Private investigation as a career

outofwork123

Hello

I have been unemployed for a while now and thinking of becoming self employed, by studying for a course on how to become a private investigator. To be honest, the predicted income for such a job sounds too good to miss.

Can anyobody tell me if they have done, or know of anyone who has done one of these courses before? Is it true that the earnings potential is quite huge or are they false promises? Are there any legal implications that need to be taken into account? I also assume that an individual may have to put him/herself in 'danger', while carrying out the day to day tasks of an investigator, every now and again?

Also, the course is offered as both distance learning and on line. If I were to end up doing one of these courses, would it be better to do it on line or via distance learning?

Thank You.

Weirdlittleman

Do yourself a favour and do a proper job.
Careers like this are a pipe dream and the number of ex police and army personnel more than fill these jobs without the need for semi trained people who just want an easy job.

As for your questions.

1) No not done a course
2) No it is not true
3) Yes endless legal implications
4) Very unlikely you would be in anymore danger than someone who walks the street

DCFC79

The money would be up and down as a yoyo, why would someone pick you a novice over someone with 20/30 years experience, think about it then come back with more questions

cit_k

It would be very hard to learn the skills on a course, lots of hands on experience will be required. A decent PI should also have access to lots of equipment, covert cctv, transmitters, vehicles, trackers etc.

People may also wish to hire a firm, who can provide more than one PI for counter surveillance tactics, and increasing the ability to conduct surveilance (switch to another operative / car etc if cover blown, or operative seen to many times)

There is a lot of technical stuff to learn from a operational point of view (how to operate the surveillance equipment) as well as from the counter surveillance point of view (how to operate equipment to ensure you are not being surveyed yourself), as well as surveillance tactics, the law (quite a big topic in itself), and evidence procedures etc etc.

Not a easy thing to successfully tackle, and also, a lot will depend on what contracts you can get, which will depend more on length of time doing the job/size of operation/who you know.

fleagle21

The others here have made some fair points, however if you're not going full on working for high profile companies and investigating conspiracies/fraud and the like, there is money to be made in the extra marital affairs 'department' - you need very little qualification (so the basic principles of this course would do - that's if you would even need that level...) and a decent camera then maybe a girl available for a honeytrap every now and then!

honeypop

I believe that for 'extra-marital affairs' PI work there is a need for more than just a honeytrap girl and a camera lol. Even just reading in the tabloids about people who do this work, they use much more equipment than that.

Vader123

I have a few "PI"s on my books and I push them work now and again.

I don't know any "full time" PIs. Most have another form of income getting work is hard due to competetion. Most of the lucrative work goes to prvate individuals with a long standing rep. Plus with the net most people can do a lot on their own on tracing people.

Vader

fleagle21

honeypop wrote: »

I believe that for 'extra-marital affairs' PI work there is a need for more than just a honeytrap girl and a camera lol. Even just reading in the tabloids about people who do this work, they use much more equipment than that.

I've read too many novels