Newsletter
BY KRISTY GRANT
IT’S a crisp Albury morning, low lying fog shrouds the city’s main street & most of its residents are still tucked up in bed.
But Peter Lynch has been camped out in his car since the early hours in a quiet cul-de-sac in West Albury.
He has watched the street sweepers go by, the early morning joggers & even the paper delivery vans.
But he hasn’t given them a second glance, nor they he.
He has almost committed to memory every crevice of the speckled brown door he has been watching for several hours.
Looking through the camera lens proves tedious, but then again, he can’t afford to miss any action from the occupants of the house.
“The occupant can be seen leaving the house & it appears he is going for a jog, it is now 6.34am,’’ he says into a tiny dictaphone secreted around his neck.
For the next two hours Mr Lynch follows his subject, taking photographs & video surveillance and methodically noting movements and times.
A jog, taking out the rubbish bin & fixing a paling on a fence is jotted in his contemporise notes.
He is a private investigator & this is his bread & butter.
Mr Lynch has been tasked by an insurance assessor to monitor the Border man, who it believes is fudging a work-related injury & defrauding insurance money.
A dark car interior & dark clothing assist to shield his presence in the vehicle; even black gaffer tape is plastered around the camera lens for extra disguise.
“We may be seconded to a job where the person has said they cannot walk or run due a work related injury but then they are seen exercising or taking the dog for a walk with the kids before school,’’ said Mr Lynch.
Corporate espionage, the theft of intellectual property, surveillance operation , bug sweeping operatives & parental drug checks on their children sound more like something you would find on a crime investigation channel, rather than on the Border, North East, Wagga Wagga and Canberra.
But Riverina-based Mr Lynch has been seconded to these areas as well as overseas after being hired by individuals, insurance companies & various businesses all in the quest for knowledge.
Border private investigators have recently reported an increase in the number of ‘peace of mind’ inquiries by parents worried their children may be caught up in drug-related activities.
Students from three Albury high schools have been followed by private investigators at the request of their parents, concerned about drug abuse.
“We have followed them to their hang-outs, sporting grounds, on push bikes & we have seen some of them engage in drug deals,’’ said industry source Terry.
“We report back to parents what we have seen & then it is up to them what action they want to take.’’
Mr Lynch said the prevalence of listening devices in the area was alarming & he was frequently called out to conduct bug sweeps on telecommunication systems, board rooms & the offices of chief executive officers.
“We have been finding some interesting intercepts on phone lines where the line has been bugged, sometimes even by a home-made device,’’ he said.
“I have done a job recently where a sales manager’s phone was bugged.
“The availability of listening devices is extraordinary with people being able to import them for between $20 and $50.’’
Mr Lynch said there had also been instances where GSM devices were planted in board rooms.
“These devices work similar to a SIM card in a phone & they can be secreted under a table or inside furniture,’’ he said.
“They can be turned on remotely from anywhere; these devices could easily cause a lot of problems.
“These devices can result in confidential information being leaked to a third party.’’
Mr Lynch said even amateurs could place bugging devices into telecommunication devices.
“Sometimes you can tell that a phone line has been tampered with, just by looking at it,’’ he said.
“But often they are very well secreted.’’
He has investigated the thefts of laptops from local organisations, fearing intellectual property has been taken during the break-ins.
Mr Lynch is one of more than 25,000 private investigators believed to be working within Australia.
The private security industry in Australia is said to be at least double the size of public police services according to a report undertaken by the Australian Institute of Criminology.
And their role in helping to combat insurance fraud speaks for itself.
A report commissioned by the Insurance Council of Australia estimated that insurance fraud cost $800 million, & that was in 1998.
The current cost is predicted to have swelled to over one billion.