Hello, this is a private investigator experience podcast, and I'm your host, Phil Little. On our, podcast, we talk about the life and cases of PI. And today is one of my favorite tools in our toolbox of investigative things is undercover agents. And when I think about our undercover cases, a lot of my work, my adrenaline gets to pump on a little bit and I get excited all over again. If you've not realized yet, if you haven't watched before, I love what I've done after my law enforcement experience going into the private sector. And this case I'm talking about today is one of the hundreds of this type of case we've worked over the last 102 years at West Coast Detectives. No, I didn't found it. As I, on some television shows I was on years ago, I got introduced as the founder of West Coast Detectives and everybody kind of raised their eyebrows a little bit. So I took it over in the late seventies. So no, I didn't find found it in this case and all the others. I worked my cases through the lens of my military law enforcement, intelligence and global security experience. Then I just add a touch of my biblical worldview to come up with solutions for our clients. Remember when these undercover cases bring a smile? As I remember the adrenaline pumping run down alleys with law enforcement chasing the bad guys, always in the middle of the night, of course. They didn't want to do anything in the daytime. And one of the hundreds of undercover cases we worked, and there are a couple of ones that always leap to my mind. The one I will be sharing about today is a government operation at an out of state from California of a joint military complex, which had space vehicles for overhauling between flights. And I loved anything about the Air Force since I spent time on jet airplanes. I love airplanes. So I thought, this might be interesting. Well, this one was unusual because it would normally be worked by the FBI, since this involved the federal government and issues that were federal in nature. But with West Coast Detective history back to 1922, we were well known nationally before I took it over. Many of our staff, like myself, had military and law enforcement and federal backgrounds. Let me share some Background on undercover agents effectiveness. Why is undercover such an effective tool for the private sector? Now in California we hit some snags years ago when they started creating all these laws. And one thing they were creating was if a client called us to put in undercover agents, the client had to notify their employees that they were putting in undercover agents. Duh. Does that make sense? I don't think so. So, California is very detrimental to some of the investigative tools that we have used. Well, one of my favorite cases to think about is the longest undercover agent we ever had in place in a company. And this company was a large company with a privately owned client. And he called us to put in undercover agents to check for drug use, theft, employee morale, and if any management misconduct, he just got a feeling that some things need to correct it. Well, the results after a few months of the undercover agent being inside reporting on information that was all correctable, the results were so effective for the owner that he said to me. I want to keep the agent in, even after we'd solved all the current problems. And then as time went by, that agent who had started in the male room, and 23 years later, he retired as a vice president, still drawing two paychecks, one from the client and one from West Coast Detectives. Yes, undercover is that effective for a company of any size. When I took over West Coast Detectives, we had a large undercover division with both male and female agents. West Coast Detectives Undercover agents give the owner the eyes and ears to be able to find out what problems they have and fix them before they get costly for the company. With undercover agents, we save millions of dollars for clients with a small investment on the part of the client. I've discovered some effective actions that help us recruit agents with the right experience, personality, and personal integrity to represent West Coast Detectives and the client. And the key with the undercover agent is it has to be a person that they can play the bad guy with employees without going across the line, but let them think that they are with them, but also be the model employee for the company because their supervisors and people around them, even the management staff won't know that they're there. So an agent has to be able to play a dual role. The morning I got this call from this client he was a little sketchy on the phone, but that's what, happens many times when we get calls for client meetings, they don't know how, what to talk about, how to talk about, and they don't want to talk about it on the phone. I remember so many like that. And so this wasn't unusual, but when I answered the phone, he gave me his name and said he had been referred to West coast detectives and he wanted to come and meet with us. I said, sure. What is your situation that requires a P. I. He said he was in another state and didn't want to talk on the phone about the situation. He would tell me in person. I said, when do you want to meet? And he said, tomorrow. I said, okay. We'll fly down in the morning, he said, and come into Burbank. Our headquarters was near the Burbank airport, about 10 minutes away. And I said I would pick him up with one of our cars after confirming how many would be coming. The following morning at 11 a. m., we were sitting in my office with three well dressed professionals looking men and after introductions, they informed me that this was a classified operation and they knew that our agency had a security clearance. I asked, well, why isn't the FBI handling this case? And they said, the area that we live in is small. Everybody's known, even FBI agents. And we're afraid of leaks. They wanted someone from the outside who could provide undercover agents to be inserted into the workforce. It was a 24 hour operation. So they wanted one on each shift. Over the next hours, we talked about the situation and what they had going on, what they thought was going on. And we had an in house lunch where we could keep discussing the ingredients to what we were going to be faced with. I had many questions about the size of the facility what the process would be to get the agents hired in as employees without leaks. Well, when they told me. No one would know the agents were coming in, so we would have to be on our own to get past the HR hiring process. Oh, that was just great. Normally, yeah, we would have an inside contact to help direct the hiring process so our people could get in easily. And with this being a classified government operation, now we're going to have to snow, that a word in our language, tradecraft is convincing people something of what we're not. And these were going to be professional interviews we were going to be going up against. I learned part of the security issues involved lax security. Yes, you heard that right. A joint government military complex with a spacecraft there. I was shaking my head. What other good news do we have? I said. They went on. Apparently the head of the joint operation was an engineer who was not that concerned about security. He just wanted to get the mission done. Well, their concerns was drug and other related problems in their workforce along with management status and how they were operating to treated employees and so forth. And they'd gotten a tip from somewhere they weren't really clear on at this point that could lead to foreign governments having compromised the site. Well, this was going to be fun. I reminded myself that I always said there wasn't a problem that couldn't be solved. It just took time and money. Sometimes a lot of money. We discussed logistics. Bringing in the agents for California living quarters for them, this would be at least a six month operation. I told them the budget but I would need a 50, 000 retainer and the billing for hours and we could wait for the undercover agents. When I had thought about how we would get the agents past these government interrogators who we assumed would be very sharp. I asked the the client to send me every detail about the people doing the interviews. Ages, who they are, what they like, what they dislike, what they want to see in a new employee, what would something our agents to do that could trip them to really like the agents how they talk, dress, or any, anything that we can find out about them, we want to know everything about them. Then what we would do once we got that. And we had selected the agents. We would do role playing with one of our top interrogators and they would take them through this process over and over again of being questioned and, ask about their backgrounds. And this was going to be the key we hope that would be able to get them hired. I set up to come to their operation two days later and be able to view the facility and get backgrounds on the HR staff. I would be going in as a safety consultant to survey the location for insurance liability issues. After the working lunch, we had everything arranged, and my visit two days later, and then I sent them back to the airport for the trip home. They'd come in a private jet, so they didn't need to worry about the schedule. As they left the office, I called our team together, which included our operations chief, the undercover unit chief, the combined investigative units chief, which undercover was part of, and the head of HR, along with my assistant to be the conduit to keep me informed as I would be traveling. I gave the team a full briefing on all I know. The operation chief had been in a meeting with the clients and my style of management is I want to give all the information to all of our team. So they know everything I know and can understand what or how I'm processing things. in most of these cases, we did departmentalize what people know. Because having the right information can help make them the right decisions. Now on many cases, as would being this case, the three agents being put in on different ships would not know each other and that was done for security reasons at the outset. And later on if it required knowledge that we would do that. So I directed the HR chief, who had the logistics section as part of HR, start on where we would be housing agents. They had to be separate, so they wouldn't know each other. What kind of transportation would we provide while they were on the ground? We had to use cars with local plates, for security reasons, so we would probably rent cars. I also had HR start the process of identifying current staff who would be possibly be able to go on for six months. We would have the ability if they could return for holidays or special things that might come up. And I had my personal assistant involved who would give me interfaces with the operation chief to give me daily reports on progress. I ended with time is critical, but we must get it right the first time. I told them I would brief them fully after I returned from my visit to the client's location. The flight to the client location was about a two hour flight from Burbank, so I arranged to fly to the closest airport to the client, which was about one hour from their location. We had a private jet for our regional use, a Citation II, so that would give me flexibility to get there before dark in time to drive to the hotel to meet the clients the next day. As I said in the hotel that night,,after one of the biggest stakes, you talk about Texas big stakes. Well, this was up at the Northwest and it was a big stake and I ate too much. Excuse me. And as I was sitting there and letting that digest, and I was looking forward to seeing this joint military operations, because with my background in the air force, I loved air point and I wanted to get a chance to touch the space shuttles and really see what was going on. This case is going to Take a second part, at least, to keep it in a reasonable length. Stay tuned for the conclusion next week. On my next post, I'm going to share with you the tradecraft we need and use to select and train our agents to make sure they would be a good agent and fit into the undercover assignment. Not all good investigators are good undercover agents. Sometimes their actions, mannerisms, how they look and dress will will give them away. I will share how we got the agents past the interviews and what happened over the next six months. Could I ask you, would you help me by liking, sharing, subscribing, and you know the drill, hit that notification bell. So you'll know about the next post, particularly the conclusion of this case. Thank you. I would welcome your comments. Or, if you have some undercover experience you would like to share, I would love to hear your comments. You can leave any comments on any of the platforms, or email me directly at plittlepi777@ at gmail dot com. If you have any issues in your life or business that you would like to see if a PI can help you, please send me that information at plittlepi777 at gmail. com. I will check it out and talk to you about some possible solutions. Now be looking for the conclusion in this case next week. Remember, become your own investigator in your community to help keep your family safe. Until next time, take care. Be safe. May God bless you. May God bless your family. And may God bless America.