Mother held in plot to kidnap son from foster parents

NEWPORT BEACH – The estranged mother of a 7-year-old boy was arrested Friday in connection with a plot to kidnap the boy from his foster parents and smuggle him to Mexico so they could be reunited, authorities said.

Niveen Ismail, 43, of Newport Beach is jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail on suspicion of solicitation of kidnapping a child under the age of 14. Her son and his foster parents were placed into protective custody as soon as police heard about the kidnapping plot, said Sgt. Evan Sailor of the Newport Beach Police Department.

According to Newport Beach police, Ismail had been in touch with a private investigator and offered to pay him to kidnap her biological son from his foster parents. The couple is in the process of adopting the boy, Sailor said.

The plan was, according to police, that the private investigator would take the boy to Tijuana, where he would rendezvous with the mother. The mother would then pay off the investigator in exchange for the boy, Sailor said.

The investigator contacted police, and detectives set up a sting to catch the woman in the act.

An undercover police detective met with Ismail in Newport Beach on Friday afternoon to talk about the kidnapping plot and money. Ismail agreed to the deal and was arrested, Sailor said.

Investigators believe Ismail may have shopped her plan around to other people before finding the private investigator.

Police are asking anyone who was contacted by Ismail or is aware of anyone being solicited to contact Newport Beach police detective Penny Freeman at 949-644-3776 or the Newport Beach Police Department’s hotline at 800-550-NBPD.

Information may be left anonymously.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/police-222611-beach-newport.html

Former employer used ‘pretexting’ to get access to personal phone records.

In the summer of 2005 Kathy Lawlor’s dad showed her a white envelope he retrieved from his neighbor’s garbage can, deposited there by a man Lawlor suspected had been following her. “Probe” was typed in the return address field. Next to it was a picture of an eye that looked to Lawlor like the logo of a private detective agency. The discovery set in motion Lawlor’s four-year battle to protect her right to privacy, which culminated last month when a Cook County jury found that her former employer, Glenview-based North American Corp. of Illinois, obtained her telephone records without her authorization. The jury ordered the company, a business services firm, to pay her $1.8 million.

To read the full article click on the following link.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-spy-1018oct18,0,3556125.story

Definition of a California Private Investigator

 

In regards to the State of California a private investigator’s license is required for anyone conducting private investigations within the state. The following is the definition of a “Private Investigator” according to the California Business and Professions Code:

7521.  A private investigator within the meaning of this chapter is a person, other than an insurance adjuster subject to the provisions of Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 14000) of Division 5 of the

Insurance Code, who, for any consideration whatsoever engages in business or accepts employment to furnish or agrees to furnish any person to protect persons pursuant to Section 7521.5, or engages in

business or accepts employment to furnish, or agrees to make, or makes, any investigation for the purpose of obtaining, information with reference to:

 

(a) Crime or wrongs done or threatened against the United States of America or any state or territory of the United States of America.

 

(b) The identity, habits, conduct, business, occupation, honesty, integrity, credibility, knowledge, trustworthiness, efficiency, loyalty, activity, movement, whereabouts, affiliations, associations,

transactions, acts, reputation, or character of any person.

 

(c) The location, disposition, or recovery of lost or stolen property.

 

(d) The cause or responsibility for fires, libels, losses, accidents, or damage or injury to persons or to property.

 

(e) Securing evidence to be used before any court, board, officer, or investigating committee.

 

For the purposes of this section, a private investigator is any person, firm, company, association, partnership, or corporation acting for the purpose of investigating, obtaining, and reporting to

any employer, its agent, supervisor, or manager, information concerning the employer’s employees involving questions of integrity, honesty, breach of rules, or other standards of performance of job

duties.

Orange County Register Interview

ask-the-attorney-ntis-pub-0723091

Robert Young is a licensed private investigator and has been in the industry since the mid-1990s, when he worked for a large firm in Northern California as an undercover operative. His work usually is linked to the legal milieu in some fashion. Sometimes he works directly for attorneys; other times, he works for private citizens, insurance companies or businesses. A PI’s findings often are presented to an attorney as a starting point for seeking some kind of legal redress. Because anonymity is a tool of his trade, we have not included his photo.

Q: How do private citizens or businesses use private investigators?A: For instance, a person might have obtained a judgment against another, and in an attempt to collect, they want to know if the person has any assets. That’s where the PI comes in. He can locate assets such as real property, monetary funds, vehicles, businesses and so on. A good PI will also run a background, to check for other judgments against the judgment debtor, as well as state and federal liens, which in most cases would take precedence. An asset search on a pre-litigated matter lets a person know whether it’s worthwhile to hire a lawyer to pursue collection. In other cases, individuals may want the PI to watch a possibly cheating spouse, or determine if the ex spouse who says they cannot pay the child support might actually be working. Perhaps a business will hire a PI to conduct surveillance to see if employees are engaging in theft or activities other than their job duties.

Q: How do attorneys typically use private investigators? A: Family Law attorneys request assignments for custody cases, to determine if a parent is abusing alcohol or drugs while that parent has custody of the children. They ask for “skip tracing investigations” to hunt-down people trying to avoid the court’s jurisdiction. Workers Compensation and other insurance lawyers use a PI to obtain evidence on potentially fraudulent claims. Lawyers and private citizens use us to serve process (such as subpoenas, and restraining orders) on people who’ll do extreme things to avoid being served, like hiding in the back seats of friends’ cars or disguising themselves so the server can’t recognize them. It can get pretty comical what people do to evade. We usually get them in the end, though.

Q: What should people look for in hiring a private investigator? A: Make sure the PI is licensed to operate in the state where he’ll be working. For example, if you need an investigation in Nevada the investigator must be licensed there or you can use a California PI to sub-contract your work to a Nevada PI, and the California PI can help you manage the case from here. Remember that PIs have specialties like any other profession. If you want someone to sweep for bugs, you want a specialist in tactical security counter measures, surveillance requires a PI who has a vehicle set up for this purpose. Make sure the PI knows the rules or the law in regards to the investigation they would be conducting. For example, you cannot put a GPS tracker on a vehicle without the authorization of the vehicle’s registered owner; otherwise, you and the PI could both be in trouble. Finally, this job is all about experience — no classroom can teach everything that a good PI needs to know about, say, asset location. Not many people or attorneys know how to locate assets, but I’ve learned how in on-the-job training over many years.

Q: What’s the most unusual thing you’ve done for a private citizen lately? A: I had a man in his 70s come to me who’d met a lady and wanted to marry her. The problem was he’d been quite a partier back in the 1960s. He told me, “I think I married a girl back then but I can’t remember!” So I did some record searching and sure enough, he was still married, but I went a step further and interestingly enough, the girl he’d married had already been married three times! He got it resolved with an annulment, and was able to marry his new fiancée — he was so happy.

 

Licensed & Insured

 

The California Business & Professions Code mandates that a California Private Investigator must be licensed with the Bureau of of Security and Investigative Services. Furthermore most licensed Private Investigators carry a minimum errors and omissions insurance policy, although nowhere in the PI Act does it state that licensees be insured or bonded, unless protecting persons or carrying a firearm.  We are licensed and insured, as well as bonded for process serving.

Services We Provide