Story Time (And Not From Me)

 

My wife sent me a TikTok from a creator named freedom_barbie. I watched and was blown away! I do not know her LinkedIn profile, or even if she has one. I don't want to do an invasive search for it because: 1) there's no reason; and 2) ick. If she wanted people to have her information she'd publish it. For example, here is her YouTube page. You can find her links there.

The Story

In this TikTok, freedom_barbie discusses an unexpected outcome of an investigation. She talks about how she was observing a man related to a worker's comp claim, and noted that he had an odd schedule. He would go into an internet cafe for a while then go to two (2) people's homes in the same sequence each day of observation. On the last day, she brought her laptop and went in to the internet cafe. She felt odd, like everyone started staring at her. The seven or eight men in there quickly started packing up their laptops and left. So she went back to her car and watch the door for when her target came out. When he eventually left, he hustled like he knew there was something wrong. She could tell because she had observed him on two (2) prior occasions. Like clockwork, he went to the first house. Then to the next house. This time she took down the license plates on the cars at the homes.

She ran the plates and found out that both of them were owned by registered sex offenders. She did a little digging and found out that the owner of the building where the internet cafe was located was - you guessed it - a sex offender. She reported her findings to her client and was directed to get the police involved. It turns out that the police had been looking for these people for two (2) years! These men were on the dark web auctioning off pictures of children.

Because of the target's worker's comp claim, he led freedom_barbie right to them.

It happens!

It is not infrequent that an investigation leads to other issues of interest to clients. In fact, I had something similar happen on one of my investigation, though thankfully child sex abuse was not a part of it. In my investigation, a man was accused of accessing pornography in an open office after normal business hours. He admitted that porn was on his screen but claimed that he opened it accidentally. While investigating the allegation, I discovered that he had been taking "upskirt" photos of a young coworker who sat next to him! Result: terminated and referred to law enforcement. So things like this happen.

Takeaway

There's not much to learn here, other than you can find out a lot about people simply by watching them and looking into what they do. Many times, you get more than you bargained for!

freedom_barbie

Seriously, check out her stuff. She has a whole series on stories from her time as an investigator. I found myself mesmerized and laughing at many! So if you want to kill a few hours enjoying PI stories, give her a follow!

 

Note: this article also appears on LinkedIn.