Private eyes using drones to catch cheating spouses
Investigators are taking drones to new heights — using the remote-controlled aircraft to catch New Yorkers cheating on spouses, lying about disabilities and endangering their kids.
“People want you to believe there’s all this negativity associated with drones . . . but they could be a very helpful tool,” said Olwyn Triggs, a gumshoe for 23 years and president of Professional Investigators Network Inc. in Glen Cove, LI. Triggs recently used a drone to find an upstate man suspected of insurance fraud. Signs on his rural property warned that trespassers would be shot, so she sent in her 2-pound, foot-long Phantom 2 Vision quadcopter, which costs about $1,000. “He was supposedly fully disabled,” she said. “We knew he was active but couldn’t prove it because of the layout of the property. I couldn’t risk being shot.” So, as a drone hovered above, snapping images of the man chopping wood, Triggs manned the controls from behind a vehicle about 1,000 feet away.
PIs are also using drones to catch cheating spouses. Matthew Seifer recently pretended to test-fly a drone in Central Park. He was actually recording a husband fooling around with a female coworker from 100 feet away. “Sometimes the best thing is to be right there in plain sight,” said Seifer, president of Long Island- based Executive Investigations.“We had to get in and get out real quick,” he added. “We deployed a drone for eight minutes and got five minutes’ worth of video. That was the closure our client was looking for.”
In another recent case, Seifer was having trouble tailing a fast-driving Long Island doctor suspected of hanky-panky. So the PI parked behind a steakhouse where the doc had taken a lover. “We raised the drone above the restaurant, [and] he was engaged in a sexual act in the front seat of his car,” the investigator said.
“Clients are amazed,” Seifer said. “The drones are a game changer.”
http://nypost.com/2014/07/13/private-eyes-using-drones-to-nab-scammers-cheating-spouses/Insect drones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cJv4O2zEOw If you're up to some hanky-panky better keep your eyes on the sky. I suspect its harder to get away with anything these days what with all the cameras and drones flying around looking for evidence or just spying for the hell of it. I recently saw a video [see link] about the military creating insect drones. They are hard to differentiate from the real insect. No doubt in the future these miniature drones will be of considerable use for the military and police but the threat of the government using them to illegally spy on citizens will be present as well. Is all this a good idea or should laws exist to control the uses of these things? Once the cat is out of the bag its hard getting it back in. What do you think?
