Episode 40: An Inside Look to the Life of a Private Investigator with Brian Willingham, PI, CFE

This week on The Investigation Game podcast, Leah chats with Brian Willingham, PI, CFE about all things private investigation including his origin story, practice management, favorite case stories, and OSINT. This is an inspiring conversation that will have you eager to round up new cases and get to work!

Brian Willingham is a father of two amazing kids, husband to an amazing wife, beer lover, less-than-stellar golfer, sports junkie and lover of all things food. He's a bit of a technology geek, can cook a mean paella, and would consider himself a baseball nerd. He has been a private investigator for more than 20 years and is also a Certified Fraud Examiner.

Connect with Brian: https://diligentiagroup.com/blog

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianawillingham/

Twitter: @b_willingham

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Transcription of Episode 40:

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 Leah wheat Holter, CEO of Workman forensics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Joining me today is Brian Willingham, president of Diligentia Group in Katonah, New York. Brian has been a private investigator for more than 20 years. And as a certified fraud examiner, I learned about Brian through his content rich online presence. When I first started my business, we had the opportunity to discuss our work recently. And after that conversation, I knew he should join me for a podcast episode. Brian, thanks for joining me today.

Brian Willingham (00:43):

Thanks so much for having me. So I'm

Leah Wietholter (00:45):

Always fascinated by the journeys that people take to the careers that they have today. So first I'd like to start with, how did you become a private investigator?

Brian Willingham (00:54):

Yeah, so my path to this business was not a very straight line. It's certainly something that is sort of always been in my blood and certainly something that is been with me since I was much younger. I think every kid, you know, the story I always tell is every kid is fascinated by Sherlock Holmes and private eyes and Hardy boys and those kinds of things. And I was too, and, you know, there's TV show, Magnum PI, and all these shows that I watched as a kid, my father happened to be a private investigator to, uh, so when I was like in middle school ish, or maybe high school, I wound up taking one of those like aptitude tests and figuring out what you wanted to do, ask me all the things I like. And don't like, and all these kinds of things. And coincidentally, the top two things that came up one was an air traffic controller.

Brian Willingham (01:45):

Uh, and number two was a private investigator. So my dad was a private investigator at the time he had his own business. So that kind of made some sense. Um, but it wasn't something that I always really was terribly passionate about. I didn't particularly want to work for my father, um, and joining the business. Wasn't at the forefront of my mind. So fast forward a couple years, I wound up getting a job, uh, in the sports industry in sports is like my main passion. I love sports baseball in particular, but any sport. Um, and I wanted to be the general manager of my beloved New York Mets. And once I realized that I wasn't a good enough baseball player to actually play for the New York Mets. And so as time went on, I realized I wasn't good enough to be part of, you know, sports, but that there is this whole business of sports where you can actually, you know, work for one of the leagues work for one of the teams there's this whole, you know, working for Nike or those kinds of things.

Brian Willingham (02:46):

And being involved in the business of sports. I work for a sports photography firm, uh, for many years where they were the, one of the only licensees of photos that for major league baseball players and NBA and the, so I was around sports. I got to go to spring training and work for major league baseball and decided to get a degree in sports. So the university of Massachusetts at Amherst has a degree undergraduate degree, which is primarily focused on business, but also has a sports management degree. And so I wound up going there, graduated summa cum laude working for major league baseball. I did an internship in the New York giants, and then I quickly sort of realized that this was not a business that I wanted to be in. And I think the challenge for me there was that, um, everybody wanted to be in sports, any sports, not out there wanting to be in sports.

Brian Willingham (03:37):

And there were people literally willing to do my job for nothing. Uh, so it was very frustrating for me. And I was kind of at that point in my life where I felt like I was a go getter, I wanted to, you know, I was sort of reaching for the stars and it was realizing that they didn't pay very well. Um, there was 82 people behind me that one of my job for nothing. Um, and that you really had to love what you were doing or to be in that world. So the long story short is I was miserable. Um, I, despite the fact that, you know, I was part of the subway series, which is the Mets and the Yankees playing each other in 2000, I was, I was in a blimp for one of the games. I got to do all this awesome stuff.

Brian Willingham (04:20):

I was miserable. And in the following year I had had conversations with my father and he was like, well, why don't you come join me for a little while and figure out what you want to do. So I did, and I desperately tried to get out of the business, uh, because I wanted to get my MBA and do all this stuff. Um, but then I sort of just grew into it. Um, nine 11 happened shortly thereafter. So this has been in 2001, March of 2001 when I started the business. And by, by September nine, 11 happened and my father's whole business, like many other businesses, uh, went to hell. Uh, and I felt like I needed to stay on and that's sort of the long and short of it. I fell sort of into the business and over the next couple of years, I grew to love it. Uh, and after staying, working with my dad for eight or nine years, I went on my own 10 years ago. Um, and that's sort of the story of how I got there.

Leah Wietholter (05:22):

Awesome. Yeah. That is very round the world kind of path to get there, but that's awesome. And so great that you found something that you do love and do enjoy, and there is nothing worse. You talking about like being in the blimp and like doing awesome things when you were working for the team, like, but then hating it at the same time. I just know I've done volunteer work or other jobs. And I'm like, man, I should be really thankful for this experience right now, but this is just not me. So I totally get that.

Brian Willingham (05:53):

I think that's a story that a lot of people can relate to. And I, you know, I tell, I talk to high schools have kids and I, I am extraordinarily like you I'm strongly, I really passionate about what I do, but it wasn't always like that. And like, I didn't, I got to this point and sort of a circuitous route. And I think it's a story that a lot of people can really, really appreciate because like that there's not always a straight line to where you get, and I totally agree. Like I think about what I do all the time and I get burnt out. I wrote a tweet the other day about how I was totally burnt out this month and now I need to do something else, but then I sit back and think, and I'm like, we do some really cool stuff here and it's always sort of entertaining and, um, you know, keeping me satisfied, uh, not only like mentally, but like, you know, keep me on my toes and this is a fascinating sort of business to be in.

Leah Wietholter (06:46):

Absolutely. I mean, I always think that the sky is the limit and that really I'm actually limited by the creativity that I want to put into this field, because I think that there's so many opportunities and you do, I, I feel like a lot of your tweets and stuff, we're talking about how to innovate within this industry. And I don't know, I just think it is exciting, but at the same time when you have done this for as long as you have, or like as long as I have, then burnout is a real thing, because it's just the same, same thing over and over again,

Brian Willingham (07:18):

For sure. I, I, listen, I I'm all about innovation. I think my, you know, being a private investigator, I think everybody has this vision of what a private investigator it is, even people in my industry. Um, and a lot of those sort of misconceptions or like, you know, they're sort of reality. I mean, there's like a bunch of old police officers. Who've been doing this for a long time that still do pen and paper. And it's just like an old stodgy business. And there's been so much innovation and technology that has changed the way that we do business over the last 20 years. Like the, the fundamentals of how we do things hasn't changed all that much. But you know, there's examples like 15 years ago, 10 years ago, you know, we, the firm that I was working with was primarily a surveillance firm and surveillance as like gum a lot by the wayside.

Brian Willingham (08:10):

There's still a lot of surveillance out there, but you know, when social media came out, I'm like, Hey, why don't we just look at their Facebook profile and see what they're doing instead of falling around for weeks at a time, you know, uh, and a lot of these, you know, old school guys didn't know how to access this. Didn't, weren't really involved in it. And, you know, I was on the younger side and I, I was, and, you know, over the years there's been a lot of different ways to exploit for lack of a better term, um, you know, social media and open source and information and public records. And, and it's an amazing source of information. And that's sort of how I grew into this business by trying to be innovative, um, and trying to do things a little bit differently than, than other people do.

Leah Wietholter (08:59):

Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about that just a second. Whenever you first started, whenever you left your father's practice and started your own, uh, what kind of work did you get at the beginning and how is that the same or different now?

Brian Willingham (09:12):

So my business has changed drastically last well, this business in general has changed drastically. And I wrote a long story about this recently, but you know, when I first started, the, my father's firm was primarily in disability insurance and life insurance investigation, him, we did tons of surveillance. We did, uh, interviews on disability claims. They were starting to build into the work of, you know, doing legal, legal support with law firms on big sort of white collar cases. You know, that sort of shifted into doing due diligence for some of the investment banks. And we were doing, you know, background checks on for heads from managers and people who were doing, uh, making investments with private equity firms. Um, but also sort of keeping in line with doing other sort of work such as doing lots of interviews and class action lawsuits when class action lawsuits were a big deal.

Brian Willingham (10:05):

So, you know, when I started my business, so the, the, the scope of what we do, what I have done over the past 15 years has changed drastically. Like my methods sort of change drastically as well, but, you know, everything is sort of changing with the time. So when I first started my business, I had no plan zero plan. I said, you know what, I'm going to call every investigator I've ever worked with and say, Hey, like I'm out here. And, and if you need some help on something, let me know. And, you know, luckily I had developed enough of a reputation that somebody was like, Hey, by the way, we've got some work for you. Maybe you can help out on this case. It's about to go to trial in a couple of weeks, it was a high profile case where millions of dollars was, was at stake and there was a tight deadline.

Brian Willingham (10:52):

And he said, Hey, I need your help. So I wound up working coincidentally over labor day, weekend, 11 years ago, and working the entire weekend, including a 17 hour day on labor day. And that was sort of my entrance into this world. So I wound up working for a lot of other investigative firms because the way that this business works in general is that there's a lot of peaks and valleys. And it's very difficult as a small firm or even a mid-sized firm to sort of always have staff available for that. So, you know, there was a lot of firms out there that were sort of hiring out, you know, subcontractors to do the work. And I had enough of a reputation. Then people started hiring me and I was able to get on the Bernie Madoff case and worked a lot with this firm in New York city. And it sort of built over time and that's to where I am now.

Leah Wietholter (11:43):

That's awesome. Are you able to talk about anything that you, or like the scope of the work that you did on the Bernie Madoff case? Sure. So

Brian Willingham (11:51):

I was one of hundreds and hundreds of investigators who were hired on this, including some very, very big law firms, but the, the, the, the gist of it was I was working, um, for the trustee who was trying to find out where some of the money went. So there were the net winners and losers in the Bernie Madoff thing. There were people who put in $500,000 and over the years had taken out millions upon millions of dollars, you know, but they thought it was theirs, but it wasn't really theirs because he was running a Ponzi scheme. So the net losers, you know, what the trustee was ultimately trying to do was trying to recover some of the money who, from people who had taken all this money out and give it to some of the people who hadn't taken it out and had lost tons of money.

Brian Willingham (12:36):

So I was doing, uh, helping to assist with asset investigations through public records of some of the net winners. Uh, so figuring out, you know, if they own houses, if they had, um, you know, where, where some of their assets would have been held. So it was fun. It was exciting. And like, and for me, like I would have never been involved in it if I hadn't been working with my father's farm. And it was, you know, to be involved in one of the biggest cases, frauds, or if not the biggest fraud of all time and one that everybody knows it was amazing. And that was sort of like, it was like a drug. Then I was like, wow, if this is what I think I'm like month three into my being out on my own. And I'm working on the biggest fraud in history, it was just amazing. And it was like a drug and I kept going on and 11 years later here I am.

Leah Wietholter (13:28):

Wow. That is so cool. How horrible to find out though, if you're one of those net winners to find out that, that money wasn't yours. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess you didn't have to make those phone calls, like how terrible would that have been? Oh, so was it because of that case that you earned your certified fraud examiners credential, or had you gotten it before then?

Brian Willingham (13:56):

It's a good, I got to think about the timing. I definitely got it. That's actually really interesting. I don't know when exactly I got it. It was something that was always on my mind. I was sort of a, I forgot what they call it, but I was sort of a member, just like a paying member. I wasn't actually a certified associate member, I think, is what they call it. I might've gotten it right before that it was something that was always on my mind. And, you know, when you're out on your own, and this is something we talked about before, I didn't have any law enforcement experience. I didn't have. All I had done is worked for my father's investigative firm for eight years, which is equivalent to like, you know, working at a mom and pop shop. So for me personally, I like, I knew what I was doing.

Brian Willingham (14:36):

And I felt pretty good about where I stood in the investigator community, but I felt like I needed something else to sort of give me legitimacy. And the CFE was, is, and was the only real credential that people pay attention to in this business. There's dozens of credentials out there, and I'm not one to get credentials. I think getting too many credentials is silly and it looks stupid, frankly, but if there is one to get in this business, that was it. So I did it. Uh, I went and took a four day course in Las Vegas and took the test, um, and it was really important. And I became, I was very involved in the organization. I think over the years, my father was one of the original members actually of the certify for our examiners. But, you know, I was very involved. I did, uh, I did, I spoke at the conference, uh, in 2013, I think. Um, but I think over the years, they sort of gotten, it's very much relating to internal fraud and internal audit and those kinds of things, which is not work that I do very often. It's sort of gotten away from the core of what, what I do become a little bit less involved over the years, but still extraordinarily important organization in our industry. Yeah.

Leah Wietholter (15:51):

I agree. I actually know, I don't know if I've said this on the podcast or not, but I never wanted to become a CPA. And I remember telling my mentor when I worked at the FBI, I said, you know, she was a CFE. And I said, you know, I don't think I'm going to get my CPA. I think I'm just going to get a CFE. She's like, Oh no, you should do both. You know, like really encouraged me. And then I worked in public accounting and they're like, Oh no, like you have to have this. And then to this day, I still don't have it. And I I'm really okay with that. Like I just wanted to be a fraud investigator, you know, like, well, I wanted to be an investigator period, but then started focusing on fraud stuff as I kind of learned what I was good at. But yeah, I think that it's a great organization.

Brian Willingham (16:30):

Well, on the outside, look at you and don't know you. And they're like, well, what credentials do you have to justify your existence? But the reality is like, and nobody like the people I work with, they know that I'm good with what I do. So it doesn't really necessarily matter. Like if I was testifying in court a lot, or I had to really justify my existence, I might be getting all kinds of, you know, credentials, but at the end of the day, it, the people that need to know what I know that would, that I'm good at what I do. They know. And I don't need 82 letters behind my name to justify that.

Leah Wietholter (17:05):

Yeah, same. We had somebody call not too long ago and said, do you have anybody on your team that has X credential? And she said, I don't think so. And anyway, so receptionist asked me about it and I said, you know, no, I don't have anybody to refer her to like, that's weird. Cause I'd be referring to my competition, but just like send her some links to our content because that's what I would want. That's what I want to see these days. I mean, that may not be what this person was looking for and that's fine. But just for me, I want to see the content, like, what is this person writing about and what are they saying so that I know that they actually know what they're doing because it's very easy to spend time getting credentials instead of doing the actual work.

Brian Willingham (17:48):

I think, listen, I'm at the bottom of them. And we're Getting a little sidetracked with like, talking about the business of this. But like if somebody is calling and for example, asking you what your rate is, is the first question or asking of you, if your first question is, do you have this credential? That's probably not going to be a good client anyway. So I get from that, I don't care if I lose out on some business because if all they care about or what my rates are and I have some credential and it's probably not going to work out because like what's important is that I know what I'm doing. And, and frankly, you know, I, I think people get a little bit hesitant because I am one of the most brutally honest people you'll meet. And I tell people all the time that I'm not, you're not talking to the right firm. You're not talking to the right person.

Brian Willingham (18:32):

If you want to do XYZ, go to these people who are experts at this. And I'm perfectly happy to say that. I think in general, most people aren't like that. So I think there's always this hesitancy and this pause that people want to know your credentials and your rates and all this stuff. So listen, I wound up, I wind up getting clients that I think are more like me and you probably get clients that are more like you because that's what I care about. Like if I'm looking, I'm just looking for a locksmith in a state that I don't work at, I'm working with a client that needs a, a safe open. And you know, I'm looking for like a locksmith who like, has like a story or like has had, you know, some sort of like online presence who will talk about it, who's open and those kinds of things. And those are the people that I want to do business with. And I'm hoping that the other side is true too, that somebody is looking at me saying, all right, this guy looks like he's open and honest. He writes about it. He's willing to talk about it. He's willing to say no. Um, those are the people that I want as clients, because those are the people that are more like me.

Leah Wietholter (19:36):

Oh no, it's great. This, this is so fun to talk to you.

Leah Wietholter (19:39):

We'll be right back to this interview. So yeah, since the investigation game was first put out into the world, we finally have a second game. Yes we do. So I want to know all about it. What's different from case of the man-cave, what is this game about and how can players access it? This investigation game is called the case of the cashflow fiasco. And this is really focusing on the risks to vendors and creditors when their customers are having cashflow issues and some of the things to look out for, and some of the fraud schemes that can be implemented because when a customer is in a cashflow crisis, they're looking for anything to just keep them and to try to help them get through a cashflow fiasco. Right? And so in the beginning presentation, we talk about those things. We talk about the risks that are involved and things that vendors and creditors can do to just monitor for these cashflow issues. Then you have 30 minutes to play the actual game. And what's cool about this game is that this one was made to play virtually. So you can play as an individual. You can play as a group, you can play with your chapter, but it's 100% digital online. It was made for that. Not just adapted for online because COVID happened. So I'm really excited. This one, I also think has more of an escape room type feel. And you have the 30 minutes to put together how much was stolen, how did they do it? What existed, what didn't exist. There's a lot of really fun things and what I love and what you have been busting to make over the last few weeks are just all of these super creative elements of videos. And I don't, I don't want to spoil it and give it away, but like, there's just so many cool elements that you and Rachel have put together in this game. And then of course at the end, we'll do another 10 minute presentation of the solution. And we'll be able to tell people which players playing scored the highest points and we'll have a leaderboard and like all this stuff. So really excited for the case of the cashflow fiasco. And this one is a 15 minute training. So you don't have to carve out two hours of your day. You can just play this for 50 minutes and get your CPE. And right now we will be taking pre-sales and scheduling people to play this game through the end of October. And then we'll just have it on our website and you can go out and sign up and play it on our website, but it's a lot of fun. Cool. Well, I'm excited for it. You don't want to miss out. Believe me now, hopefully you guys are excited for it too, to learn more about the case of the cash flow fiasco, go to the investigation game.com.

Leah Wietholter (22:25):

Welcome back to the podcast. But I did want to talk about your blog and just kind of leading into that. And I, as I mentioned in the intro, the way that I learned about you was because you talk about your experiences. And although I didn't really share a lot of mine, um, until more recently, I remember just being like, Oh, okay, I can follow this guy because I agree with what he's writing about. And so you've been doing this a long time, cause I think I ran across your blog maybe in like 2011, 2012, somewhere in there. Uh, and it's really informative and helpful and it's called the diligent theory blog. And we'll put a link in the show notes, but one of the posts that caught my eye immediately that you've posted recently was it's entitled the time a private investigator was hired to follow a private investigator. So I just really wanted you to share that story with me and our listeners.

Brian Willingham (23:17):

Well, I can, I'll give you the condensed version. It turns into like a 2000 word article. This is so one of the things that I do is I share a lot of like personal stuff and I'm not ashamed of sharing like personal stories, but this happened a couple of years ago. Um, the long and short of it is, is that I was on our local sort of Catona Facebook page and saw the sort of something caught my eyes, that people were talking about this private, who is on the street and, you know, they had to call the police and he's really not hiding very well. And I thought it was hysterical. People were commenting on it. Like he must be terrible at his job. And he was obviously doing some surveillance on something. So I truly did not think anything of it. And then, you know, sort of weird things started happening like that.

Brian Willingham (24:05):

Must've been in the back of my mind, weird things started happening over time. Like I saw the same car a couple times. There were some weird people that sort of like entered into my vicinity. Some people I walked, some guy walked into a gym in the middle of our, where I work out at a CrossFit gym. Some guy walked in and it was just this weird, there was this weird feeling. And I went back and I looked at this post and on Facebook and I'm like, Oh my God, that guy is, was in a car, three doors down from the street where I used to live. I hadn't lived there in six or seven months. So I'm like, this is really bizarre and something's going on here. So anyway, all this stuff started was happening and I had it in the back of my head.

Brian Willingham (24:48):

And in fact, something happened at one point where some guy drove by me and, um, it was so curious about it that I jotted down, like the license plate didn't do anything about it, but I jotted down the license plate fast forward, like a week. And I went to my daughter's lacrosse game. Oh, a couple of towns away on my way back. I pulled into my driveway to drop my son off and I turn around and there's this car that's coming around, sorta my block. And my block is a block that you don't drive through unless like you live on the block. And I see the car and I'm like, Holy Moses, that's the same car that was, I saw early, early in the week. And I looked them down on my paper where I wrote down the license plate and it was the same freaking license plate.

Brian Willingham (25:34):

And I'm like, Oh my God, these guys have been following me. And normally like, this sounds like completely ridiculous. But like, and I said this before, my life is such an open book. Like, I don't care. You could follow me all day and all week, like be my guests. Like you're going to wind up spending like 13 hours a day at my office. Like I may exit to get a sandwich in the middle of the day, but like, it's going to be one of the most boring things you ever did. I followed him and I wound up checking out his plate. It turns out he's a private investigator and the guy who started doing all these crazy like maneuvers and I backed off but long and short of it is that week. I was going down to Virginia and I was praying that these guys would follow me, Virginia.

Brian Willingham (26:15):

And I, in fact, I had said to my wife, I'm like, if they're following us, I'm literally going to stop every 200 miles and make sure they've got gas in their car because I was going to like a graduation. Like, and I wanted, whoever was following me to wind up spending thousands and thousands of dollars to watch me go to a graduation. They didn't wind up following me. But as we came back from this, I was talking to my children about how they were using their devices like 18 hours a day and, and was having a serious conversation and out the window, there's a car that pulls across the street and into the driveway across the street, which is interesting because the driveway, the house across the street was empty and nobody lived there. And the car is just like sitting in the driveway. My daughter gets up and she's like, that's the car that's been stalking me.

Brian Willingham (27:02):

And I'm immediately freaked out because I hadn't told my kids about this at all, because I didn't want them to be freaked out about it. And that's when like dad and may just went ballistic. And I went outside to like to grab some pictures of the car, like started chasing the guy down the block. And over the next couple of days, the same car would come down the road and pull across the street. And like the only thing I could think of was that they were just trying to ultimately harass me and intimidate me. And the reality was, and the funny thing is, is that, you know, I don't work on like cases that I'm ever worried about my safety or my family safety. Most of the stuff I do is online. I do some interview work, but none of it is ever, I don't think anybody's ever going to come and follow me.

Brian Willingham (27:49):

I happened to have been working on some cases that were a little bit outside of what I normally do. And one of those cases, ultimately B was the person that was following me. Uh, so anyway, it was, it was at the time it was freaky. It was scary, especially because my kids, like, I didn't care that they were following me. Like they can do whatever they want. Like, um, but the fact that my kids got mauled that sort of freaked me out. And at one point my daughter even said, like, I saw that car at my school, which I don't tend to believe, but that's just like going beyond a line. So that brought out so many things to me, it's just like, why are these guys following me? What purpose? Like other than to possibly harass me or intimidate me, were they doing it?

Brian Willingham (28:34):

But also like why? Like, I don't understand, like these investigators who were hired to do this, and I understand everybody's got their own thing, they got to make a living and whatever, but like what, what were they doing this for? You know, they'd already been made, they'd already, I had already followed them. They knew I was following them. So what was the purpose of what they were doing? And I think it sort of bothered me that that, and other investigators would be doing this, but there's a lot more to the story, which you can read in my 1800 words. But that's the gist.

Leah Wietholter (29:06):

Yeah. Gosh, of course, because I did read it and prepping for this and I was just like, yeah, why continue? Like you said, that they had been, they had been made and other than just intimidation, but I mean, you still had a job to do if you're working on a case. I mean, I don't know what the case was, but you still have to do your job. So I don't know, maybe somebody, maybe it was just a client that they thought they could build a lot of money for and they just followed you and thought it'd be safe.

Brian Willingham (29:35):

I think that's ultimately what it ended up being like somebody was willing to pay them and they were to do it. And it was just, it was ridiculous. Uh, just, just totally ridiculous. I don't know what they were even expecting to find.

Leah Wietholter (29:50):

Yeah. So you mentioned in the blog post, and then just now, as you were telling the story that your work doesn't take you to places that puts you or your family in danger. So what is your area of expertise and focus that allows this to be the case?

Brian Willingham (30:03):

So I primarily, first of all, I think most of the cases I do are more in the sort of the white collar field. I don't do like criminal a lot of, well, I do criminal defense work, but it's more like white collar, criminal defense, like, you know, fraud and embezzlement, those kinds of cases. I don't do like murders, um, or those kinds of cases. So I, I'm not ever, there's never been a case where I felt like I was, you know, putting myself in danger. I have gone up against some extraordinarily rich and powerful people who will absolutely make your life miserable. Um, but that I think is a little bit different. And I, you know, like I said, my, my life is generally an open book, so I don't, you know, if you don't hide anything, you've got nothing to worry about sort of thing.

Brian Willingham (30:49):

That's how I view my life. Um, but for the most part, so I do some interviews, um, door to door interviews and telephone interviews. But a lot of my work is sitting behind a computer. Like we talked about before, you know, the technology of doing research. Um, I research people and things and places on the United doing really deep, like dives on individuals, uh, whether they are going to be the fi you know, a highly public positions such as a CEO or a politician, uh, or something along those lines or an expert witness. Um, so that's a lot of where I've focused on over the past couple of years is being sort of an expert in digging up information on people and things sitting behind my computer.

Leah Wietholter (31:41):

Yeah, that's awesome. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about, um, open source intelligence or osint on this podcast and really because of the podcast is how I even learned about that term. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit my eyes have just been very opened by learning about osint and stuff after starting this podcast and interviewing some of our guests. So I'm curious if any of our listeners are looking to improve their osint skills. Are there any resources or trainings that you provide or that you recommend?

Brian Willingham (32:11):

Yeah. I agree with you this, the term OSINT is a sort of relatively new term. It's nowhere by any stretch of imagination, a new way of doing things. So for example, I call, you know, and it's sort of a nebulous term as well. Like I do a lot of public records research and I consider that an open source and I realized that there's no defined definition, but open source is generally, you know, social media and all the data that is being collected on the internet that can sort of being collected and, and analyzed, um, including social media, including thousands of other things. Um, so that's how, you know, that's been my focus over the past couple of years. I don't consider myself like an OSINT researcher. I'm a private investigator and I, part of what I do on a daily basis, I'm searching open source information and public records, but I kind of sort of combine in one sort of, um, grouping.

Brian Willingham (33:06):

There are millions of data, data sources out there. Obviously Michael Buzzell is one of the founding fathers of sort of open source research. You can find his website, Intel techniques is where you can find Michael Buzzell. He's written several books. He is like, yeah. Of open source research. There's tons of other sources out there. Oh, so I'm curious, there's a podcast out there. There are tons of Twitter followers, Kirby Plessis polices, I'm mispronouncing your name. Um, she's sort of at the forefront of this Hank Van Ess, who's based in Holland is one of the other OGs Bellingcat is a website that use utilizes a lot of OSINT information, uh, in their investigations. Um, they've done some really, really fascinating stuff. Um, but you find this stuff sort of everywhere. There's like it's become like part of our Lexology now to, to use open source research.

Brian Willingham (34:10):

And one of the most fascinating cases that I've seen in a long time that was very public, was this Netflix series. Don't F with cats, I'm going to not curse on your podcast. If it was my podcast. I might be cursing, but, uh, don't F with cats, which is just as fascinating look of, of these basically nerdy osint people, uh, who are on the internet, who were trying to track down this person who was, um, killing animals, mean it was just horrific thing, but they were using clues from videos and pictures and clues that this person had left to figure out where he was in the world. Uh, and it was just this amazing, amazing story. And it's just this, you know, this whole industry is changing every day because the amount of information that is available to us and sort of disappearing from us as well, like for many years, Facebook had this, uh, graph search where we can, and with a little bit of know-how, you could extract amazing amount of information from Facebook that you didn't know was there, including who you liked, where your friends were, any photos around Facebook of you, um, just mazing, amazing, amazing amounts of detail, which is all but gone away.

Brian Willingham (35:22):

So as much as there's all this stuff sort of rising, because people are sort of seeing that how much of their information is out there and open to the public and how much people are becoming much more, uh, privacy freaks, you know, it's sort of as well. Uh, and with new sort of social media, like Tik TOK is now sort of exploding onto the scene. Now people are trying to figure out how to exploited and how to figure out how to get information out of that. So,

Leah Wietholter (35:50):

Yeah. So before we wrap up, I, you know, I just love hearing stories. I mean, we're just in the, I just think our industry is just full of great stories. So, um, do you have like a favorite case story, or maybe where you discovered something unexpected or maybe the client didn't think you could find it, or maybe you surprised the client?

Brian Willingham (36:11):

So the, the story that I always bring up, and it's really interesting because this business there's a lot of work that I do. That's like sort of bread and butter work, like finding people, um, you know, doing, you know, sort of mundane legal matters, but every once in a while, these cases come along, that is one is either like front page of the news, um, which a couple of those cases that I'm working on right now, which I can't really talk about, but other ones that are sort of very rewarding, um, and the, this case, and these are not the ones that I make very much money on, but it just makes you feel really good about what you do. And the short story about this one, I've written this one on my blog as well, which I can get to you, and you can put it in the show notes, but ultimately the story a woman called me, um, who wanted to find out who the father of her child was several years ago.

Brian Willingham (37:07):

Um, and what made this unique was that she had met her and her girlfriend had met two people at a camp grounds in Wyoming. I believe I'm going to probably butcher a part of the story. And they had a one night stand and she got pregnant. So she called me, her son was 11 years old. They never saw these people ever again, but once she realized she got pregnant, she went to the campground where they, these two gentlemen had stayed. She got the information on the car that they had provided and an address and those kinds of things. And for years, she would Google this person's name and the address, and nothing would sort of ever come up. So her son is turning 10 or 11 was constantly asking about her father. And she called me and I said, listen, this is going to be really challenging.

Brian Willingham (37:56):

You've got a really common name. You know, we don't have much information to go on, but I'm happy to give it a shot. And the long and short of it, she called me, she, she put a, you know, a retainer on the case and we started searching. And what I quickly learned that, and this happened in matter of literally 15 minutes. What I quickly learned was the information that she had been gotten from the campgrounds, whether intentional or not was not accurate, the address and the name of the person sort of didn't exist in any of our investigative databases, which is pretty comprehensive. And I looked through all through three or four of them, but I realized that the street name was right. And there was a couple of pieces of information. So after plugging in a couple of pieces of information, I realized that his last name was wrong and she had the wrong street number, I believe.

Brian Willingham (38:49):

And there was this person who fit the exact age, had the same first name, a slightly different last name. And I'm like, huh, that's weird. Like, this is probably the guy. So normally I give this enormous amount of thought about like calling these people up and what I'm going to say and how I'm going to approach this, because this is an extraordinarily sensitive. So I just on a whim, I called the guy and I said, Hey, is this so-and-so? Um, he's like, yeah, I'm like, this is going to be really weird. But did you happen to be in like Wyoming driving across country with your friends in 2008? He was like, yeah. Why? And I'm like, Oh my God. Like, I just completely like freaked out. I'm like, listen, this is so crazy. But I was I'm private investigator I'm based in New York. Um, I was hired by this woman who has a child and, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Brian Willingham (39:51):

I started telling him the story and the guy hangs up the phone on me and I immediately freak the hell out because I hadn't told the whole story. And the part of the story that I haven't told is that the person that owned this car, like this person that I was contacting was not the actual father. The father was the other guy who was not driving the car. He didn't have his name. So I was tasked with calling this guy and saying, Hey, you know, would you mind getting us in touch with so-and-so because we need to tell him that he's a father. So he hung up on me and I call him back and I'm like, Oh my God, what just happened here? And I called him back repeatedly and he just wouldn't pick up the phone. And I called the rack and I'm like, listen, I have, this is, I feel horrible.

Brian Willingham (40:38):

Like you got one shot at this. And I screwed it up and I felt absolutely horrific about it. And I kept calling him, kept doing this other stuff and doing all this other research on him and trying to figure out who the friend was. And, and ultimately I'm like, I'm just like a month after month. I'm like, the best I can do is write the guy a letter and just pray that he writes me back. He was in Wisconsin, I think. And I took me like two days to write this letter because I didn't want to screw it up again. And I want, you know, you have to appeal to them and blah, blah, blah. And I sent the letter be a registered mail. I think it's, there's some form of registered mail where only the person that you address it to has to sign for it.

Brian Willingham (41:24):

So I knew that he got it. So I knew that he got it. He didn't respond to me for months. And ultimately, um, I get a call three or four months later and he, the person on the other line says, Hey, Brian, you know, this is so-and-so. I think you've been looking for me. And it was the father. Um, the long and short of it was the guy that got the letter, um, had told, hadn't told the friend about it for many months, because he was going through something in his life. I don't know exactly what it was, but he he's like, I'm really glad he didn't tell me because I was going through a lot in my life. And I really didn't need that now. But, you know, I want to be a part of this kid's life. I'm glad you got in touch with me.

Brian Willingham (42:05):

How do I get in touch? And it was just a happy, they ultimately got in touch. They met a few weeks later and it was just this amazing, satisfying thing that, you know, you always think like, Oh my God, this is the easiest thing in the world. And then you screw it up and then you get this whole other where you turn around and there's a happy ending. So, you know, putting a family together like that is, is, is ultimately one of the most rewarding things I do. I don't do a lot of it and I don't, and I wish I could do more. Um, but that's, that's one of my more favorite stories and, and I, I wrote about it on the blog, so you guys can check it out.

Leah Wietholter (42:46):

Wow. I love it. Oh my gosh. That's so, that's so good. And thanks for picking a story that you actually know the ending to too. That's just,

Brian Willingham (42:54):

And I posted a, it was amazing. Like, like I like writing about these things too, because I think it's number one, it's a good example. It's great for people to hear about it, but like the outpouring of like LA people were like, I was crying at the end of reading. Well, girls normally, but like, but they were crying at the end meeting it and it was just like this amazing thing. And I love stories with a happy ending and especially ones that are actually true.

Leah Wietholter (43:20):

Yeah. And what I also love about this story is that, like you just owned that you felt like you had screwed it up, but then you used innovation and creativity to still like, try to see it through. I mean, I don't know that I would have thought to send a letter like that. Like I'm talking that away for some future case that I might have, like, that's awesome.

Brian Willingham (43:42):

Here's the thing that always usually things that inhibit me or the amount that somebody's willing to pay in order to do it. Like, you know, if I, if, if money were no object, I would have driven out there and like knocked on the guy's door, but she was not, you know, this person wasn't very well off and she wasn't about to pay me thousands of dollars to do that or hire another investigator. You know, I was trying to think of everything I could possibly do. So yeah. I mean, absolutely it requires some real thought about how the best way to approach it and like, you know, it's not always going to work and, and, and I'm perfectly willing and happy to admit that I'm going to screw it up sometimes I'm, I have everybody's best interest at heart, including my own. Um, but it doesn't always work out the way you plan. In fact, it rarely ever, that's

Leah Wietholter (44:32):

Still just such a great example. And yeah, I think that on most cases we would do a whole lot of things if money wasn't the issue, you know, if we didn't have to pay bills and for me pay a team and, and all of that. And so I do think that the creativity I mentioned and innovation just within the resources that the client has. I just think that's just awesome. I love that story. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for taking the time to talk with me today. And if any of our listeners would like to connect, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Brian Willingham (45:04):

You can find me on any of the 82 social media websites out there. Um, my website is www.diligentiagroup.com. And the blog is there as well, but you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or any of your other favorite social media platforms.

Leah Wietholter (45:24):

Fantastic. Yeah. Well, thanks again. And we'll make sure to link to your at least LinkedIn and your website and blog in the show notes. So thanks so much, Brian have a great day. 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 at podcast@workmanforensics.com.