Episode 42: The Art of Fact Investigation with Philip Segal
On this week's episode, Leah talks with Philip Segal about his experience as a journalist and attorney. They dive into how Phil's previous role as a journalist has shaped the way he works cases as an attorney.
Philip Segal is a New York attorney and the founder of Charles Griffin Intelligence, with extensive experience in corporate investigations in the United States for AMLAW 100 law firms and Fortune 100 companies. Prior to becoming an attorney, Phil was the finance editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, and worked as a journalist in five countries over 19 years with a specialization in finance. He is the author of the book, The Art of Fact Investigation: Creative Thinking in the Age of Overload. He lectures widely on fact investigation and ethics to bar associations across the United States.
Connect with Philip:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-segal-b90a6315/
Twitter: @cgintelligence
Philip's Resources:
charlesgriffinllc.com
artoffactinvestigation.com
ethicalinvestigator.com
divorceassethunter.com
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Transcript for Episode 42:
Leah Wietholter (00:00):
Hi, I'm Leah Wietholter owner of Workman Forensics and this is the investigation game podcast. Welcome to the investigation game podcast. I'm your host, Leah Wietholter CEO of Workman forensics in Tulsa, Oklahoma on today's episode, I'm joined by Phillip Segal. Phil is the New York attorney and the founder of Charles Griffin intelligence. He has extensive experience in corporate investigations in the United States for AmLaw 100 law firms and fortune 100 companies prior to becoming an attorney. Phil was the finance editor of the Asian wall street journal, and worked as a journalist in five countries over 19 years with a specialization in finance. He is the author of the book, the art effect investigation, creative thinking in the age of information overload. He lectures widely on fact investigation and ethics to bar associations across the United States. Thank you for joining me today, Phil.
Phillip Segal (00:58):
Thank you for having me good to be here. So what was your
Leah Wietholter (01:00):
Career path leading to your profession and the company that, that you own and run now?
Phillip Segal (01:05):
I was a journalist for almost 20 years and I got a specialization in financial journalism about halfway through there. The first half was a television production politics and war zones. And I spent a lot of time in Asia and then I ended up while in Asia, changing over to finance. And, uh, that was my last job. I was the financial editor of the Asian wall street journal before I went to law school and I went to law school thinking I would just learn a bit about law to make me a better writer. And I loved law school and decided to go. And instead of just doing one year on this fellowship, I did the whole thing and became a lawyer. I had picked up a good knowledge of accounting while being a business journalist, but not of law. So I thought law would be complimentary. And then it turned out that I loved studying law and wanted to work closer to lawyers if not be a practicing lawyer. And I found my way into this business, which I've been in ever since. And that's 16 years now. I think something like that 14, 15, 16 years.
Leah Wietholter (02:15):
Yeah. Interesting. So how would you describe the services you provide at your firm? Now
Phillip Segal (02:21):
We specialize in unraveling complicated financial structures. Um, it helps that we can read balance sheets, securities filings, and legal documents. Uh, what we do is we provide a picture of someone, uh, whether that's in the context of an asset search, whether that's to figure out who is against you in litigation, whether it's to figure out who is behind this website, that's defaming you. It's always really aimed at getting the picture of the people, uh, who are their connections, what's their history. And so if you're doing due diligence for an investor, if you're doing an asset search, you still want to have the person's story. What we offer is the ability to look at law firm, the benefit of being a lawyer and financial documents. I have found that a lot of times lawyers that I'd hired did know how to read balance sheets. Didn't like to read the wall street journal did Nova companies and similarly people who know business can't read a a case. So it's helpful to do both of the kind of work we do. Um, it's helpful to do all those things.
Leah Wietholter (03:29):
Is there something like some specific service in your business that you do more so than others?
Phillip Segal (03:35):
We do a lot of due diligence for investors who is this CEO that is going to run the company that we are thinking of investing in, who are these people that want to borrow $50 million from us. It's a syndicate and closes next week and we're a hedge fund. And we need to find out who these people are before we lend to them, or we've bought some discounted paper and we have to exercise a personal guarantee by the borrower that the bank never really thought they have to go into a, so now who in the world is this person? And he's now our new best friend because he owes us $20 million. Uh, and we have to find out what he owns and what the, and what do the things he owns own. And that's where, that's where it gets complicated. And we do a lot of that. Some assets searching for divorce. What we don't do is, is, uh, cyber security. We're not forensic accountants. We really look at people and the companies that, that they have and try and build, uh, a picture of a structure, uh, who is a PR, what does a person's life? What is a person's business life? What are those businesses themselves have and how are they doing?
Leah Wietholter (04:50):
Yeah. Has anybody to your knowledge? And I don't know if you, when I'm done with a case, I don't necessarily see it all the way through, you know, prosecution or anything like that. So maybe this is a bad question. I don't know, but from the research and from the investigations you do on the due diligence and like, you know, who people are and corporate structures and things like that, do you ever find that your clients end up maybe not doing deals because of what you find?
Phillip Segal (05:15):
Yes. Uh, I've, I've shot a few down and I really I've. I've helped clients not hire people who falsified their resumes. I helped a client not blend money to, uh, there was a client who won't want her to know if they should lend money to a property developer who had a building that was mostly finished, and this was bridge lending because there've been delays. And oftentimes in construction, you get, you got high interest rate loans, you know, from, uh, it's bridge financing, or it's hard money lending someone's called. And this was a fund that did that. And the guy that was going to borrow, we looked at his history and we looked at the history of the project and we saw that the project was involved in litigation and that the litigation threatened, if it was successful to make him tear down the whole building, that was almost all built.
Phillip Segal (06:09):
And I said to the client, I'm not a Florida real estate developer, but it wasn't Florida, but let's just say argument's sake. It was, I'm not a floor for a real estate development lawyer, but you should get one because according to these filings, in the case, uh, the relief could be having a tear down the whole building. And I forget if it was an environmental, it's probably an environmental problem that they were, that they were looking at. But I said to them, I can get you some names if you want. I'm not here to advise you on that. State's construction law. They said, thank you very much. And they paid their bill. And later I found out that they did not in fact do that loan, but other times what happens is you'll go ahead with due diligence. Anyway, you'll go ahead and they'll go ahead and hire the person, but they might give them less of a limit as to what they can sign for.
Phillip Segal (07:05):
Uh, you know, sometimes there'll be on guard for certain things because they'll hire them. But with caveats, uh, they'll give the less responsibility or watch them more carefully, like kind of thing. So there's, it's not always just a yes or no sometimes. And of course in litigation, it can be, you don't find everything, but you find enough assets that they get a good settlement out of it because it's commercial, commercial. Life's not really that black and white, it's often very gray, lots of shades of gray. And that's an important thing to bring in when you are talking to clients about what they should do.
Leah Wietholter (07:40):
Sure. There was, um, a due diligence case. I worked a long time ago. I would consider it one of my first cases after leaving the Bureau. And I didn't really know what I was doing, but I had enough experience at the Bureau. I just kind of tagged along with an auditor to kind of help them on this project. And it was looking at doing due diligence and we did have to look at financials for this investment kind of private equity group. And I just remember that we, I, I was like, so what do we do on this and the auditor? I don't think they really knew what they were doing. And so I just said, so we're just, and he said, let's just talk to people. I'm like, okay. So we just start talking to people and I'm looking at the financials. And I just said, so what do you guys do? And like, they couldn't articulate to me what they did.
Phillip Segal (08:28):
Well, that's, that's a pretty good red flag right there.
Leah Wietholter (08:31):
Yeah. And so I remember I left and like, we CA I mean, we spent two days there and no one could ever tell me what they did. And I remembered from Ponzi schemes and stuff like that. I had worked at the Bureau that, you know, if you're going to want to make something look legit, make it look patriotic. And so they ended up showing us like these other subsidiaries that they owned and all of the names its subsidiaries had like very patriotic names. And so I just, the guy, I said, you're the auditor. I don't know what I'm doing, but I don't think they actually have a business. I think they just get people to invest. And anyway, the, the client, I don't remember how we worded it, but the client ended up not investing with him.
Phillip Segal (09:10):
I remember as a, as a journalist, you know, when you're, when you're writing good copy and at a newspaper, or I, I wrote for the economist a lot as well as a freelancer. And you have to make it comprehensible. You can't just copy down some bump from the website. We provide solutions for all manner of electronic, but you know, the, all this, this gobbledygook talk, what kind of a business is it? Your editor would say, if you ever wrote that, what is this, what do they do? Put it in, in language that Agatha can understand what is, and if you can't do that all, I mean, all finance is, is you're either buying shares or you're lending the money and everything else has just different terms that vary those themes. And if you can't boil down a financial transaction in one of those two ways, something's wrong, you know, and, and ultimately that's what you found out too. You know, if no one could really explain it to you in simple enough terms, I mean, there is rocket science and the rest of the world is not rocket science and it shouldn't be that hard. So that's of course a major problem when you, when you can't see what exactly do they do,
Leah Wietholter (10:23):
Right. Like telling me that you provide management services in a particular industry for two days. And that's all everybody's saying, we provide management services. Okay. But like, so do you manage their financials? You know, no, we just provide management services. Okay. Well,
Phillip Segal (10:39):
I got, I got a phone call a couple of weeks ago from, uh, an investigative company in the UK, uh, wanting to partner with us. Um, and it was all very sort of vague about who their partners were and, and I, and so I said, okay, uh, I'll have a call with you. But then I looked up, I looked up and their company had been formed that day. It was the first day they were operating and no wonder they were a little vague about, I played along. I said, okay, I'll have a phone call with you. And they backed out, okay, I'll, I'll talk to you here. Could you do this for me? And I made up a, a problem I had with some information, China, actually, it was a real problem. We had on a case about information. China said, if you're disconnected all over the world, how much would you charge me to do this? Uh, no, I don't think our interests align, but you know, calling me up on a day, one of your corporate existence, maybe wasn't the best idea.
Leah Wietholter (11:39):
Yeah. Gosh, that's good. Wow. Wow. Okay. So you have written a book called the art of fact investigation, creative thinking in the age of information overload. And I don't think that we have had a conversation where you didn't tell me like an idea or a method that you use that I thought, gosh, that is so creative. So what led you to write this book?
Phillip Segal (12:03):
Well, to be, to be Frank money, but also intellectual satisfaction. Uh, I found that the clients even really intelligent clients didn't understand why it takes time to do an investigation. And, and, and as everyone got broadband in the early part of the century here, and as, as even dinosaur lawyers became comfortable with using Google, uh, more and more people would say, well, we've done Google and we have LexisNexis. Why would we need you? You know, or, and I would, and I would have to explain to them why they needed me and one, one client that that is my happy one of my largest clients, the first case I did for them, I had a big success for them. Uh, and they asked me to go talk to the litigation department at the firm about how I did it. And I realized that I couldn't just say, well, I did a media search and I looked up some secretary of state websites and, um, and some, and some LexisNexis that sounds so easy.
Phillip Segal (13:08):
And yet they couldn't do that. They, they had people working on it for a week and they came to the completely wrong conclusion about who these two people were and how they were related to each other. And I found out in six, seven hours, what the truth was, and it saved the client a million dollars. And I, I thought I have to be able to say more than I did Lexus nexus because they have LexisNexis and they had can look at secretary of state websites. And I thought if I write a book that gives some examples and this examples in the book, maybe, maybe people will understand more as to why it takes longer to do this than just run a Google search. And, um, you know, and then I, I had found also that in trying to teach other people to, to investigate, um, I taught at Cardozo law school for three years, a course called fact investigation with a wonderful evidence professor I had since passed away.
Phillip Segal (14:05):
But, um, both those students and people who worked for me, uh, I would try and train them how to do this. And I found that certain people were just much better at this than other people. And it has nothing to do with which databases you give to them to use. Uh, it's a mindset. And so I thought I want to show people what the mindset is for successful investigation. It's second nature to good investigators or else you're probably not in the business. It's second nature to a lot of journalists, but it's not second nature to lawyers because lawyers, the kind of person who goes to law school, I I'm convinced is the kind of person who likes to be given a whole bunch of facts and then be told, okay, now how do you spin these into a good argument? How can you make this look constitutional or unconstitutional?
Phillip Segal (14:54):
And the way law school is taught, the facts are given to you in a tiny little pattern at the beginning of the case. And no one ever tells you how they got those facts, how reliable those facts are because in appeal in appellate work, the facts are all just given you can't really negate those, but in real life, the facts are everything. 98% Knight is, well, who is this guy? And how do we know this? And how do we know that? And where, you know, w where did we get this from? And where do we get that from? And how can we get more? And so I thought lawyers needed to know about this. And so I did the book and it's been, it's been very successful in that it has, it's sold some copies and it's in the FBI library, Harvard, Yale law school libraries.
Phillip Segal (15:41):
And it's used in courses at Georgetown higher state. Um, but it's also a nice entree to go and speak. And I think I met you because I spoke with somebody else that you knew, and that person, and I spoke for the first time at the ABA, because of we'd each written a book, uh, that was the, and the books were complimentary. So we, we were put on together. And, uh, so the book's been very helpful for meeting people. And I like to give it away. Sometimes if someone calls and says, I don't understand, I'll send it to you. That's, I mean, I sold enough of them and, uh, you know, you don't make a lot of money unless you have a best seller, which certainly was not too academic to be that, but I I'm, I'm, I'm happy with it. And, uh, and it's, it's helped me explain a lot of things to a lot of, and meet lots of new people. And so that's, uh, that's why originally wrote it. And then there were the unexpected social networking benefits from, from happening.
Leah Wietholter (16:43):
Sure. Yeah. So now I want to ask, cause I have interviewed a lot of professionals who have written books and some of them for very similar reasons that you have, I just want to know when did, like, what was your process to having enough time to sit down and write it? Because I'm struggling to get like a blog post out every other week.
Phillip Segal (17:04):
I I've been thinking about writing it for a long time. I wanted a visual representation of how things work. And I went and heard, uh, people experts on visual presentation. And I thought, okay, for visual people, it's going to be helpful if I can have a, a chart of how it works. And I realized it's impossible. There is no such chart, not, not, not really of how you chart, how an investigation goes too complicated. There are too many balls in the air. And I was, I look at a lot of art. My wife's an artist. I go to a lot of museums and galleries, and I was in front of a, a wonderful show of Cubist paintings. Um, in 2014, I guess it was that Leonard Lauder had done donated to the metropolitan museum. And it just, it was like a bolt of lightning struck me.
Phillip Segal (17:56):
And I said, this is my metaphor for how investigation works and that his cubism, uh, the, the facts are all broken up. There are hints of things. There are shadows. It's not a clean portrait where you say, this is the person you're trying to guess. What's the perspective. You have multiple perspectives in one, in one painting. You're trying to guess it well, who is, is that a person there? How many pieces of fruit are in that bowl? Is it two or three? It's not clear. And that's what it's like when you're presented with a huge universe of information, you're trying to figure out what the picture is. You don't always get the full picture, but you can get a hint of the, of the full picture sometimes. And so once I had that, uh, that was the impetus to, to do some more research about cubism.
Phillip Segal (18:43):
And most of the time writing the book came into writing the first couple of chapters, which built on ideas, uh, relating to information, being flat, dispersed, unclear, and with the Cubist metaphor and their paintings in the book that really used to illustrate this. And, um, it's a little unorthodox, but it, to me, it works as a, as a metaphor. And once I got that done and I, I had to, I spent a lot of weekends sitting there and writing it, but I write quickly. And I wrote for a living for 20 years as a, as a wire reporter and a newspaper reporter. So it's writing is not that hard for it. I enjoy it. And it's, it's not hard for me to, to write. Um, if I have the time I made the time and the rest of the book about ethics and databases, and I have been doing courses, continuing legal education courses about, uh, investigation for years and years.
Phillip Segal (19:43):
So I had a nice body of notes already. And so those became the basis of, of the second part of the book. It's not a very long book, but it really, the time was taken up in this first couple of chapters and it was exciting. So I, I didn't find it a chore. I found it, um, you know, rewarding intellectually to do it. And then I attached to a business purpose, intellect reward, intellectual reward, and possible business. You know, that's two good incentives to keep going. So that's what I did out of cane. Yeah, for sure.
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Leah Wietholter (21:39):
You talk a lot about investigators being open-minded in an investigation. When you say that, what are you suggesting
Phillip Segal (21:45):
They do? I'm suggesting that they put on two hats, kind of when they're talking to a client, sometimes clients will say to you, here's everything I know about this guy. And in one sense, your client knows a lot more than you do, because maybe they've worked with that person for years. Maybe they were married to that person for years. They have a lot of information that you don't have, and it's good to get all that information because it helped to give you leads. And also the clients get very angry when you write down what they already know and give it to them and try and charge the money for that. So I always like to say, tell me everything you know about the person, because then I won't spend your time and money finding that out. And that's also good if they don't tell me, and then I find it out and give it to them, I can say, right, you didn't tell him.
Phillip Segal (22:34):
So I had to go find this. But the other thing is that sometimes these people think they know a lot about the person, but they don't. I always say you have to take a really new look on a person. And the example I like to give is a woman came, came over to the office when we were at Rockefeller center a few years ago. And she was looking to get divorced from her husband, uh, in, uh, Europe. And she was forum shopping. She was trying to establish residency here in the U S in order to have a better result because the laws where she lived weren't that good for her and the property division. Uh, but anyway, she said, I have a phone that, that, uh, he had he's American, but we've lived in Europe for 35 years. So I'm sure he doesn't all assets here in the unit, in the United States, but I'd like, just to make sure.
Phillip Segal (23:24):
And I said, we couldn't do that, but I really have no, without any leads. I have no idea where I would start looking on the site, for example, cause you know, I don't want you to do that. Take the fall that he, um, gave to our son and maybe there's some stuff from his business left on that phone and there wasn't, uh, and then just to do a few hours database work, just so just so I can be sure, okay, we can do that. She said, but one thing I don't want you to do is, uh, you'll find that he, that he and I own this property in Georgia and it's a valueless little police piece of land, but I don't want you to spend any time on that. I said, okay, I will. And I did a few hours of database work with all the caveats that we're going to miss filings that are not online and everything else.
Phillip Segal (24:12):
I always tell people, you have to go to courthouses if you possibly can. But anyway, I was online and I, and I called her up when she came back in a few, you know, a week later and I said, you're right. There's nothing that I can see online. Uh, as to assets you didn't know about, but you should know that this Georgia property that you and he owned, um, that was sold last year. She said, what do you mean it was sold? I didn't sell it. Well, I said, um, it was owned by, uh, eight of you, uh, you and your husband had a bunch of his relatives and you sold it to an LLC in Iowa, uh, controlled by your brother-in-law and your husband's brother. She said, how could that happen? I said, did you go to a different state a year before and give a signature sample?
Phillip Segal (25:04):
She said, yeah, I never understood why they wanted me to do that. So what had happened is these, these people, her husband and his family shoved her signature under some lazy clerk's nose. And he put through the sale of property. They took that as approval that she had, that she was granting this piece of property to this other LLC. So I explained all that to her. And she said, well, it doesn't really matter because it's, the property is not worth anything. And I said, well, I had a few minutes. So I took a look and uh, it turns out the properties at the intersection, two interstate highways, and there's a truck service center on that property. So the property is actually probably pretty valuable. Uh, and there's probably been rental income for years on that property. They just didn't tell you this. And she off, she went back to Europe.
Phillip Segal (25:52):
I don't think she ever got jurisdiction here. I don't know what happened under the law of that country. Maybe she had no right to this. I'm not really sure. Um, but I thought if I had listened to her and not looked at that property, I wouldn't have found this. And if she had ever gotten the jurisdiction here in the United States, a divorce judge would have been a family law judge would have been very interested in that, uh, in that property. And might've called it a fraudulent conveyance. Might've called it back. Might've gone look for an accounting for all the rental income that was withheld from this company or from her. Uh, so that's a good example for me of how you, you just look from the beginning at whoever a person is. If your, if your client says, don't look outside New York, he's a New York guy.
Phillip Segal (26:40):
And I happened to see a database where this New York guy seems to own a big piece of property in Las Vegas. It's incumbent upon me to look up that piece of property and prove to myself that that's not the same guy, the signatures match. It's the same middle initial. Uh, I have to know that that's not the same person or else I have to keep going until I see that it's not otherwise it's called confirmation bias. I'm not going to find anything outside of New York. So I'm not even going to bother looking. Uh, and, and you, that is, that is a great enemy of a good investigator. So that's, that's one example of why you want to be open-minded
Leah Wietholter (27:20):
For sure. And that actually leads me to my next question for you. Just how do you know when you're finished with an investigation,
Phillip Segal (27:27):
The easy answer and sometimes the right answer is your budget's exhausted. And you, you do as much as you can on the budget that you've been given and you try and set realistic expectations for what you can do. And then you're done when sometimes in divorce cases, you get called at the last minute when the filing is a month off and, and you find maybe the guy has a Caribbean company, and then it's going to be pretty expensive to go to court in that Caribbean jurisdiction to get an accounting. And they say, well, I don't have any more money. You say, okay, I guess we're done, but you know, too bad, you didn't come to me when you had more money. You know, when the divorce was starting, as opposed to now at the very, very, very end. Uh, so sometimes there's budget. Uh, and sometimes, you know, I'll tell clients, uh, we've gone as far as we can without calling anybody.
Phillip Segal (28:22):
I mean the most common time that I would say we've done as much as we can, as we turned over every piece of public information we can. Uh, and if we're not allowed to talk to anybody or subpoena documents, we're not, you know, if you're not at the, in the, at the stage where you can go to a court and say, your honor, we need these documents, then I can't get those. And, uh, you're done. And if you're in, and if you don't want me to talk to people about this person in case he finds out we're doing an investigation and there are all kinds of reasons why that's a good thing, not to have him find out. Uh, sometimes you know, the, the it's too sensitive and they don't want it getting out and you're not allowed to call anybody. Then you're done, or you do have permission to call people and no one calls you back and they don't have budget to go knock on doors.
Phillip Segal (29:17):
And again, that's as our budget overlaps with, we've done as much as we can. We've looked at every piece of paper we can find on the person. And, you know, I tell people that if you Google yourself, do an investigation on yourself, very little of what you know about yourself to be true will come up in that investigation where, where the real good stuff is. So if they talk to people like my wife, tell you more about me, many, many hundreds of times, more about me than anything. You're going to find written down somewhere. If you don't interview her. And if she's, if she's willing to talk to you, uh, then fine, if she's you can't interview her because you can't find her, or you don't have the budget to talk to her, or she won't talk to you, then you're not going to find out a lot of that stuff.
Phillip Segal (30:04):
And so sometimes it's finished because you're just, you're out of you're out of road. But then the other thing to remember is really the client's in charge. And sometimes the investigation's over because the client tells you it's over, uh, the client will say, you've done great work. You found interesting stuff, but we, we settled yesterday. So stop. And then it's over. You didn't find everything out that you could've, you could've found more stuff. You were getting close. It was great. But the client says the legal fees are killing me. We're settling. And the, and then it's over. I know it's over because the client told me it is. And when I took my first job in this business, uh, as a former journalist and my first boss said, a lot of former journalists have trouble listening to clients because journalists in the field, don't like listening to their desks.
Phillip Segal (31:00):
It's a famous thing of the desks, hate the journalists in the field because they don't listen to them. And the journalists of the field say, well, what does the desk know? I'm out here. I know what the story is. The desk doesn't know. But when you're having, when you have a client in a professional relationship, you can't ignore the desk, you have to listen to them. And if they say it's over, it's over and you have to pack up. And it's like, if you're a doctor and they person decides not to have the operation, okay, you want knee pain, the rest of your life. All right. I won't do the knee operation. So that's it finish. And, um, it's, it can be frustrating, but when you're a professional, that's, that's how you have to look at it. It's the client's call, give them all the information you can give them. And then they decide. And, and that by definition is the right decision, because it's up to them if, as long as they're properly informed.
Leah Wietholter (31:52):
Yeah, I agree. And that is often difficult because as an investigator, it is, there's just something so satisfying to know that you found everything you possibly could. And you know, that if you had just a little more time or a little more budget, that you could do the same for this client. And then sometimes like, they just don't want to know.
Phillip Segal (32:12):
They don't want to know it's well, it's, you know, investigating fun. And of course we want to keep going. Cause it's fun. Um, many, most of us are not in this business because it's the best way we know to get really wealthy. I mean, you can, but it's fun. It has the benefit of being fun as, uh, a Mo in many cases. And, um, I found what you said to be true, especially divorce. You know, when, when someone, uh, I've written about this on our blog, you know, you don't know in divorce when the, when the mistrust started or when you should have stopped trusting the other party. And when someone comes to me, they'll often say everything was great in the marriage till 2016. And then I started noticing things and they don't sometimes want to hear the news that, you know, you were being misled by your husband in the year 2001.
Phillip Segal (33:06):
He started doing all this stuff without your knowledge. And you may not have known that he was misleading you, but he was, and that's a very painful message. Someone thinks Jean, almost all of my marriage was kind of a fraud. I thought there was all this trust a minute. It broke down when he met that other woman, but he probably had lots of other women because, you know, he was sneaking around on the financial side and other sides on me much earlier. And they don't, they don't want to know that that's sometimes a barrier to even hiring us if it's a family law situation. And then they, you know, if they can stop, it they'll want to stop it. If, if they, if they can get a decent settlement, they don't want to know anymore.
Leah Wietholter (33:49):
Yup. Yup. I agree. Well, I don't want to run out of time talking to you, Phil, without talking about the, um, you talk a lot about ethical issues in investigations and just kind of where that line is or the gray area is. And so when we've talked before, you've mentioned some of the ways that you like to warn attorneys and investigators about some potential ethical issues or pitfalls. And so I wondered if you just had a few you'd like to share with our audience.
Phillip Segal (34:19):
Sure. Well, you know, I tell investigators who aren't lawyers, that if they're working for lawyers, they're still bound by the professional, uh, responsibility requirements that that lawyers have to fulfill. So, uh, you know, you might not get arrested if you are not working for a lawyer and you pretend that you're a reporter when you're not. Uh, but if you're, uh, working for an attorney and you get caught doing that, misrep, that a judge might throw out the evidence that you gathered. So there are all kinds of, there is a higher standard, even people who hate lawyers, lawyers are held to a higher standard about being truthful. Investigators need to know that if they do something that, that a lawyer wouldn't be allowed to do, uh it's as if the lawyer did that because the investigator is the lawyers agent. And so the main ones that I think some investigators aren't aware of versus the no contact rule, whereas you know, more about, if you're talking to somebody who is represented, who's represented by an attorney in litigation, um, you're not allowed to talk to them without their lawyer being there.
Phillip Segal (35:28):
And so when we do interviews with people on the phone, we say, but we just want to make sure you're not represented in the lawyer representing you. And they say, they say, yeah, I have a lawyer in my gave me a lawyer. You got to stop, stop the interview. Uh, that's a no-no, uh, misrepresentation is another one. Um, and even something like recording the conversation without the other person's knowledge, uh, even if you're in a one party state where only one side of the phone call needs to know there's a tape going, uh, a lot of bar associations, uh, viewed that to be unethical behavior for a lawyer, uh, unless it's a criminal matter or maybe intellectual property matter, many States say, no, even if it's a one party state you're not allowed to record. And even if it's, uh, if it's a one party state and you call somebody and they're standing in a two party state, because the phone, their cell phone, uh, is, is in Massachusetts, which is a two party state.
Phillip Segal (36:25):
And you think they're in New York because they have a two, one, two number, uh, you could be in trouble. And there was a case recently where the, the judge was very cross because, uh, they recorded this conversation and it, and it, it broke a Massachusetts law. So, uh, you know, I think there's, that's one of my more popular presentations is I go to bar associations and talk about ethical issues, uh, when you're managing an investigator, because many investigators aren't aware, they didn't go to law school, they didn't have to take ethics. They don't have to take ethics, CLS every, every couple of years, the way we do. So it's, it's an editor's part. There's a portion of the book that's devoted to this. Cause it's, I think it's invaluable information for lawyers to know. Uh, and, uh, some of the things that some of the pitfalls in investigation they won't think about, and, uh, they shouldn't assume that every investigator is all up to speed on, you know, the ABA model rules of professional responsibility, because many are.
Leah Wietholter (37:24):
Yeah, for sure. Gosh, we just try to communicate with attorneys as much as possible and let them know, like, yeah, just that whole communication. When an attorney is involved, there's has to be so much community.
Phillip Segal (37:38):
And a lot of attorneys will say to you just, just, I don't care what you do just don't break any rules. And that is unethical behavior right there, because you can't delegate professional responsibility. And there's an attorney model rule 5.3, you're responsible for supervising your agents. And so they can't, if they just say, you don't tell me what you're doing, just, just come back with the goods, but don't break any rules. That's, that's not good enough. Uh, and you know, you want to be, I think, memorializing what you're doing in an email to your attorney, uh, so that he can say, well, I didn't know they were going to do that. You know, you want to protect yourself.
Leah Wietholter (38:16):
Yeah, for sure. Well, it fills such good stuff as usual. Thank you so much for your time today. I actually, in preparing for this podcast, you provided me with a list of all of these websites, where you provide so much valuable information. So we'll make sure to list those in our show notes, but what's the best way for our listeners to learn more about you and your content or resources?
Phillip Segal (38:38):
Well, we do, but we've got two blogs. We've been, we've been going from a 10 years with two blogs, the ethical investigator and the divorce asset Hunter. And there are dozens and dozens and dozens of blog entries over the years about all sorts of different topics. So that's an easy way in, um, the website has articles that I've written a lot, slightly longer articles, um, you know, for Bloomberg law and for magazines and law journals and places like that. So there's, there's plenty of, uh, background information there. And then there's my book, which, uh, people are free to buy if they want it's on Amazon, or you ordered a bookstore, if you can find, uh, a bookstore anymore. Um, and, and if someone calls me up and wants to talk about a case, uh, and it says, Hey, could I have a book? I'll send it to them. I have a few left and I'm happy to send it out. Uh, it's not, not too expensive to send something. Book posts, couple of bucks. I'm happy to do that. So I'm also happy to talk to people. If people want to arrange a short call, that's fine with me. Uh, I like meeting people and I'm not going to do half a case for free, but you want to talk for 15, 20 minutes. That's fine with me so they can get in touch over the website. We're easy to find.
Leah Wietholter (39:56):
Awesome. And we'll make sure that we link to all of those, like I said, in the show notes. So once again, Phil, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure.
Closing (40:05):
The investigation game podcast is a production of Workman forensics. For more information about the topics we discuss on each episode, please visit Workman forensics.com. If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. You can also connect with us on any of the social media platforms by searching Workman forensics. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for the podcast, please email us@podcastatworkmanforensics.com.