around us.
I met Angela* for the first time about a year or so after James was born when she came to work at the office. She wasn’t working for me when she first arrived but we immediately hit it off and started to time our visits to the Kitchen so that we could meet for a chat throughout the day.
Early in 2006, we had a work conference in
Its worth mentioning that at this point, while I was planning what I was going to do, or at least try and do, I still loved Tania as much as when we first met and I still do. But something was different with Angela: The fire was there, that old spark that Tania and I used to have that had somehow become covered up by nappies and bath time. Anyway, I went on the course and low and behold, something did happen. The affair lasted for a year and a half until the Black Cat agents found us and there isnt now a day that goes by that I don’t regret what happened. After we were caught, I realised that Angela wasn’t something new and exciting at all, but was simply everything that Tania was when we first met. They even look a little alike. She reminded me of Tania in the days before James and before our life became a routine. Don’t get me worng, I am not trying to make excuses for what happened as there are none, I guess I just saw a chance to go back in time for a while and took it.
Getting caught and almost losing everything that I truly love has forced home how good I have got it with my family. Tania is my best friend and this affair has taught me that no matter how hard things get, I have my best friend right here with me that I can talk it over with”
Tony is typical of the people that we meet in our business. A lack of communication between him and his partner, toghether with a dramatic change in lifestyle, led him to seek the excitement he used to have with someone else, so it would appear that the key driving factor in what went wrong in this case was communication.
Tony and Tania apparently never talked about how they felt about their changing lifestyles and the risk here is that if you don’t talk to you partner, someone else will.
So this case illustrates that infidelity is just a symtom and not a cause as Tony and Tania are still together, but what can you do to treat the cause of the problem before these ‘symtpoms’ appear? Tony and Tania suggest the following:
- Communicate with each other about how you are feeling. If you feel trapped, tell your partner because chances are they do too and it is always better to be trapped with someone else!
- Remember why you got together with your partner in the first place and focus on that during hard times
- Accept that all relationships hit bad patches. These might last a week, a month or even a year but you will come through it and if you come through it together, you will be stronger than ever
- Make time for each other. If you cant afford to go out like you used to, cook dinner together after the children have gone to bed and eat in the dining room rather than in front of the TV
- Decide at the start of the week what you want to watch on TV and only turn it on for those shows. Spend the other times talking or simply sit together reading books
- Accept that both of you will find other people attractive, and don’t be afriad to notice people. There will always be people who catch your eye, it is simply how you deal with it that makes the difference
- Tell each other one nice thing every day. I.e, you look nice today or I love you
- Text each other during the day or send emails just to say hi
- If you can, get a friend or relative to babysit once a week or once a month and make this night your special going out night
- Look through old photos together of when you first met, it will remind you why you fell in love in the first place!
- Laugh about each others flaws!
Tony and Tania are still together and are trying to work things out after his affair, and we would like to thank them both for allowing us the chance to publish their story. It is their wish that other couples can learn from this.
New equipment
Occasionally, we receive a new piece of equipment that is just so good it begs to be used at every opportunity and just as we were when our new super vehicle tracking devices arrived, we are all very excited this morning about the arrival of our next generation GSM audio bug…
What we basically have are seven small black boxes, about the size of the new iPod shuffle, which will allow us to monitor audio activity in a room or vehicle from anywhere on the planet, providing we have access to a phone. Working on the GSM frequencies (the same as mobile phones) the device has a tiny SIM card inside it and thus a dedicated telephone number. Placed in a room, it will sit there quite happily for three or four weeks (or indefinitely if we plug it into the mains) until it picks up sound. When it does, it will then automatically phone a pre-set number (whatever we choose this number to be) and start broadcasting to us everything that it hears!
Obviously, at this stage we can arrange to have the broadcast recorded or simply listen in and take notes. Either way, the possibilities for the deployment of these new bugs are endless and thus sadly, we don’t anticipate being able to play with them for long before sending them out to work. We are not claiming that the GSM bug is a new technology as people have been rolling these out for a while now, but the audio clarity and sheer size of these devices are worth the excitement!
Having been in the business for so long, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the technology develops in our field. The last few years alone have seen massive leaps in the areas of GSM bugging and GPS tracking and now we have GPS tracking devices that, no larger than a matchbox, offer up to three weeks of tracking life before the battery dies. It seems like only yesterday that we were using devices for the same purpose that were larger than an old video cassette that would conk out after just four days on a car!
Ho hum, I ought to start naming these new bugs before nostalgia takes hold…
Save your money!
We have received some comments and information about devices that can supposedly ‘block’ the signals sent by GPS Tracking devices, thus allowing cheaters to move around unwatched. These devices are advertised on sites like eBay etc and can look like a steal at just £100 or so….Just for the record, there isnt a device in the world that can block the Black Cat Investigations GPS Tracking units, so if you are sincerely worried about your privacy being invaded, don’t cheat. Then you will never have cause to meet us!
Any questions?
We receive a lot of press for what we do and the way we do it and this invariably leads to a lot of questions that all too often are left unanswered or worse, are answered by someone who doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about. That in mind, we would like to offer you the chance to ask us questions about our gadgets, the Agency itself, our training methods or anything you want to know about the industry and we will do our best to answer them for you.
You can email us at info@blackcatinvestigations.co.uk, or through the website at http://www.blackcatinvestigations.co.uk/
or simply leave a comment here for us to read.Not ideal, but not our choice!
Our business, by the very nature of what we do isn’t without its risks. Normally, these risks are calculated and minimised for the both the security of our Agents in the field and the anonymity of our clients but occasionally our clients (being the people in charge of what we do) request that we push aside the risk element to secure a result that they can use against a cheating spouse. I would like to share one such story with you that will stay with us for some time.
The
Baffled and sitting alone in my car in the early hours, I started a mental check of everything that could affect the device, before checking the location once more on my PDA. Still over one hundred yards out.
Then I noticed it. Each of our devices (Ruby,
Clicking through to the correct page for
I barely had a chance to move off down the road before I spotted the target vehicle I had attached Sophie some nine days before! But what was he doing here? Checking the client file once more, I saw instructions for 24hr updates to the client, and, pulling over onto the verge made a call to our client.
Saving you the expletives, it transpired that the owner of the ‘Sophie car’ should have been at home while our client was at her sisters for the night, but it was obvious that he had other plans…While the cat’s away and all that. Obviously furious, she demanded pictures and if possible, proof that he was in the house. I explained to her that not anticipating this opportunity (this was a completely unrelated bug plant after all and she didn’t even have this time booked!) I didn’t have my digital SLR camera with me, and only had use of my Sony Ericcsson 5 mega pixel mobile phone camera…with auto flash! Even after explaining that as soon as I took a picture, the flash would light up the street like a Christmas tree, she insisted that I get the evidence, consequences aside.
OK then. So, preparing for a quick flash (so to speak!) and then off, I stepped out of my vehicle, phone in hand and walked closer to the Sophie Car. Phone poised, I ran off a couple of shots and bathed the street in lightning flashes! Suddenly, I heard someone behind me.
“What the hell are you doing?” The voice demanded to know. Turning to put a face to the voice, the targets features swam into view under the streetlight. I walked off quickly to my car
“I said what are you doing, that’s my car you are photographing?!” I simply turned to him, and using the stock answer stated “I am here with the knowledge of the relevant authorities, if you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact the local police” We always inform the local police when working in one of their areas, if for nothing more than to prevent them answering calls to investigate strange people parked up in cars around the village!
Fast forwarding about 30 seconds, our target had been joined by about 12 other people in the street, neighbours etc, that had seen the camera flashes, and between them they were examining the car for damage and making obvious gestures towards taking down my number plate and vehicle description.
Now, I simply vanished again in to the night leaving the street with some pub banter that the locals will no doubt dine out on for the next few months, but there was a valuable lesson to be learned that evening. What if the target hadn’t been so passive in his questioning? What if they hadn’t been happy just to let me leave what potentially could be a crime scene? In terms of safety, the answers don’t bear thinking about.
It does however demonstrate the need the need for cover, or covert behaviour if you will. Fine, on this occasion one could argue that the case, complete with a target coming out of the house in sleepwear is well and truly closed (especially as the address turned out to be that of his secretary) and thus the end justifies the means, but still….
I suppose what I am trying to say is that the closure was not ideal, but then again, we have to act as the clients direct and if they want us to break cover to close a case then so be it.
Still, it will be sometime before I frequent that village pub again which is a shame as my wife was particularly fond of their Scampi….
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