It's surprising just how much a good private investigator can dig up for their client, and they're used by people all across the world to find information that would otherwise remain under wraps.
By far the most popular topic for private investigators is infidelity, where one individual suspects that their partner isn’t as faithful as they claim, enlisting the help of a P.I. to provide the evidence they need to break things off.
You can hire a private investigator for just about anything – providing the work stays within the confines of the legal system – and one man saw that as the perfect opportunity to find out some secrets about himself.
Comedian and former BuzzFeed Multiplayer YouTube host Mike Carrier asked private investigator Jason Shaw to dig up all his secrets across the course of a week. The idea was to see just how much he could find, but in the process, Carrier was conducting an unexpected experiment of his own.
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While Shaw was delving deep into Mike's past, he was also doing as much research as he could to find out about the private investigator's own secrets, pulling off a reverse switch the P.I. surely couldn't see coming.
Things didn't get off to a great start, as while Mike did have a friend who is "deeply connected to the underground web forum community," all of the advice and methods he learned about were unfortunately illegal and not something he was willing to try out.
His next step was a logical one, as he turned to another private investigator to see if he would be willing to dig up dirt on his fellow professional, yet that proved to cost too much money at $90 per hour in addition to other case-related expenses.
Finally, Mike took up the mantle himself and did as much research as he possibly could on the man investigating him, yet that proved to be just as futile by the end of the week.
"I couldn't find anything on this guy," he exclaimed, noting that "the fact he's a private investigator means that he's probably covered up his tracks."
It certainly makes sense that someone so familiar with how you can find out information about others would also know how to protect his own information, and he put that on display as well after revealing what he found out about Mike.
Shaw successfully discovered that Mike had no criminal convictions in the past, noting that he actually had a pretty 'vanilla' life compared to the people he usually investigates.
"These reports are generally anywhere from 15 to 50 pages long," the private investigator noted, revealing that Mike's 'clean' record was only eight in total, comprised mostly of old addresses and jobs.