Though not as restrictive as those binding government agencies, there are some restrictions on private investigators. Most states have statewide licensing agreements. Some are quite difficult to obtain. Many have an internship. California requires 6,000 hours of paid investigative work (about 3 years given a 40-hours work week) under a licensed investigator. You will be fingerprinted, photographed and pass an examination. Training and advanced degrees in Criminal Justice may affect the hours of internship.
States Requiring PI License
These states have reciprocity agreements with each other. This allow a private investigator to operate in these states on a specific case for a short time. The states are California, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia. There are four states that do not require licensing, Alaska (Anchorage and Fairbanks do have licensing requirements), Mississippi, South Dakota and Wyoming. If the results of the investigation is to be presented in a court the case is a ‘regulated case’ and requires a license. Non-regulated cases like public records, court records, internet files searches are the kind of situations where no licensing is required.
Private Investigator Specialist Jobs
Like all fields there are specialists.
Forensics – Forensic financial examiners, forensic digital electronics examiners and insurance investigators. Many are retired law enforcement, either local or federal. Their primary clients are attorneys and they do follow-up for the defense and complete investigations in many civil suits. They spend a lot time conducting interviews and locating witnesses, process serving, skip tracing (locating ‘dead-beat’ dads, debtors and bail enforcement).
Corporate – At the corporate level PI’s investigate or conduct, antipiracy, copyright infringement, due diligence investigations, malware and cyber criminal activity, background checks and locating missing persons. False injury and worker’s compensation fraud investigations are encounted on a regular basis and tackled by a PI specializing is such cases. Under cover operations are conduct in some cases. Corporate espionage and counter espionage are also common. Corporate (in this sense Corporate is used for any business regardless of legal organization) intelligence a growing factor and almost a direct fit for former military intelligence specialists.
Financial – A certified public accountant (CPA) specializes in audits but are sometimes employed by a PI to conduct financial investigation. Fraud in general is an area of great activity and opportunity for the private investigator. Fraud cases are difficult for police departments to conduct. The fraud investigator has a unique personal characteristics, knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA). In most fraud cases the perpetrator is known, the challenge is in finding how they did it, and then packaging the case in manner presentable to the court. Many prosecutors avoid fraud cases because of the difficulty in presentation. Most police departments allocated insufficient resources to fraud cases. Violent crime suppression eats a disproportionate amount of resources leaving little to address fraudulent actions and property crimes. This makes fraud case a unique fit for the private investigator.
Missing Persons – As with fraud, missing persons are also a good choice for the PI. About 80% of missing person case are closed within 72 hours. Missing persons cases are not high propriety cases, unless of course there indications early of foul play or the victim is under 12 years of age or elderly.
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