“This time last year we saw our traffic on PInow.com increase more than 12 times between December and January for people looking for a private investigator,” said PInow.com, a directory of pre-screened private investigators, Co-founder Adam Camras. “People begin to notice the signs of a cheating spouse around the holidays and tend to act on it by hiring an investigator.”

What once felt like a nagging feeling may show itself during this chaotic time of year. What should you look for? Unfaithful partners often exhibit these characteristics:

1. Mistakes. The holiday season is hectic for everyone and even more so for an individual who is trying to see two partners. When rushed it is easier to make mistakes such as forgetting to sign out of an email account, not clearing a cell phone call history or overlooking a voice mail that normally would have been erased. A partner who is in a hurry may not remember to throw away phone numbers on slips of paper with coded notes. Looking for these subtle mistakes can show you evidence of cheating.

2. Gifts. Unfaithful partners will likely want to buy special gifts for their loved ones — and those they are cheating with. Look for large withdrawals of cash that cannot be accounted for, and unusual or unexplained charges on credit card bills. As expenses pile up this time of year, it is often hard to buy impressive gifts for lovers without the accumulation of debt. Investigations into credit card bills can help uncover where gifts were bought, and hotels, dinners, bar bills and other entertainment expenses.

3. Scheduling. A cheating spouse will want to visit with his or her cheating partner during the holidays and may have difficulty juggling time. Unfaithful partners may have more unaccounted for absences, more excuses and may “work late” more than usual. Spending a great deal of time out makes it easier for private investigators to conduct surveillance during the busy holiday season.

4. Relationship. Those who are concerned about a spouse cheating may notice subtle changes in their relationships. There may be more trivial arguments and complaints that weren’t noticeable before. They may notice a decrease in their sex life, and a partner who is more concerned about his or her wardrobe and outward appearance. While these may seem like nuances that ebb and flow in a relationship, they may be signs of bigger issues.

While the holidays can be a full on frenzy, and most people do not want to deal with additional stress, this time of year may make it easier for an investigator to uncover adultery. Finding out the truth can help victims of infidelity start the New Year with a fresh start.

About PInow.com:

PInow.com is the most widely used source for finding private investigators worldwide. PInow.com assists legal professionals, insurance companies, corporations public institutions, government agencies and the public in locating local pre-screened investigators.

PInow.com’s search technology allows you to locate an investigator by location and investigation type - and it’s FREE to use. Visit the PInow.com private investigator directory at http://www.pinow.com.

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In these hard economic times, bailing out criminals is getting almost as hard as bailing out Detroit automakers.

As fewer suspects and their families can post bail, they’re buying fewer bail bonds, which is causing many longtime bondsmen and - women to rethink the business.

Van Nuys-based bail bondsman Larry Goldberg said he’s seen some competitors around the Van Nuys courthouse shut their doors in recent months.

“The big companies are trying to reduce overhead as they try to get business,” said Goldberg. “I’m down 20 (percent) to 25 percent in business from a year ago, and I know others are hurting even worse.”

Some companies, his included, have had to resort to allowing people to be bailed out of jail on payment plans just to keep business, said Goldberg.

Although there are no industrywide figures available, a spokesman for the Los Angeles-based trade group AboutBail.com said member reports have been mixed.

But one bail bond company in the desert cited on the Web site mentioned that business had fallen 50 percent from a year ago.

“Some are facing very slow times,” said Adam Camras, co-founder of AboutBail. “Overall, we’re finding that (bail bond) agents are getting more calls from people who need to bail out someone or who need to be bailed out, although the ability of those people to qualify is decreasing because of what’s going on in the economy and in the real estate markets.”

In the past, when people were out of cash, they could always use the equity in their home as collateral. But fewer homeowners can count on that anymore.

“We’re turning down more clients because we’re not able to get the collateral we’re looking for,” said Jeff Chavez, co-owner of All American Bail Bonds in Van Nuys. “And we’re finding that we’re having to turn away more people than in the past.”

Tonya Rynerson, co-owner of a Van Nuys-based family bail bond business with offices throughout the San Fernando Valley, said she has seen the toll on families.

“On an average bail of $20,000, they’re having to put up 10 percent - $2,000 - and that may not be as easy right now,” she said.

“We’re seeing more people staying in jail, waiting to see a judge first to see if they can get off on their own recognizance or have their bail lowered. There’s more of a tendency of that now.”

But so far, there has not been a surge in the jail population.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said there has been no overcrowding at the county jail recently because the jail population tends to decline during the holidays.

Meanwhile, bonding agents say they continue to feel the squeeze the economy is putting on potential clients.

Goldberg recounted a recent late-night phone call about an 18-year-old Glendale man arrested on a marijuana charge.

“When I called the father, who owned his own company, he said he didn’t have the money for (a bail bond),” said Goldberg. “He said his son would have to sit in jail for several days until his court date.”

Camras cited several instances in which homes put up for collateral dropped significantly in value, or were foreclosed on, before the case had been resolved by the courts.

“For a bail bondsman,” he said, “it’s your worst nightmare, especially if they don’t show up for court.”

To read the article from it’s original source, visit Daily News.

Camras’ seminar covered key industry issues such as the importance of professional branding and corporate identity, marketing essentials and marketing effectiveness.

“AboutBail.com’s core mission is to drive new business to bail agencies and firms through multiple brands and marketing initiatives, and with this presentation my objective was to educate bail agents,” said Camras. “Our goal is always to help bail agents advance their businesses through solid and effective marketing solutions.”

AboutBail.com has a free marketing resource available to bail agents at: http://www.aboutbail.com/marketing. This is not only an archive of articles written specifically for bail agents, but it also includes tools for marketing effectiveness, and a power point presentation for those who were not able to attend Camras’ presentation.

About AboutBail.com
AboutBail.com is a nationwide directory of bail bond agents, criminal lawyers, investigators, immigration bondsmen, jails, courts and more. AboutBail.com’s comprehensive database of bail agents, and legal professionals provides users with instant access to the help they need. AboutBail.com also offers customized marketing and technology solutions to bail surety companies. To contact AboutBail.com, call (866) 411-2245 or visit http://www.aboutbail.com

AboutBail.com was created by the same founders of the PInow.com, a worldwide directory of Private Investigators, and ServeNow.com a directory of Professional Process Servers.

AboutBail.com
3215 Osage St.
Denver, CO 80211
T - 866.411.BAIL (2245)
F - 877.824.2482
Email Us

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Carlyle gave bail agents an introduction to using Bail Engine. Bail Engine is a web-based application that provides bail surety companies and bail agents with the ability to communicate with one another, especially in the transfer bond process.

Camras led a seminar called: Marketing Your Business in Difficult Times. The seminar covered topics such as the importance of professional branding, creative marketing ideas and marketing effectiveness.

“With the business climate changing it is of the utmost importance to keep bail agents up-to-date on how to market their businesses,” said Camras. “We are providing them with tools that will aide their success.”

AboutBail.com has a free marketing resource available to bail agents at: http://www.aboutbail.com/marketing. This is not only an archive of articles written specifically for bail agents, but it also includes tools for marketing effectiveness, and a power point presentation for those who were not able to attend Camras’ presentation.
About AboutBail.com

AboutBail.com is a nationwide directory of bail bond agents, criminal lawyers, investigators, immigration bondsmen, jails, courts and more. AboutBail.com’s comprehensive database of bail agents, and legal professionals provides users with instant access to the help they need. AboutBail.com also offers customized marketing and technology solutions to bail surety companies. To contact AboutBail.com, call (866) 411-2245 or visit http://www.aboutbail.com.

AboutBail.com was created by the same founders of the PInow.com, a worldwide directory of Private Investigators, and ServeNow.com a directory of Professional Process Servers.

AboutBail.com
3215 Osage St.
Denver, CO 80211
T - 866.411.BAIL (2245)
F - 877.824.2482
Email Us

By Joanna Stern, published December 18, 2007

Rena Holloway (who preferred not to use her real name) was suspicious. The 36-year-old mother of four from Chicago had become uncomfortable with her husband’s rampant cell phone use and that his voicemail password had been changed from the usual family code. His call history was blank—a sign he’d erased it. There were also paw prints on the family desktop Web browser: He had been logging into a separate e-mail account.

One morning, while her husband was in the shower, she flipped open his cell phone and there it was: an illicit text message. Holloway, who had been through this before, didn’t stop there. She wrote down the phone number and used Intelius’ Web service to look up her husband’s cell phone records. Lo and behold, the number of the text sender appeared numerous times on her husband’s outgoing call list. Today, Holloway and her husband are separated.

As you might imagine, Holloway isn’t alone. “As technology gets more and more sophisticated, cheaters are going to have a greater risk of getting caught, especially because so many of them are meeting online and communicating there,” said infidelity expert Ruth Houston, author of Is He Cheating On You? “The evidence is all in the cyber realm,” she said.

Net Helps Cheating Husbands and Wives
According to relationship experts like Houston, cheating is on the rise because technology makes finding a willing partner easier. The unfaithful don’t have to scour bars or cultivate relationships; they can simply visit a site like The Ashley Madison Agency, a site dedicated to helping married people find other partners. The site, whose tagline is “When monogamy becomes monotony,” boasts almost a million members in the U.S. alone. Stats may convey the popularity of the site among cheaters, but creating a profile of our own was equally telling. Within 20 minutes of setting up a profile, in which we said we were a 30-year-old “attached female seeking males,” we received seven messages from men who were married or “attached.”

One member, whom we’ll call Rick, traded messages with us on the site. He told us how he keeps his extramarital relations a secret from his wife and asked that we not use his real name. “I log into Ashley Madison a few times a day to see what else is out there,” Rick said. “I always make sure to erase the Web-browser history on the family computer if that’s the one I’m on.”

Rick has met face to face with women from the site. “I typically am traveling for work, so I use my laptop on the road to communicate,” he said.

Divorce lawyers and marriage counselors agree that Internet-abetted infidelity—romance originating in chat rooms and fueled by e-mail—is now one of the leading contributors of marital breakdowns. A 2005 study conducted by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers indicated that 63 percent of divorce cases involve some form of online infidelity. (This infidelity can refer to relationships that began on the Internet or were spurred on by electronic communication.)

“I couldn’t count the number of cases when there has been e-mail evidence of adulterous relationships,” said Gaetano Ferro, a matrimonial attorney and president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “It often happens that a prospective client comes in [saying that their] spouse has a boyfriend or girlfriend, and they drop a stack of e-mails on my desk.”

Following the E-Tracks
It’s no coincidence that catching a cheating wife or cheating husband has also become easier because much of the communication occurs via mobile technology.

“A basic knowledge of cell phones and computers gave me access to hard evidence,” said Holloway. “I think the Internet and cell phones make it amazingly easy to have affairs and be caught doing so.”
Private investigators once relied on long-lens cameras and receipt records, but technology has changed their trade. “The personal computer and mobile phone have revolutionized our business,” said Bill Mitchell, the director and chief investigator of Mitchell Reports Investigation, who has been a PI since the Internet’s infancy. “There is a clear advantage in technology for the investigator. Now we can do everything from install a camera that can run by itself or put a GPS device in an automobile and watch it from our laptop.”

Mitchell also mentioned that his company uses software to track keystrokes and image hard drives, adding that the technology has saved his clients thousands of dollars in man-hours.

It’s a business that’s growing. Adam Camras is cofounder of PInow.com, a site that links people with private investigators in their geographic location. He’s seen a major increase in the site’s infidelity-investigation business. “We receive anywhere from 10 to 25 inquiries for online infidelity cases on a weekly basis,” said Camras, adding that local investigators usually receive even more.

These inquiries come not only from evidence of time spent in virtual communities, such as Second Life, but from other social sites such as MySpace, dating sites, and sites that cater to cheating husbands and wives. “Requests from people wanting tangible information about their spouse’s other ‘online spouse’ have grown 200 percent over the past two years,” Camras said.

Although nothing beats having a tech-savvy private investigator at your disposal, John Lucich, a computer forensic expert, has focused on bringing detectives’ technology skills to the average person. He argues that costly bills and the idea of involving an outsider in one’s dissolving marriage don’t make hiring a private investigator the most attractive solution. Lucich’s book, Cyber Lies, teaches suspecting spouses how to examine a partner’s computer or cell phone to find out if he or she is cheating. “Unfortunately, I can lead people in the right direction to uncover their suspicions,” he said.

More Inclined to Cheat?

Although cell phones and instant messaging can be used to keep relationships strong, these tools can also be weapons that tear marriages and families apart. “Mobile technology has made breakthroughs in human relationships and brought us closer to loved ones,” said Dr. Susan Heitler, a clinical psychologist specializing in marital therapy and author of The Power of Two. “But on the flip side, it lets us be inappropriately romantic during affairs. The spouse can even be in the same room as the cheater communicates with the [other] woman or man.”
But are people who are already inclined to cheat simply upgrading to higher-tech tools, or are more people cheating because technology has made it easier? Marc H. Rudov, author of <I>The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women</I>, told us that technology has nothing to do with it. “Technology is just the enabler of infidelity,” he said. “Like a gun is the means for murder, you have to want to kill someone before firing that gun. People do not cheat because the technology is there; they cheat because they are bored or insecure.”

Dr. Kimberly Young, the founder of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, takes another view. She thinks that today’s digital world has created a new breed of cheaters that may not have ever cheated before. “I believe the Internet and mobile devices make affairs much more possible,” Young said.

Rudov does agree that technology is partly to blame for the upsurge in infidelity. “We live in a world that is electronically connected but disconnected emotionally,” he said. “People are communicating via text messages and voicemails more than they’re talking to each other face to face. It provides a layer of artificiality that has changed marriages and relationships. That disconnection makes it easier to bounce from one person to the other.”

To read the article from it’s original source, visit LapTop Magazine.

There are quite a number of reasons why using process servers and investigators that are local to the service area are your best option.

1. Efficiency and Faster Service.
Local process servers and investigators know the ‘landscape’ of the area in which they will be working. There is no need for them to acclimate to a town or city. It is also very likely the local process server or investigator has access to a network of professionals, including law enforcement, that can help expedite the process or help collect hard-to-obtain information.

2. Lower Costs.
When you hire a national process server or your “local guy” to have court documents served out of town, they will generally forward these papers to a business within their network. In cases such as this, the company you hire will tack on a margin for managing the serve. This fee can range from $50 to $200 or more for a routine service. This gets much more expensive when multiple attempts, rush service and mileage comes in to play.

By hiring local, you can save your firm and your clients hundreds of dollars on routine service of process.

Not hiring a local investigator can cost you even more. If you hire a national company or an investigator in your own area you may incur hotel bills, travel costs and incidental expenses for an out-of-town surveillance or investigation. This can easily add up to thousands of dollars that are not directly related to the investigation. It is likely that these extra costs can be mitigated by hiring local, experienced investigators.

3. Knowledge of Local Laws.
Each state (and even some cities and counties) have specific laws about process serving and investigations. If the process server or investigator you hire is not familiar with the local rules, you could be putting your client’s case at risk. Qualified local process servers and investigators can diminish the possibilities of a case being affected by their services. These individuals are most likely to know from past experience the pertinent laws they must abide by while working on your firm’s behalf.

4) Efficient Communication.
As mentioned earlier, when you hire a nationwide provider or “the local guy” your case is referred out to someone else. You do not have immediate access to these individuals which can be an issue if you need to react to time–sensitive information. When you break down the communication chain and work directly with the folks handling your case you are more likely to receive timely and accurate information.

Since local investigators and process servers can be such an asset to your company, it makes sense to use local professionals over nationwide forwarding companies. When you have cases that require out-of-town process service or investigations you can save time and money by hiring locally. Local experts provide more control over who is handling your case in the field, reduce costs and improve the efficiency in which your case is handled.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Adam Camras and Trent Carlyle are the founders of ServeNow.com and PInow.com. ServeNow.com is a local directory of qualified and experienced process servers. PInow.com is a directory of private investigators. Both online directories enable you to find qualified, experienced and pre-screened professionals anywhere in the United States or Worldwide. Additionally, you may reach them at (877) 737-8366 for personalized service.

“This is an exciting milestone for our company,” said Mike MacDonald, ServeNow.com Brand Manager. “We’re now able to offer process servers the opportunity to reach more of their potential clients, and legal professionals an additional place to find local, pre-screened process servers.”

Using local process servers is the most efficient and cost-effective way to execute a service of process. When dealing with cases that are outside of their area, many firms continue to turn to their “local guy” or a nationwide company, but that is not the best method. Using a local server lowers the costs to law firms and their clients. With local process servers, papers are served faster, and legal professionals are able to communicate directly with the process server regarding the case.

ProcessServers.com is one of the most prominent sites in the process serving industry. The acquisition of ProcessServers.com further solidifies ServeNow.com brands as the premier places to find local assistance for process serving needs. In addition to ProcessServers.com, ServeNow.com also acquired the International Process Servers Association and FindPIs.com, which will supplement PInow.com, an international directory of pre-screened private investigators.

About ServeNow.com:
ServeNow.com is the most widely used source for finding process servers worldwide. ServeNow.com assists lawyers, paralegals, legal assistants and the public in locating local process servers and legal support professionals.

Need a summons and complaint, subpoena, judgment or other legal documents served? Need document filing and retrieval or skip trace performed? Visit the ServeNow.com process server directory at http://www.serve-now.com.

ServeNow.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Westin Consulting LLC. Westin Consulting develops, owns and manages properties and software applications in the legal industry. The Westin Consulting portfolio also includes PublicRecordsWire.com, PInow.com AboutBail.com, and the ServeManager and BailEngine software applications.

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• Web/Graphic Designer
• Denver, CO

Description:

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• PHP and/or Ruby experience preferred
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• Ruby on Rails Developer
• Denver, CO

Description:

Westin Consulting LLC is a marketing/software development firm seeking a full-time web application developer with Rails experience and a strong foundation in PHP, MySQL, etc.

We offer a competitive compensation package that includes health insurance. Our office environment is very casual and creative, and is located in the lower Highlands area - just a couple blocks from LoDo.

We are seeking more than a programmer. The person who fills this role will have a direct and immediate impact on the success of our brands. If your skills fit the below criteria and you are looking for a challenging work environment, we look forward to hearing from you.

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