89: Under The Rose with Mike Petrie

This episode has been automatically transcribed by AI, please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

Chris: Private investigators and intelligence professionals stand as true modern day detectives who uncover information, solve mysteries, and provide insight. They conduct intense investigations, surveillance, and research, often assisting legal cases and businesses by gathering evidence and analyzing data.

Chris: With expertise in security and risk assessments, they play a vital role in uncovering truths and minimizing risks in a constantly changing environment. With their skills honed in the shadows, investigators play a pivotal role in uncovering secrets. Although my drink for this one, aptly named The Shadow, is no secret. In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, you combine 2oz of gin, 1oz of chilled Earl Grey tea, half ounce of creme de Violette, and a half ounce fresh lemon juice.

Chris: Shake vigorously, strain it into a chilled glass, and then optionally garnish it with a lemon twist. Here’s to revealing the shadow. Mike Petrie is a true pioneer in the fraud investigative industry. With nearly three decades of experience, he founded Webutation Inc. A revolutionary social media intelligence solution and brand defense organization. Having built the first ever social media investigation platform for the insurance industry in 2007, mike has educated thousands of insurance professionals worldwide on the power of social media investigative methodologies.

Chris: My man Mike. Welcome to Barcode. I’m stoked to have you on the show, man.

Mike: Could you be more stoked than I am? I’m like, pumped up. This is amazing.

Chris: Let’s do it, man.

Mike: Nice to hear from you, Chris.

Chris: Yeah, you too, man. Thanks for joining. So I’m extremely interested in hearing your story.

Mike: It’s an interesting one. Yeah. You ask, I tell.

Chris: Yeah. So tell me where it all began for you in terms of your pursuit into the investigative field.

Mike: Yeah, it’s an interesting one. By the way, I was hoping that we could have some hall of notes like Private Eyes running into as an intro song, but it’s okay, maybe another time. But it was actually one of the songs I loved growing up was Private Eyes. But as a kid, I was always intrigued and interested in government organizations and investigative units and departments like your Secret Service or FBI and any other acronym that existed in the early seventy s and eighty s, but I grew up like watching Starsky and Hutch and Kojak and Heart to Heart Rockford Files. Not too much Colombo, but those were the type of shows I was like into at ten and twelve.

Mike: Maybe throw some SWAT in there too, but basically any crime show that was getting solved in 46 minutes, I was interested in that. So fast forward into the early ninety s. I got an opportunity from my older brother who was working for a local private investigation firm. And the cool thing was, is that you didn’t actually have to have your personal private investigator’s license during those times and even now today, you could still work for the company that holds a license and you can work under the umbrella of their investigators license. The differences were that you don’t get sued personally. So it’s actually a nice protective shield if you are going to get into this industry. But I was hearing all of his stories and I’m like, man this is cool. And we’re talking like 93, 94.

Mike: So at that point in my life, my daughter was just getting born. So I was 22, just married, new daughter. And I’m looking for this career that’s going to basically satiate my desire that I missed at that point because I felt like I was too old at a ripe old age of 22 that the secret Service and FBI might not be the path that I may be accepted in. So I was looking for something like the equivalent to or as exciting as the FBI or Secret Service.

Mike: And this industry, this private investigation, this corporate fraud industry was similar. It seemed as exciting. Now obviously they’re not the same, but I was like, hey, maybe I’ll get shot less and I won’t have to wear a suit every day like the FBI guys. I mean, can I be frank since your name’s Chris? This industry has made me personally very happy and launched what I think a pretty successful career in an industry which can sometimes be saturated.

Mike: For example, Florida state of Florida receives 6000 annual license applications by every retired state trooper police officer. So it could sometimes feel like a saturated industry but it was still archaic, right? You’re sitting out there and I don’t want to get ahead, but there was room to change and there was room to make improvements in this industry if you took a chance. I submerged myself. I was basically like the sponge at the bottom of the ocean trying to soak up every piece of knowledge, anything transferred via knowledge.

Mike: The internet wasn’t as big then as it is now, but any books or tricks of the trades, understanding the laws and the objectives of a private investigation because there’s a couple of different types of private investigation you can fall into or go after, right? So you’ve got matrimonial type or family law and then you’ve got corporate fraud and who knows whatever else they’re out there today. But this was straight insurance fraud and it took me from rookie field investigator to a senior investigator, a trainer, a manager, a VP of sales and these were the best experiences of my life. And it actually got me to a point of opening up a startup, our very own business.

Mike: But I felt like a doctor, saving lives but paid a lot less. But I feel like seriously there was differences being made in the fight against fraud because we were nailing fraudsters. I mean, left and right and back then you didn’t have social media. So a lot of things that we were using was learning the masters of the art of field investigations, right. Learning the art of mobile surveillance, learning the art of interviewing the subject and their neighbors under pretext, which we’ll touch on later.

Mike: But we were catching these fraudsters in all types of uncomfortable positions. I don’t want to dress up or mislead this career, but the field surveillance was one of the most exciting parts of the opportunity.

Chris: And so, as a Pi focused on fraud, what were some of the cases that you worked on?

Mike: It was anything that was related to an injury. Via at work, via at the ballpark where somebody slipped on a hot dog and hit their head on the railing to an auto accident, where you have these swoop troops from, say, Northeast Philly that would come in and pin people into a position on 95 and you’d get into an accident with them and they’d rear end you and you rear end them and then they sue you for a quick fifty k and the Gamut is exponentially large and it continues to grow at a rapid rate. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, fraud on an annual measurement was running between 40 and, say, $60 billion a year.

Mike: That was the cost to all of us that were paying into insurance. It affected everyone, like shoplifting. Right. Your Levi jeans used to be $5, and now they’re $10, because people might have been lifting them and not paying, but got you. Now, today, as of late 2022 and 2023, that number is $309,000,000,000 a year in insurance fraud, that’s the cost. So imagine this, a family of four, that’s going to run you around $3,800.

Mike: It’s $932.63 per person. That’s what the cost is in fraud in the US. So obviously a very large problem, one of the largest we could think of next to tax evasion. But the goal was, you’re not going to stop it, but let’s just catch a couple of people, send some examples down the informational highway, and maybe some people would be scared to do it. You see a lot of commercials on TV, a lot of PSAs, and it doesn’t deter people from doing it.

Chris: Yeah. So when you got started, pre Internet, pre-OSINT as we know it today, walk me through the methodology that you used at that time to gather evidence or conduct field surveillance.

Mike: It was like the Dewey Decimal System times ten when you wanted to look for a book. Right. So you didn’t have Google in 94? Yeah, we were using the bulletin board systems, the BBS, and that was where information was basically posted up on a public forum. You know, you go skiing and you leave a note on the whiteboard saying, hey, Johnny, you’re too slow. Meet me at the double black diamond. Right. That was a way of messaging people.

Mike: It was like pen and paper. So it was very similar to where you’re just digging through troves and large amounts of data and you’re using what’s known as say, Google dorking today you’re looking for very specific information. I’ll talk about my business partner Scott Patron’s case, where he was looking for a woman on a horse, all pun aside, and he was able to find an equestrian, an event in the area of the female claimant’s house, and was able to get a picture of the horse, maybe some hats that the claimant might have been wearing, some very specific hats.

Mike: And out of all these horses and all these people was able to find this individual at this horse race or horse equestrian event and videotape all of their actions that conflicted with the reported to their doctor, right? So bad back, bad neck and they’re riding 1000 pound horse doing tricks and stuff like stuff like that. So that was one of the ways of it was difficult. Everything else, I mean, this is what it was like I didn’t want to dress this up as make it like glamorous.

Mike: Because there’s a saying about private investigators, right? Private investigators are like potatoes make the best detectives. Right? You may have heard this because they always keep their eyes peeled but it wasn’t always glamorous, right? You’re sitting it’s a mix of sitting for hours at a time with sriracha filled sweat drops dripping into the center of your eyeballs feeling like Conor McGregor’s kicking you in the jewels for 6 hours. You know why?

Mike: Because you can’t leave your position for any reason. So you gotta go to the bathroom too. I don’t I don’t care if it felt like you were giving birth like the world’s largest kidney stone. I’ve been there. You had to remain on site. This is even back then, even now, like the neighborhoods that we were in, they were challenging. I mean you’re in very tough drug filled neighborhoods in Newark or in Harlem, in Philly, in mean we had drug dealers like sitting on the there was drug dealers sitting on the hood of my car not knowing I was buttoned up inside and some people would put their makeup on and the reflection of the tinted windows.

Mike: Other people would perform some inappropriate acts of love against my tires. I mean it was some odd stuff. And then the pretexting, that was another form of today’s OSINT and social media intel is a comparable to the old fashioned pretexting which is still used today. And pretexting is an art unto itself aka also known as bad acting via subrosa techniques. And subrosa is Latin for meaning under the rose.

Mike: It’s a legal form of acquiring information without letting the individual know your true intent on why you’re knocking on their door or their neighbor’s door because you’re trying to get information. So in 94 you weren’t able to get information like you can today. You had to knock on doors. So some people call that social engineering, but the objectives pretexting and social engineering, the objectives are the same, which is one’s legal and one’s considered not legal.

Mike: So that was how we were gaining intel. Pre OSINT, pre social media intel.

Chris: Okay, so during that time in the field, it sounded like you were faced with some scary situations. So I have to know, how did you ensure your personal safety, never knowing exactly what you might encounter? How did you prepare for that to ensure your own safety, both physically and mentally?

Mike: That’s a great question. And traditionally, as private investigators, you are not allowed to carry on the case. It increases insurance coverage. It’s just not a good fit for the industry. Now, some might and not talk about it, but I never did. I mean, I was born with two guns. I was prepared to use these two little left right thunder and lightning if I had to. But the goal is to actually be in the environment, in the neighborhood, without being detected. So what I did, and what I hope a lot of other investigators still do today, is I would go out the night before.

Mike: I would go out the night before on my own time and it didn’t matter how far within reason. Even if it was a couple of hours away. I would drive out to the neighborhood and see exactly what I’m driving into. Because it’s 435 in the morning when you’re driving into a neighborhood you’d never been in, you might park in front of the wrong house. You might park in an area that you stick out. You got to blend in with vehicles before people start waking up in their neighborhood, because people are curious and they’re not stupid. They know a car doesn’t belong if they see it.

Mike: But I would go out in the neighborhood. That was really the only thing that we could do other than checking the bulletin board systems. But even then, not a lot of people were online as they are now. So that was one way of we were looking at Cole’s directories for some neighbors in case we needed to drop a name for whatever reason. A lot of it was like, through textbook, no Internet and just straight driving and looking at your book maps to get a feel of what you’re walking into.

Chris: Yeah. So walk me through your transition into leveraging more OSINT as an intelligence tool.

Mike: This is a cool story. I’m glad you brought that up because many people are starting to see the Internet. They’re like, the Internet. It was almost like how the fax machine replaced the bike messenger. People were like, Wait a second. You’re going to tell me I could put this piece of paper in this machine and it’s going to get over there in 30 seconds? And they whistle to Frankie downstairs on his little tents, be like, Frankie, I want you to go take this over. And then they’re going to try to test it out, and the fax machine wins, right? People were very resistant to the Internet as a whole. They’re like, what’s this?

Mike: The same held true with social media. Many were like, this is a flash in the pan. Like, what’s this social media crap? This isn’t going to be around forever. I, along with some of my other colleagues, Scott, we embraced the change, just like AI. AI is out. You embrace the change, you get run over by it. And when Friends what was it? Friendster and Hot or not, which is pre Facebook, they came out, and it was interesting. Facebook did something really unique, where they were like, they didn’t allow everybody in. You had to have an.edu address to join their platform, which made people desire it even more. Like, when you tell somebody, no, today, it’s like a six year old. You’re like, no.

Mike: All right, I’m going to figure out a thousand ways how to get what I want. So when that came out, I had a local case where there was a friend of ours missing. And this is in like 2000, 2006, knock on my door. It’s one of the neighbors. And they’re like, Little Jenny is missing, and we need to get her on a plane to a treatment facility by midnight. And this is about 730 in the evening. So I dropped my SpaghettiOs. I was cooking that night. Drop my SpaghettiOs. I take my laptop, which was huge, and I say, give me some nicknames. Give me some alternative names that you call Jenny.

Mike: And they give me a couple different things and who they hang out with. And MySpace was huge then. So within it was like, I don’t know, eight minutes, I was able to, with their friends, pinpoint where they were and where they were going to be in the next hour, which was like a local, let’s say the local football game two townships over. And they sent the authorities to pick up the person, get them on a plane and ship them to a facility.

Mike: And there was like this light bulb. I’m like, this social media intelligence gathering has a place everywhere. Not just this business, but in many, many businesses where critical decisions are needed to be made. And at that point, it was like, high fives. Hugs, kisses, tears. They were really happy. And that was a moving moment for me, where I was like, okay, I’m going to do something with this on my own initially. And people were like, you’re crazy.

Mike: What is this virtual Internet you’re even talking about? Like, no one could see the future. So I was like, screw it. I’ll just be the crazy mike that’s going to build a platform based off of social media, not just networks, based off the social media as a whole, the web. Because it’s not just Facebook, Instagram, Snap, and Twitter. I mean, you’re talking about for this type of work, I want to know actual intelligence right? I can get your bowling scores from a Wednesday night, or if you’re a golfer, I can see what your Gin score is and when you played last, and if you’ve got injuries and they’re inconsistent with what you reported to your physician, it’s going to make you look bad. You’re going to have a bad reputation.

Chris: Oh, I remember MySpace vividly, and it was revolutionary for its time. But using it as a tool for OSINT, nobody was thinking of that, not even close.

Mike: Everybody in this particular industry, in the private investigation industry, surveillance was the first decision. For the last 60 years, everybody was speaking that same language, language. So when something new came about, they’re like, this is a fax machine, I don’t need that. I got Johnny down the street that could bike message this thing over. But you know what I mean, it’s an archaic approach, but it needed to.

Chris: Be changed in terms of fraud prevention techniques that focus on your average everyday social media user that are unaware of the value of their own data. How do you explain the criticality of this threat to them?

Mike: Yeah, I just put a post out this on LinkedIn not too long ago. But a lot of it revolves around education and educating people. So I do tell people who I speak to is, tell your loved ones, grandma, grandpa, even the kids that you have to protect your PII, your personally identifiable information. Don’t give out any information to somebody claiming that they’re the just like it’s almost like we have to re educate and get back to the basics because there’s so much information overload you forget and then you get caught up in a moment.

Mike: Think about this. Humans are inherently curious and humans inherently want to help other people.

Chris: Yes.

Mike: So if there’s someone on the other line on the phone says, I really need your help, we’re trying to help you. Naturally, the person, the victim, or the potential victim is like, okay, how can I help you? Right. Not knowing that it’s nefarious objective on the other line. So it comes back to education is to plane in the sky, write it out there, send a telegram or email or verbal conversation to our loved ones and saying, do not give anyone information over the phone or email or text.

Mike: Even you. People are being hacked just through text with malicious malware. All they have to do is open it and without even realizing that malware is now attached to the phone or your computer, you see it probably day in, day out, these people getting scammed on their computers. I’m the Microsoft agent. There was something that came up with an alert and then they attached their bank account and their credit cards.

Mike: Right. So we see it all the time. Billions of billions of dollars lost. Comes back to education. Let’s teach the victims again and just remind them that never give away your personal identifiable information. Use a junk email, right? It could be Chris g or junk at Gmail. Right? Just use an alternative email, and all your junk will get collected into that particular email. You could use that as more of, like a disposal, like a burner.

Mike: Um, but it’s really, really difficult, I have to tell you, to stop it and get ahead of it. I mean, there are some vigilantes out there that are really making waves where they’re tracking the call centers. Whether they’re in India, or they’re in Africa or any other country. Even here, they’re tracking the people that are making these calls back to the centers and providing the information to law enforcement and the authorities. It’s another way of helping, but it’s certainly not going to stop. And it doesn’t stop even with the elderly generation. Even our younger generation are getting hacked with their crypto, right? They’re losing their crypto by giving the wallets, sending money to an address, that they’re going to steal everything in their wallets.

Mike: There’s just so much fraud out there, it’s hard to keep your head straight. I’m going to stay laser focused on the insurance fraud issue, but also I’m not getting into these other avenues of protection and security.

Chris: Yeah. And I think that the techniques and strategies used to commit fraud will evolve just as the technology will. We just need to continue to inform others as that evolution happens.

Mike: We just got to get the message back out to everybody just as a reminder. I mean, OSINT really comes into play, like a lot of people think. OSINT is a program. This open source intelligence gathering is a methodology, it’s a technique, and it’s really come to play over the last, I want to say seven, eight years. Because as soon as Facebook, Instagram, twitter, who else? There’s one other. As soon as they started removing the metadata from their images, for us, the investigators, it hurt, because they took away four main components longitude, latitude, date, and time.

Mike: So all that information would help us know where that picture was or when it was posted, and they could almost pinpoint where that person physically was present. Standing, sitting, wherever. Now, with that, we’re able to use the workarounds, we’re able to use OSINT, and we’re able to do different things from face matching to we could basically tell a client where that person is standing anywhere in the world using OSINT methodologies, by reverse imaging the rooms, looking at the data inside the picture. So basically, behind the picture, you’ve got a person or a thing.

Mike: So behind that picture could be more evidence of where the person might be, what year it might have been. You could see a pennant on the back of the wall. It said, Phils 2008 world champions. Okay, well, you know, that time, it’s after 2008 that this picture exists. OSINT is absolutely a tremendous help understanding how to use it, and the sites that are available literally. There’s twelve to 1500 different social network sites every year that apply for patents.

Mike: Everybody wants to be the next Facebook, the threads, the Meta, the Elon’s, but there is thousands and thousands of social networks out there.

Chris: And they’re not probably only down no what your interests are. There is a network for you, there.

Mike: Is a site for everybody. Absolutely. There’s probably ten sites for everybody.

Chris: Right.

Mike: Whatever they’re into, it’s quite interesting. We don’t have time to get into the tour, but the ones that aren’t on the regular web, ones that are on the deep web, they’re in there, they’re selling Bazookas and all the types of doing all types of nefarious activities.

Chris: What’s unfortunate is, like I said before, it’s often too late. So unless you can visualize or understand how what you post freely online directly correlates to an immediate danger to you, then it often goes ignored. Most people will hear that and say, yeah, that’s cool. Then put down their headphones and go post some shit to Twitter without thinking twice.

Mike: I am so glad you actually mentioned that, because to your listeners that have kids, I do want to put out this PSA. Parents. Guardians of kids. Part of the reason we exist is to protect them. Sites like Omegle, right? O-M-E-G-L-E. Do not let them use. Try to see what they’re visiting. Sites like Omeagle Chathub Cam Surf Bazookam. What’s the other? Shaggle emerald chat, chat, Rundom, chat, spin LiveMe.

Mike: These are sites that allow your kids to chat with strangers. And it is a platform that is unregulated. They can talk to anybody in the world. Please educate your kids about these stranger chat rooms and keep that in the forefront. Those are sites that we really want to keep the kids away from.

Chris: I think that’s extremely important. So I appreciate you putting that out.

Mike: Yeah, no problem.

Chris: So one of the areas I like to focus on is AI. So I want to ask you, how do you see AI becoming integrated into the fraud industry, particularly within the aspects of detection and prevention?

Mike: Yeah, this is really exciting. When it came out, I mean, I don’t know if you remember Minority Report and Eagle Eye Shia LaBeouf and what’s that one with Will Smith and Gene Hackman where he bugged and he’s running all over the rooftops?

Chris: That wasn’t Enemy of the State, was it?

Mike: Yes. Okay. Yes. That was great memory. That’s what AI reminds me of. And these movies that were out 15 years ago. But one of the ways in which AI can affect investigations that are conducted by PiS is through the use of facial rec software. There are software like Tinyeye, Yandex and Face. Check ID that will take profile pictures, your little face in that circle and run it across the various platforms to try to match other platforms where the individual may not have the same username.

Mike: It’s interesting, some people, not all people are lazy. There’s some lazy fraudsters out there where they’re told to refrain or deactivate or delete certain things, maybe by their attorneys, which is a no, but some of them don’t do that. And what they do is they just change their name, or maybe they change their picture. But what they don’t do is they don’t change their cell phone, they don’t change their email address, so we’ll still be able to match it up and find them out there.

Mike: Depending upon the site. The facial rec software is actually a big help. It’s typically 60 to 70 plus percent accurate. There are some misses and some strikeouts, but for hard to locate profiles. And as we talked about, there’s thousands and thousands of profiles and people. What do you think, Chris, people normally do when they want to look somebody up and they’re not a Pi, or they don’t know a Pi, or they don’t really know how to search? What do you think people normally what’s the first thing they do?

Chris: I’d say they Google their name.

Mike: Boom. They Google their name. And not knowing that Google wasn’t built for this. Google wasn’t built to find people. Google was built to give you, like, the best veal parm recipe or what time the movie at AMC is playing. Yeah, google gives you approximately one in 700 of the amount of information that’s available online. So basically, it’s about four or 5%. If you look at a tip of the iceberg, it’s about four or 5%.

Mike: Just that the other 94, 95% is underneath. And that information is not cached or found by Google. It’s just too much. It’s 1.2 petabytes of information and growing every second. That’s a one, followed by, like, 24 zeros. That’s how much data is out there and growing exponentially larger and larger every single second. So there’s just no way Google and that’s actually a lot of people use that, and if they don’t find anything, they’re like, well, I guess the person’s clean.

Mike: Not knowing that this person, you might want to know just unalive a bunch of people in Topeka, Kansas, or wherever. Right. It’s just not a good way of you don’t want to rest your investigative laurels on a Google search ever. But with the AI, I mean, there’s other types of software that can analyze images and videos for unique patterns and characteristics that can help identify unknown people, or reconstruct crime scenes, even.

Mike: But there is a risk that it may be used improperly or for illegal purposes, such as invasion of people’s privacy. This isn’t necessarily AI, but it reminds me of hackers that are not the ones that are stealing cars through your garage door and reading the signal from your key fobs that are hanging by the door, which, by the way, stop doing that to your audience. Hopefully they hide your keys further away from the garage doors.

Mike: And this is more of like, IoT the Internet of things. Where hackers are breaking into, or I shouldn’t say breaking into hacking into your wireless vacuum cleaner, your bob or whatever they’re called, right? They can hack into the camera and what do you think people that hack into the camera of a vacuum cleaner are looking for? They’re looking for feet. They’re looking for if anybody’s home, is there a dog?

Mike: They’re looking for intelligence that’ll make the crime less risky when they go back to the house. Right? But this is what’s going on, that’s been going on for years. But another way AI can affect investigations conducted by PiS is through the use of data analysts, data analysis, algos. So what they can do is they can use the algorithms to analyze basically bulk amounts of information, call logs, text messages.

Mike: When we get a public Venmo, you will have hundreds, maybe even thousands of transactions of someone’s public Venmo or cash app that can aid in the investigation more of a time save or making it more efficient. But obviously it’s important for everybody that’s using these techniques that the information is used ethically and within the bounds of the law. The other helpful a using AI is to automate certain repetitive tasks that could free up time for us to focus on other areas of the investigation.

Mike: You can use the software to say, search and sort information online, like a Maltego would use or X One, some of these other companies basically that’ll just help identify leads and rule out false leads. And it can also help analyze contextual speech keywords. We look at emojis as well as part of our claim investigations. We will see if these emojis are putting out happy faces. If someone’s depressed, maybe they have a mental claim and they say they can’t smile, well, maybe this emoji might say, hey, well, you’re in a good mood or you’re happy, you’re smiling. Maybe that conflicts with how you’re truly feeling through an emoji. You just never know. So we look for all types of clues and data points, capture it, preserve it, present it in a legally defensible courtroom ready report for the client. So it’s important to keep in mind though, that although AI can be useful in research, it’s not going to completely replace the human role in research.

Mike: You always will need a human element human eye to determine who’s who, right? There’s a lot of people with the same name and from different ethnicities. So the AI is not going to tell you, well, this person from this ethnicity is the one that you’re looking for. The human eye is going to be able to obviously help further along the investigation being used with AI. But I’m excited about it.

Chris: It’s an interesting time for sure. What advice would you give to aspiring investigators who are considering entering that field? Where would you point them to learn the trade craft?

Mike: That’s a great question. And for all the current criminal justice majors or forensics majors, or anybody else in that Crim J field or in a data analysis or computer analysis field is I feel it’s a lot easier to learn Auto didactically speaking for them now than it was for us before because of YouTube and any other free programs. There’s Harvard’s giving out free programming programs. I mean, learn as much as you can through doing your own research using sites like YouTube, and if you can check for internship opportunities via Indeed or any of the other online resume or I should say job offerings.

Mike: Indeed is a great place to start and see if there’s any internships or entry level positions for if you’re a graduating Crim J major or even minor, they have a good opportunity to get into these companies through their scholastic degrees and things like that. If they’re out of school and they want to switch careers, apply and stand out somehow. Tell your story through the conviction and confidence of how you write your resume or your cover letter.

Mike: And basically here’s why I feel like I’m a good fit. If you don’t have any experience, and if you don’t have any experience, though, prior to that, make sure you’re a really good online I don’t want to say stalker researcher. You want to make sure you understand how the internet works through and throughout, how people are connected. You want to understand that you cannot friend people and expect to get information.

Mike: That’s a big no no. That’s a form of pretexting digital pretexting. Our searches are 100% anonymous. So you cannot friend somebody and then they accept it, and then you can provide this information to a judge. It’s just not how you you’re not allowed to do that. There’s a lot of do’s and don’ts there’s understand how Facebook works, right? So Facebook and Instagram, they want to connect everybody in the world so that if they know, let’s say they want to be a social media investigative analyst, they need to know that if you looked at someone’s Facebook on your public page, that person’s going to get notified through a friend suggestion that you looked at their page. That’s how people find out you looked at their Facebook or their Instagram is through the suggestions.

Mike: And that’s a big no no because you could potentially compromise the future of an investigation. So there’s some classes out there. There are some degrees and certifications that you can get with becoming a certified social media analyst that could help. But as far as the field work, you really wanted to maybe talk to your police friends, your retired friends, your retired tired police friends, but you’re going to have to look. You’re really going to have to look for it. And there might be some luck involved. But I’ll tell you what, I’d be more than happy to help. If anybody wanted to reach out, you definitely consult and help them a little bit more than we can here in these few minutes.

Chris: That’s great advice. I was going to ask you if we’re going to see the Mike Petrie Institute of Fraud Investigation one day.

Mike: We’re ready. I mean, we can do that if we had a New York Minute. I am a subject matter expert. It did take years to attain, and educating people is a joy I have, especially in this particular specificity, that I don’t want to do anything else. This is what I love to do, and we’re pretty damn good. Can I say that? We’re pretty good at it. We’re pretty good at it. Okay.

Chris: And so you do some public speaking now, right?

Mike: I do. I’m lined up to speak at the WCRC conference in San Diego in November as part of an innovator collective speaking about new technologies, particularly about AI, and how it’s going to help increase results, better. The results, it’s only being made I shouldn’t say it’s only being made. It’s being made as an enhancement, not as a replacement. So, I mean, we did make something that we sold in 2020.

Mike: My partner, Scott Catron, and I built that search platform that rivaled the competition and I mean companies that were worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and we sold it to a large investigative firm in And that exit taught us things that no NBA or PhD could teach us. But here we are, three years later. We’re going to build something even bigger, better are faster, stronger. Super cool. Very cool.

Chris: Nice. I do want to mention Reputation, Inc. Would you mind explaining the concept of reputation and what folks listening should know about it?

Mike: Sure. The name came from just being I’ve used this word in the past for the last 20 years, is your online reputation. Is your reputation. It’s like a tattoo, right? Easy to get and hard to remove.

Chris: Yeah.

Mike: But once your Webutation is lost or damaged, it’s even harder to earn that trust back from the online communities that you’re in or that you’re viewed as. So the basis is social media intelligence gathering of actual intelligence that could be used in almost any industry. So if you need to make critical decisions, say, about an insurance claim or that could save a carrier millions, which, by the way, we’ve done that on one case, almost $10 million on an amputation.

Mike: Super proud of that. It could be used still in the insurance field. That’s what I’ve known for the last three decades. But it’s also to be used in corporate mergers, social media threat. Intelligence needs company brand protection, where people need to understand and know that their reputation is safe. Anybody could say anything about anyone or any business today because www doesn’t stand necessarily for the World Wide Web.

Mike: I mean, it’s like the wild, wild west. You can do anything anonymously and really damage someone’s company, their brand. Like, Chris, you’re a brand, I’m a brand. Our kids are a brand. Our dog could be a brand. Everybody has some type of representation that needs to be protected and can be protected. I think Ice Cube said it the best, like, check yourself before you wreck yourself, which is like another form of protecting your own Webutation. You can search yourself, but background checks. But the biggest thing I really would like to push is for this gun purchase applications.

Mike: And with gun laws constantly being tested and the desire for them to be changed, I don’t think we do enough for gun purchase background checks. We don’t look at their social media in the sense that maybe we shouldn’t sell this person a gun just yet because of what they’ve posted and maybe some of the rhetoric that they’re saying on their Twitters or maybe some of the darker sites that wasn’t known prior to them applying to buy a gun. Gun safety and gun purchase applications is very dear to us and we want to protect people.

Mike: And I don’t think guns don’t kill people. Right. They say people kill people. So I think if we knew more about the individual that’s purchasing, we might be able to save people.

Chris: Is Webutation built to benefit individuals who need that visibility of what they’re doing? Or is it more built for businesses as that verification checkpoint?

Mike: Companies first, corporations first and then people secondary? I don’t think there’s room to say no to anybody that wants information so long as it’s being used in the right context.

Chris: Excellent. And what’s the webutation? URL.

Mike: It’s WWW-webutation. io W-E-B-U-T-A-T-I-O-N. I think it’s fitting for all of us that are online.

Chris: Absolutely.

Mike: What are the chances, Chris? I could do some special thanks.

Chris: Yeah, go for it, man.

Mike: Can I do a little shout outs, like old Philadelphia style? I mean, I’m from Frankfurt, but I moved out to the there’s still I still have Philly in what. Great. I want to give a special thanks to my wife Yana, and all of my kids that have put up with this craziness that have been the last few years of building a business, selling a business, and now doing it again. My three kids, Logan, Dylan, and Maura, my business partner, Scott Catron, my AC crew, my many mentors that I’ve had. And I actually do think that it’s very important to have a mentor along the road, along the journey. I do want to mention that I am accepting applications for a future mentor and investors. So I’m open, I’m on the market for a mentor, and if anybody wants to catch any clips of Unscripted with Mike Petrie, you can see that on YouTube at Unscripted with Mike Petrie.

Mike: Smash that like button. Follow. What else do the kids say these days, Chris? I don’t know any other references but that’s all I know is smash that like button and two more, Chris. I forgot my three brothers. And I want to thank Dan The man Reardon for putting us together.

Chris: Yes, we cannot forget Dan the man Reardon for sure. So Mike, you mentioned this many times. You reign in the same part of the country as I do. We’re just outside of Philadelphia, and you’ve been in this area for quite a long time, so I’m sure you are familiar with the bar scene here in southeastern PA. Do you have a go to bar here in the area or where do you prefer to go and unwind after a long are?

Mike: Those are some great boy, not even close to prepared for those questions. You caught me on the spot. But let’s say if it’s a suburban bar, if it is outside of Philadelphia, there’s one that’s called Panache, which is in blue bell, one of my favorites. And then for selection, there’s yards in king of Prussia. In of the some of the best drinks are some of the oldest bars. But oh, my gosh, it’s got the dogs on the walls on 16th and Samson.

Mike: Oh, my God. The dog bar in Philadelphia next to it’s got like hundreds of dogs on the walls and it’s right next to the other great bar where you have the best oysters and mussels.

Chris: Is it good dog bar?

Mike: Good dog.

Chris: Okay.

Mike: Yes, it’s a good dog bar down there in Philadelphia. Great burgers infused. One of the top five burgers too, in the city.

Chris: Nice. Okay, so outside of Philly, where would you pinpoint on the world map for a bar worth visiting?

Mike: Well, the bar at the JW Marriott in Mumbai was quite interesting. Okay. So that was fun. I have to tell you, if it was a bar that I liked, there’s a high probability I won’t remember the name there you go. Because I had such a good time. But there are many, I would have to say most recently Shuckers in Margate. Most recently that one. But then again, I was just in Miami, so Kiki on the river and some of these other places were also.

Chris: Yeah, there’s no lack of good bars.

Mike: Down there for you. What do you have in your arsenal bars?

Chris: Geez, man. Locally, I have to say it’s my basement bar. It’s cheap and I don’t have to travel far. Although I have been looking for good speakeasy in Philly if you happen to know Ranstead room.

Mike: That’s on the back of Stephen Starr’s. It’s a taco restaurant. You can walk right through the kitchen, right through a couple secret doors, or you can go over on Ranstead street, knock three times. Maybe they’ll let you in, maybe they won’t. And there’s another one in Delaware with a butterfly on the door. Madame butterfly or some type of butterfly speakeasy in downtown Wilmington where all the bars are hummingbird to Mars.

Mike: That’s the one in Delaware. West 16th street.

Chris: I’m on it, man. Hey, Mike, I just heard last call here. You got time for one more.

Mike: Is it a shot? We taking a shot right here. I’m not prepared for that.

Chris: It’s a shot coming your way.

Mike: It’s got to be tequila, like double Anejo.

Chris: It might burn. If you opened a cybersecurity themed bar, what would the name be and what would your signature drink be called?

Mike: Oh, man, I would go black hat. And I would do a white hated Russian.

Chris: Nice.

Mike: I would do something like that.

Chris: A white hated Russian. Okay.

Mike: A white hated Russian.

Chris: I like it.

Mike: Priviet to Bolshoy Bolshoy. Bartenders. Yes, I know. A little russian. Enough to be dangerous.

Chris: Mike, thank you for stopping by, man. It was great catching up with you, and I hope to see you soon.

Mike: My pleasure, Chris. And cheers to you and your listeners.