The Sound of Pursuit

Your smart TV is watching you. Your fitness tracker knows your heart rate. Your doorbell has a camera. Your car logs everywhere you go. IoT, the Internet of Things , is everywhere. And those connected devices are priceless sources of digital evidence for investigators. The question is: Do you know how to get to the data those devices collect? Our guest Amber Schroader is a proud Trekkie and a self...

On a spring day in 1999, Russell Maze called 911, frantic: his son Alex, just five weeks old, had stopped breathing. At the hospital, doctors noticed bruises on Alex’s head and abdomen. They quickly deduced that his injuries could only have been caused by “shaken baby syndrome.”  Over a year later, Alex died. Russell Maze was convicted of killing his son.  More than two decades later, the Nashvill...

How do you identify online threats before they turn into disasters? Our guest Chris Nyhuis specializes in shielding clients from cyberattacks. As co-founder and CEO of Vigilant, a cybersecurity company in Cincinnati, he’s developed defenses for the food supply chain and telecom — protecting the kind of infrastructure that, when it gets hit, makes national news. Nyhuis teaches about cyberwarfare an...

Twin brothers, 18 years old, go to a party in San Jose, California. A fight ensues. Somebody gets stabbed — and dies. The brothers are arrested, and one twin is charged with murder. The wrong twin. And he stays in jail for nearly two years before the guilty twin finally comes clean.  My guest, author and journalist Jennifer Miller, met one of the brothers, Trung, while reporting a story for the Wa...

Some of the laws shaping how investigators work today were written decades before anyone had a smartphone. And right now, a new round of legislation is moving through state capitals and Congress that could change how PIs track people, pull records, and use the tools they depend on every day. My guest Edward Ajaeb is president of the National Council of Investigation and Security Services (NCISS)....

1996. A blast rips through Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. The FBI’s initial suspect — a security guard just doing his job — is cleared. The only evidence pointing to the real bomber is a grainy photo. To the FBI, he’s simply “blob man.” They have no idea who he is or how to find him. You may remember the story of the bomber who blew up the summer Olympics. You might also recall other bombings...

What happens when trust is weaponized and life savings start to disappear?  In this episode, we’ll expose the hidden world of elder financial exploitation — how these crimes play out, and how private investigators can help victims in their aftermath.  Our guests are Clay Kahler and Mindy Bohn with Bohn & Associates in Wichita Falls, Texas. As a firm, they specialize in transdermal alcohol moni...

How did a summer job at an amusement park lead to running a private investigations firm?  Let’s just say the path was not direct.  Molly Donaldson has one of the most interesting and varied PI origin stories around. She’s done a little bit of everything. But her story is not about indecision. It’s about experimentation. Her way of finding a professional sweet spot is to try on lots of career hats....

Today, we're talking about something that's changing the investigative landscape: Generative AI. It's everywhere, it's powerful, and it's already being used by private investigators — but not always wisely.  Dean Beers joins Hal to talk about how PIs can leverage GenAI ethically and effectively, where its limitations are, and why understanding this technology isn't op...

Join Hal and his guest Eileen Moynahan to talk about a little-known resource for executors, private investigators, and anyone who thinks they might have money out there that they've completely forgotten about — or never knew existed.  Moynahan is a New York PI with many years of experience as an intelligence analyst with the DEA, working drug-trafficking and money laundering cases. Now she ru...

If Jennifer Mackovjak quit working tomorrow, she’d already have a fantastic investigative career under her belt. She worked as a senior detective investigator in the Manhattan DA’s office, before becoming a private investigator. She worked at Kroll, then became a senior VP for investigations at a big risk management firm. And over the years, she’s investigated wrongful convictions for the Innocenc...

After a long hiatus, Hal Humphreys ("The Beard") and John Nardizzi ("The Dome") are back to catch up on PI work, wins, and losses, and to share what they love to read, watch, and listen to when they’re not uncovering malfeasance or defending clients. Most of these books, shows, movies, and podcasts are related to crime and investigations. Some only marginally so. Basically, it&...

Technical Surveillance Countermeasures. TSCM. It's the polished term for bug sweeps. It sounds glamorous, right? But in practice, it's a field littered with hucksters and halfwits wielding gadgets that flash and beep like slot machines. And the folks who hire them are often scared, stressed, and in some cases, mentally ill. Real TSCM professionals don't play with toys or take advant...

Have you ever handled a Title IX or sexual misconduct investigation? Our guest Dan Schorr specializes in them. He’s a Harvard-trained attorney and a former sex crimes prosecutor in New York. Now he’s a sexual misconduct investigator at his own firm and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he teaches courses on sexual misconduct and domestic violence cases. Schorr is also the author of...

After her mother died, Johnisha Matthews Levi was sorting through boxes of ordinary family artifacts. There among the Polaroids, diplomas, and property deeds, she found a piece of paper that forever changed how she saw her family's story. Levi is an author and a former litigation attorney. While she was in law school, she helped represent death row inmates pursuing appeals and indigent defend...

"Every business faces risks. Will we get paid...Do we hire that candidate. Accept their offer. Make a deal. And then there are the risks that are not anticipated. Trust abused...." That's a snippet from our guest Robert Gardner's company website . He's a researcher who helps companies anticipate and mitigate risks, from bad hires to compromised competitive intel. He's...

Mike Spencer is a former journalist, a Bay-Area private investigator, and the author of Private Eye Confidential: Stories from a Real P.I . He's been a guest on our podcast several times and is a longtime contributor to Pursuit. In this episode, Mike talks about an unsolved murder that's connected to a case he worked in 1998. It's the "pebble in your shoe," he says — a sto...

Money's a magician. It disappears, shape shifts, and hides in plain sight. If you don't know what to look for, it may as well not exist at all.  In this episode, Hal Humphreys talks asset searches with longtime colleague and friend Marcy Phelps, a professional researcher, licensed private investigator, and Certified Fraud Examiner. She's the author of Research on Main Street , owner...

Jason Powell is a New York City firefighter and a debut author. His first novel, No Man’s Ghost , is an arson thriller about a firefighter’s first week on the job. It's a crime novel, and it’s kind of a mystery – a whydunit, let's say. In this episode, Jason explains why he wanted to bring to life the culture of an FDNY firehouse, how natural it felt for him to write the fire scenes, and...

Your wallet goes missing. You cancel everything, but the alerts just keep coming: New bank accounts and credit cards in your name. Big charges. Damage to your credit score. It can take months or years to untangle all this. You may never get paid back in full. And nobody seems to be able to help you. Not the police. Not your bank. Not the government.  Our guest, Carrie Kerskie, CAN help. She'...

How does mortgage fraud even work? And how did these risky real estate schemes help fuel the 2008 mortgage meltdown? Tune in to this special crossover episode of the Appraisal Buzzcast and Sound of Pursuit podcast to hear a gripping morality play about greed, speculation, the fraud triangle, and the dangerous allure of easy credit. Our guest is a Utah mom who lost herself in a tangled Ponzi-style...

Susan Waller Lehmann is a private investigator, a criminal defense and capital mitigation specialist, a journalist, and an award-winning author. She’s written for Pursuit Magazine , and she’s got a new book coming out soon. It’s a collection of stories about her casework in the Deep South, from process service and bitter divorce cases to capital murder cases.  Southern Lies and Homicides is an hon...

Meet Rachele’ Davis: a longtime colleague and friend, occasional contributor to Pursuit Magazine , and now, the author of a course for PI Education . called "Finding Birth Parents for Adoptees, Donor-Conceived, and NPEs." Rachele’ has a really interesting niche: She helps reunite birth families . Her clients are adoptees looking for biological parents or siblings, and sometimes, parents...

"People don't understand what a bad day at the office means for people like us." That's a quote by Ben Lopez , a Chicago private investigator and the author of a moving personal essay in Pursuit about a case that came to a tragic conclusion — and the emotional toll it took on Ben. Join host Hal Humphreys and Ben as they talk about Ben's essay, the cases that haunt all of u...

What IS due diligence, and what ISN'T it? To answer this, Hal turns to our longtime colleague and friend Marcy Phelps, a professional researcher, licensed private investigator, and Certified Fraud Examiner. She's the author of Research on Main Street , owner of Marcy Phelps & Associates , and an instructor at PI Education . In the episode, Hal and Marcy talk about the why and how of...