Forget stakeouts, these private eyes find fraud using social media

PHILADELPHIA – Spying is pretty creepy. But cheating spouses and people who file false insurance claims have made poking around others' business a necessary profession for a long time.

Which brings us to Scott Catron, a private investigator for more than 20 years.

His work has exposed him to dogs and wild animals during camouflage surveillance on public land. He has endured eight hours on a deep-sea fishing excursion to catch an insurance claimant evidently fit enough to work on the boat.

Then there were the six days he hid in a hatchback, waiting to capture visual evidence that a supposedly wheelchair-bound person could walk.

But time-consuming, shot-in-the-dark, rough-on-the-body tactics aren't the only ways to learn all there is to know about a person, especially in the digitally abundant 21st century, when people just can't seem to stay off social media, even when they're attempting a scam.

Recognition of that truth inspired Catron and Michael Petrie, another longtime private investigator, to create Social Detection, where people searches involve fast, comprehensive internet scouring rather than days sitting in a car with binoculars.

"If there is fraud, it will be found, provided there's a web presence," said Petrie, 45, suggesting an important change in our personal record. "It's not a reputation anymore. It's a webutation."

In less than six months, Social Detection saved insurance carriers and employers more than $7 million in eight cases, Petrie said.

Think a Google search is a comprehensive review of a person's public profile? Watch Social Detection's sleuths plug your essentials into Google and see the results. Then watch them do the same using their software and marvel, maybe cringe a little, at how much more comes up.

"There are a lot of sites that don't let Google index their database," said Catron, 44. "So you need to know what sites to go to."

At Social Detection, "we're going beyond the surface web," using up to 50 identifiers, including nicknames, user names, e-mail addresses, aliases, relatives, Facebook tags, texts, photos, and videos, ensuring more informed searches and, consequently, more relevant results, said David Graham, 52, another owner and director of business development.

All the information found is public. Social Detection never makes contact with individuals, the work is from a keyboard.

The 14-employee company, profitable and self-funded, would not disclose revenue, saying only that 2016's will be about two times last year's. About 20 percent is from subscriptions (mostly law firms and private investigators); the rest, from individual, or "concierge," jobs.

Prices for concierge searches and reports range from $375 to $500. Subscriptions run $199 to $1,000 a month, depending on number of searches.

Though Catron and Petrie started the business to serve the insurance industry, their focus as PIs for two decades, "we know it belongs in almost every category of business where people need to make critical decisions about people," Petrie said.