Spring. Love is in the air. And Rob Kimmons said private investigators at his investigations and security agency, Kimmons Security Services, are doing background checks on suitors for a steady stream of careful women.
That's right. Romance has taken a turn for the modern. Cupid no longer has the free rein he once did. Love need not be blind, or even nearsighted, in this high-tech age.
Typically, Kimmons said, a client wants
to know if a particular man she has been seeing has been
telling her the truth about himself before she invests
too much time and emotion in a relationship.
"People are tired of hearing B.S.," Kimmons said.
The typical client wants to know: Does her boyfriend have the job or own the business he claims to have or own? How much money does he make? If he is divorced, has he been truthful about why? How many times has he been married? And so on.
Kimmons said the cost of typical boyfriend background checks start at about $500. If more specific details are sought, it can reach $1,000 pretty quickly. And even more money is involved if a client wants to have a suitor put under surveillance.
Most of his clients are women
A few men hire private investigators to check out their girlfriends, but the vast majority of such clients are women, Kimmons said.
That is just at his investigations and security agency. Consider all the other private investigators in Houston and imagine how great the total must be.
Your mom might find the idea pretty shocking. Or perhaps, depending upon her personal experiences and current situation, she might welcome it. If she is a widow of some means, she might find it a useful way to protect herself from smooth-talkers.
"There are some pretty good con artists out there,"Kimmons said.
An example of how it can pay to be suspicious is the woman in one recent case who came to Kimmons and said she was wondering why her boyfriend wouldn't give her his telephone number. Everytime she asked for it he managed to dodge her with some excuse.
She liked the guy. He was such a gentleman. Always so polite. Sent flowers every two or three days. But the phone number thing had her wondering if maybe he had something to hide.
Turned out the guy was married. Two children. And it seemed pretty evident from the investigation that he was a wife beater. A regular Jekyll and Hyde type. The girlfriend dumped him in a hurry.
Another client has turned into a repeat customer. As soon as she gets to know a guy well enough to think she might like to know him better, she has a background check run.
Kimmons said the woman calls with a "shopping list" of things she wants investigated.
"Here's what he told me," the woman will say to her detective, and then read quotes from the notes she collected.
If it turns out the guy was giving her a line, Kimmons said, "he's history."
Thus far this middle-aged woman, who owns a successful business, has had Kimmons check out four boyfriends. Three of them didn't pass.
At some point in their initial conversations with Kimmons, all clients stress one point in common: The boyfriend must never suspect he is being investigated.
He said one woman who hired him to check out her mother's boyfriend insisted that neither the mother nor the boyfriend know about it. It turned out the boyfriend was misrepresenting his business interests, but Kimmons did not follow up to see what effects his report ultimately had on the relationship.
Many clues are in the computer
Sometimes he does find out what happens with clients after he turns over the information he gathers. He knows that one woman later married the guy she had him investigate. Kimmons said the boyfriend apparently never learned she had him checked out so thoroughly.
Keeping it secret is not too tough, actually.
The private investigations are mostly record checking,
Kimmons said, going to computer banks to withdraw information.
For some idea of how fast that has happened, just eight years ago he got his first computer. And last year he spent more than $70,000 buying database information for various types of private investigations, he said.
Ah, those sounds of spring; the songs of love birds... the soft whispers about forever... the click of computer keyboards running background checks...
By Thom Marshall, Houston Chronicle, March 25,1992 |
