Sometimes, big corporations hire me to find out how they customers are taking advantage of them. It’s always interesting how these companies, in return, try to squeeze every penny out of the people they serve. Anyway.  

A big health insurance company came to me about a woman who recently had had hip surgery. They believed that she was asking for more physical therapy appoints that she actually needed, according to their estimates. They asked me to do some digging to see how she is actually doing and prove she doesn’t need the appointments. I think they were thinking that the woman was actually doing really well, running marathons, and using the PT appointments to get back into shape.  

I schedule some appointments myself at the same clinic and had to go a few times before I actually saw the woman. Six months after her surgery, she was still on crutches. As it turns out, a freak bus accident, reinjured her hip and she had to have more PT to get back to health.  

In this case the insurance company was wrong about suspected fraud and needed to keep paying the woman.

When you get into the PI business, you expect to have many cases about cheating lovers, but one of my first cases, was one that I didn’t expect coming.  

Denice’s boyfriend, Harold, went missing one night after a lovely date. The two had met about three months prior on Match.com and really hit it off. Denice really liked Harold, and she thought he liked her back as well.  

The biggest problem in their relationship, though, is timing. Denice is a physical therapist and often works evenings. She also doesn’t get much time off around the holidays because their businesses is always open. Harold is a banking consultant and travels around the country to help businesses learn new software. They both have active lifestyles and take trips with friends on the weekends. Although they had been seeing each other for a few months, they had only met up a handful of times. But, they did talk every week.  

Denice and Harold had planned to hang out one Friday evening, when Denice had hoped to bring up the “what is this” conversation, but she got a text from Harold the night before saying that his parents decided to sell their house randomly, and he needs to go down to Florida the next night to help them. She was disappointed but understood. She told him to text her while down there, and he agreed.  

Denice figured he would be back after a few days, but two weeks passed, and Harold was still down there. “Things came up,” he said. She was rightly furious, and after a bottle of merlot, texted him, “well, I guess I won’t ever see you again.” As you can imagine, Harold did not like this, and he told Denice she was not being understanding. He didn’t return any of text messages or phone calls after that.  

Not sure what to do, Denice came to me to see if we could locate him and what happened. I checked Harold’s social media accounts, and they did indicate that he was in Florida two weeks ago, but there wasn’t anything since. I decided to see if I could call his office, pretend that I was a bank looking for some help, and as soon as I called his work number, Harold answered. I pretended to be the banker and asked if he could do a meeting in the city where he and Denice lived, and he said he could meet me that afternoon! He was not in Florida.  

I brought Denice with me to the meeting, and Harold was not at all happy to see her. He said he had actually never gone to Florida and the photos he posted were a rouse to distract Denice, when she would inevitable come searching for him on social media. He said that he lost interest in her and didn’t know how to tell her. To this, Denice through a glass of water in his face and walked out!