Why Undercover Investigations are Popular

by Rajesh Sinha Consultant

At times the only way to get into the root cause of the issue is to pursue the truth from its source. This can through undercover investigations which is helpful to crack cases like to catch a cheating spouse red-handedly or to verify the details of an employee.

Nowadays, organizations hire undercover investigators to find out the facts about their employees, substance abuse, theft and other serious misconduct. The corporate undercover investigation is carried out by hiring an investigator who works in an office physically and reports back any suspicious activities that take place there. The hidden cameras and surveillance are also used for ongoing investigations.

Types of Undercover Investigations

Undercover investigations have been used in varieties of ways throughout the history. There are two major risks involved in this kind of investigation: one is to maintain the identity and the second is the getting back to normal duty. This kind of investigations takes some time particularly while dealing with white collar crime and money laundering in an organization. Sometimes private investigators in Mumbai are also hired for divorce litigation. Usually domestic and private investigators are combined together in undercover operations. The operation utilizes various undercover operations to expose criminal activities in any organization.

The Techniques Used

There are many techniques which are used by undercover agents to accumulate information without the knowledge of the target. Since the technology has changed therefore the scope of investigation has become varied without endangering the lives of the investigators. For example, the undercover investigators in Mumbai follow the adulterers or tailing that commit insurance fraud that can reveal various things about them. Such investigations are done at workplace, for white collar crimes, interview and fact finding, domestic investigations, intellectual property, and background investigations.

The Traditional Approach

The success is always through traditional method which starts with background checks which are used at the early stage of investigations. It gives an insight into the history of the suspect like employment records, pending warrants, bank records, education, property ownership, rental property and credit card information. Then is the surveillance to monitor the movement of the suspect and recording their day-to- day movements. The audio and video monitoring plays a crucial role in investigation. The most common type is the wiretap where the authorities listen to conversations that take place through telephone. The audio monitoring is carried out when the undercover agent is required to wear a wire to record the conversations by placing a bug in the room.

Other way is through shadowing which one of the best ways to collect solid evidence. Surveillance can be done with the help of latest technology. Video and photographic evidence can be collected without alerting the target. Another popular way of collecting evidence is sting which is tactic used by undercover agent to catch the person in the act. One of the examples of such kind of investigation is through sting operation in which the undercover agent can pose as child to trap a child molester or setting-up a bait to catch online fraud. In this way undercover investigations have become immensely popular and help to solve cases.