Archive for the ‘Private Investigator’ Category

Man Gets 26-Year Jail Term for 17 Years of Stalking

By Dawn in harassment, Home Security, Investigations, MSI Detective Services, Private Investigator, Safety, Security, stalking, Stalking Cases at February 1st, 2012 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

This story sounds like a bad Lifetime movie – a suspense/drama thriller that goes beyond the norm of what “normal” people will do. I can’t imagine how this poor woman has lived out such a real nightmare for so many years.

A Seattle-area man was given a 26 1/2-year prison term for waging a 17-year campaign of harassment against a former classmate he met in middle school. Prosecutors are calling this the longest sentence for stalking in memory.

Shawn Moul, 31, passively accepted the sentence last week which came about six months after being convicted on two felony counts of stalking and 19 counts of violating anti-harassment orders.

Moul began stalking classmate Tracy Lundeen in 1994, shortly after Lundeen saw him at the school library struggling with his homework and offered to help him. Lundeen said Moul began following her and wrote her more than 100 letters, alternately threatening her and vowing to kill himself. He also contacted Lundeen’s family members, demanding that she contact him.

Moul has already served prison time for repeatedly violating a no-contact order, having been sentenced to eight years in prison in 2001. Apparently, eight years wasn’t enough to teach him a lesson because after his release, he again initiated contact through Lundeen’s sister. Read the full article »

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Va. College Student Visiting NYC Vanishes

By Dawn in Locate Investigations, Missing Persons, Missing Persons Investigations, MSI Detective Services, Private Investigator at January 12th, 2012 | No comments

Ian Burnet

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ian Burnet studies engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. He came to New York City to celebrate the New Year holiday with friends and has been missing since Dec. 30 – no one has heard from him. Sources say the 22-year-old has a history of suicide attempts, according to NBC New York.

Ian left his Richmond, Va., home the day after Christmas and took a bus to New York. He was planning to rent an apartment for a week with friends, authorities said.

According to The New York Daily News, Burnet’s last known contact was a text with a friend on Dec. 30. He was seen that afternoon at the apartment where he had been staying on 139th St. and Riverside Drive. He left without his cell phone and did not say where he was going.

Ian’s mother, Nancy Burnett, said, “It’s completely out of character. We have no reason to think that he would do something like this.” The last time she heard from her son was via text on Dec. 27, after he visited Central Park, she said.

Concerned family and friends utilized Facebook and the online community Reddit to spread the word about Burnet’s disappearance. Burnet’s older brother Jamie, a Reddit user, responded to one user who asked, “Have you ever thought he DOESN’T want to be found?” and said, “Yes. There’s a very real possibility that he took his own life, and I’m trying not to think about it. He has a history of depression, and there have been scares before. But he didn’t leave any last messages behind, which would be extremely uncharacteristic … I’m hoping that’s not the case.” Read the full article »

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Piers Morgan Accused of Knowledge of Phone Hacking at Daily Mirror

By Dawn in Celebrity, Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, eavesdropping, Hacking, invasion of privacy, MSI Detective Services, Private Investigator, testimony, witness statement at December 21st, 2011 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

It appears that Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World paper is not the only publication being accused of phone hacking. Now, Piers Morgan, former Editor of the Daily Mirror, is in the hot seat for the same offense.

Phone hacking was widespread at the Daily Mirror newspaper when Piers Morgan was editor of the paper, a former employee testified Wednesday, stopping just short of saying Morgan definitely knew about it.

James Hipwell said that he “cannot prove” that Morgan knew about illegal eavesdropping, but that it was “very unlikely he did not know what was going on.”

Phone hacking “happened every day” at the Mirror’s show business desk in late 1999, Hipwell told the Leveson Inquiry, a wide-ranging government-backed investigation of British press ethics and practices.

The Leveson Inquiry was prompted by public and political outrage at the revelation that another tabloid, Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, hacked into the phone of a missing teenage girl who later turned out to have been murdered.

Morgan, who now hosts the CNN talk show “Piers Morgan Tonight,” testified the previous day that he did not believe phone hacking had taken place when he was editor of the tabloid.

Speaking by video link, Morgan tenaciously defended himself against accusations that he knew more about phone hacking than he has admitted in the past.

Piers was questioned about a story based on a voice message Paul McCartney left for his then-wife Mills, trying to make up after a quarrel and singing to her. Morgan refused to say who played the message for him or where, but admitted that he believed it was a voice mail. Read the full article »

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A Clerical Error Landed Kathleen Casey on the Streets

By Dawn in Background Checks, court cases, Criminal Background Check, Criminal Records, legal papers, MSI Detective Services, Police Records, Private Investigator at December 21st, 2011 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

If you are an employer needing background checks performed on prospective employees, MSI Detective Services offers this service. Mistakes won’t be make like the ones you will read about in this story because we have the means to accurately check and cross-check information. For example, in the first story, our staff would have noticed that the birth date did not match the age of the individual, and even if it did, one of our Private Investigators would have pulled the police report to ensure they had the right person. Employers should also know that they are required by law to inform job applicants when they have been rejected because of negative information in a background check. This gives the applicant an opportunity to clear up any mis-information. So, unless you want a lawsuit on your hands, you are advised to do a proper background check and follow the law.

Out of work two years, her unemployment benefits exhausted, in danger of losing her apartment, Casey applied for a job in the pharmacy of a Boston drugstore. She was offered $11 an hour. All she had to do was pass a background check.

It turned up a 14-count criminal indictment. Kathleen Casey had been charged with larceny in a scam against an elderly man and woman that involved forged checks and fake credit cards.

There was one technicality: The company that ran the background check, First Advantage, had the wrong woman. The rap sheet belonged to Kathleen A. Casey, who lived in another town nearby and was 18 years younger.

Kathleen Ann Casey, would-be pharmacy technician, was clean.

“It knocked my legs out from under me,” she says.

The business of background checks is booming. Employers spend at least $2 billion a year to look into the pasts of their prospective employees. They want to make sure they’re not hiring a thief, or worse.

But it is a system weakened by the conversion to digital files and compromised by the welter of private companies that profit by amassing public records and selling them to employers. These flaws have devastating consequences. Read the full article »

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