Uebelhart . Net

Every once in awhile I’ll recount a case I worked on. This one is ongoing (or going on right now, however you want to consider it). Names (except mine and Chris) have been changed to protect the innocent, guilty, and my arse.

Wednesday afternoon around 3 oclock I get a call from a good client. We’ve been doing work for this guy for at least 6-7 years, and he’s an attorney we occassionally use. Overall a nice guy and a nice client.

He asks if we can do an overnight surveillance, and the kicker, it’s for that night. I inform him that I’ll check out availablity. For surveillance we usually use the same person most of the time (My friend Chris at Saturos.net ), but we usually need notice. He’s a stay at home dad who is being babysat by his 18 month old son during the day. In addition, his wife has the car at her job.

What this means is he can’t start until around 6 or 7, after his wife gets home, and then must quit around 5 am to return the car to his wife and takeover baby duties. Also he has our video camera.

I talk it over with him and the client and it comes down to this: They want someone there ASAP and have them there all night long until 9 AM. So the plan is: I head there immediatly, Chris takes over at 6 PMish, I take back over at 5 AMish, and go back to the office at 9. Cool, everyone’s okay with that. Luckily I never go anywhere without my digital camera, so it’s with me incase something happens, and then Chris will have the video camera.

What are we surveilling? Well as you can tell by the post title, a business, more accurately someone at the business. Here’s the situation:
There’s a company, we’ll call it “Super Cowbells, Inc” with a unique product with lots of potential (per the client, I think it’s just a funky gadget geejaw that’ll be in flea markets for a buck). It was started by and is majority owned by and run by a man (I’ll call him Bob Bocephus). Bob has a partner who put up most of the capital, we’ll call him Will Whatever. Will is our client’s client. Well, it seems Will is unhappy with the way Bob has been runing Cowbells, and especially the way he’s going through the cash reserves. Bob I guess was treating the company as a personal piggy bank. So Will hires our client to file a lawsuit on Bob. Part of the lawsuit is an Injunction which states among other things that Bob can’t remove or alter any of the paperwork or inventory of the business until a court hearing (in 2 days). Seems that Bob flipped his lid when he was served (which is why we don’t serve papers anymore - too weird and dangerous). Will thinks Bob might try to take everything he can out of the business before the hearing. Hence they hired us to watch and document the biz.

Well I pull up. The biz is an office/storefront with a warehouse behind it in the middle of a warehouse district adjacent to 2 Major Highways. I am up and watching by 4:20 PM. About 5 I watch a young guy (not our subject) load up a Suburban driven by a female (not our subject) with about 1/2 dozen big boxes. Not having the video camera, I take still shots with my digital. Also being the way the place is laid out - I am about 100 yards away, accross a street, in another parking lot taking these shots with only a 3x zoom. But you can see what is happening. The lady departs after awhile. The business starts closing down (whole area starts emptying) and the young loader I saw departs in a flat bed followed by a green pickup (can’t see who is driving). About 6 the suspect leaves and locks up, and also Chris arrives to take over. Due to rush hour, I can’t follow the suspect, but I have what I believe is his home address, which is less than 2 miles away accross one of the major highways. I head over ther and find a place tucked in at the end of a dirt road that is nearly impossible to do surveillance on (you could go GI Joe and hide in bushes/trees and do it though). The suspect’s vehicle is not there, but the flatbed the young guy left in is.

I report in to the client, head home, send him an report on what happened to date and copies of the shots I took of the load up (including some crops and enlargements of key parts). He’s happy, but wants to keep going.

I get up at 4 AM and am back to relive Chris by 5. Nothing happened at all that night aside from boredom and skeeters. I watch to 9 AM, witnessing what looks like the lady that drove out the loaded Suburban shows up in the green pickup I witnessed last night. She unlocks the doors and enters. I depart a bit after 9 and head towards the office. Hungry and tired I stop at Waffle House for some fuel. The client calls me back and Will wants more work done - he wants the place watched to 1 PM. So I finish up and head back and watch until 1. Nothing new. I leave, and instead of heading to the office I go home. I type in new reports, run license plates, and send in the info to the client.

Client & Will are both happy. Real happy with last night’s work and the load up especially. So happy in fact that they want me at the Injunction hearing tomorrow in court to testify and show the pictures. Yipee.

Icing on the cake: since I do most of the work at the office, I am the main point of contact for the clients. So being out of the office I get the important calls sent to my cell phone. While doing surveillance I managed to get 3 more cases (one locate, one record check, and a business background). This on top of the 33 backgrounds I’ve done in the last 10 days, and 50+ civil cases I am still summarizing and laying out for a client. EXHAUSTION!