A Watchful Eye

While the nation beefs up security, more local companies look to private detectives to help protect investments

There was one moment in Joe Cabrejos’ career that could have come straight out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. In his 20 years as a private detective with Goodenow Associates Inc., Cabrejos has investigated thousands of people, including county officials and corporate executives. During one particular case some years back, Cabrejos tracked a subject to the Honolulu International Airport.

Eye Spy: Over the past 20 years, Joe Cabrejos has handled thousands of cases.

“I saw him get into a cab, but everyone else said, ‘Nah, that’s not him,’” Cabrejos recalls. “So I just jumped into a taxi, and I actually yelled to the driver, ‘Follow that cab!’ And the driver did. He weaved around all the cars until we caught the guy.”

For Cabrejos, that was a rare Hollywood moment. He’d be the first to tell you that this type of work is hardly glamorous. It requires endless computer searches, knocking on numerous doors and long hours.

There are 34 licensed private detective agencies in Hawaii, with 105 licensed investigators. Goodenow Associates is the state’s oldest and largest agency. It annually handles up to 4,000 cases, from routine background checks to months-long investigatons. Just like a law firm, Goodenow bills by the hour – between $75 to $95. And while the agency is best known for its government-related cases, Cabrejos says that businesses are a growing customer segment for his company.

What kind of services do you usually provide for local companies?

We do a lot of pre-employment checks, usually for large employers or those with high turnovers. Once they’ve got a candidate they’d like to hire, we determine whether they’ve got clean criminal and civil records, call their past employers and, in some cases, do a credit report check. Those are all in accordance with the guidelines that regulate our industry. What we look for is pretty much available to the public.

We also do fingerprinting, predominantly for schools and hospitals. Federal guidelines now require anyone who deals with children on a regular basis to be fingerprinted. Our fingerprint volume has increased about 700 percent in the last two years, from about 200 fingerprints a year to 1,400 a year.

Has that segment of your business been affected by the overall boost in national security since Sept. 11?

More people are concerned about who they’re doing business with. Sometimes it’s warranted. Other times, it’s the peace of mind that they’re dealing with someone who is who he says he is. We’re also doing more tenant screening for the retail market. Someone might contact us and say, “I’m about to rent 5,200 square feet of retail space to this person. Check him out before he signs the lease.”

Isn’t it easier to obtain information on people these days with the Internet?

I don’t feel that what you get on the Internet is necessarily good information. There’s no verification. It’s basically garbage in, garbage out. An investigator, on the other hand, analyzes that report. This address matches this address, or this person has changed his name. We’ll define those results into a more complete package.

How much of your corporate work requires undercover operations?

Most of the corporate stuff we do is due diligence. For instance, Corporation A wants to take over Corporation Z. But before continuing negotiations, they want to know who the CEO is — what he’s worth, what he’s been involved in — so they can get a better picture of who they’re about to get into bed with. That doesn’t necessarily require undercover.

You also investigate workplace-violence situations. Have there been more requests for this type of service in recent years?

We’ll get involved if it’s an item of litigation. We’ll check an employee’s background and see if he’s been involved in previous incidents. We get a fair amount of those cases, but not on a regular basis. People forget that the underlying factor is usually drugs, and it’s usually crystal meth. We’ve done cases where we’ve found that there’s wide use in the company. It’s not uncommon.

You have also handled a few cases regarding improper use of proprietary information.

They usually happen in franchisee-franchiser situations where someone has lost their franchise. They may have a new name, but we check to see if they’re still operating under the previous franchise — serving the same food, wearing the same uniforms. They no longer have authorization to do so.

Sometimes, we get a Mainland company that has fired a high-ranking executive, and all of a sudden he’s in Honolulu. The company wants to know what he’s got on him, who he’s meeting with. We’ve got to figure out who the players are.

We also have a lot of counterfeit cases. We’ll do undercover buys, purchase an item that’s a designer label and send it to the experts. If it’s identified as a fake, it’s up to the company to either sue or turn it into a criminal matter.

Is the technology you use as advanced as Hollywood films would like us to believe?

We do have a lot of covert cameras in our inventory that we can blend into almost any situation, but there are certain instances where it’s just not gonna happen. For instance, some nightclubs will run a metal detector on you before you enter.

You also have to know how to introduce a piece of equipment into a case. Tiny cameras have limitations; a wide angle won’t get a clear picture unless you’re within two feet of the person, and the cameras are fairly delicate pieces of equipment. So there have been times when we’ve checked the equipment before we went out, used it, got back to the office and found we got nothing but black.

High tech doesn’t always work, but it will amaze us sometimes because we’ll get into a situation where the client will say, “Wow, I can’t believe you got that.”

How do state privacy laws affect your business?

The main one is a reasonable expectation of privacy. Offices with doors closed, bathrooms, dressing rooms, bedrooms — anyplace someone would have an expectation of privacy is somewhere we can’t use our hidden capabilities. It’s not admissible in court. When we do take video, it has to be from a publicly accessible location — from a street, from a park, anything open to the general public.

As for tape recording, Hawaii is a one-party consent state. As long as one of the two people involved in a conversation knows it’s being tape recorded, it’s OK. California is a two-party consent state, meaning both parties need to know.

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