Case Study - Surveillance on Repatriating Italian Citizen

UpStream’s surveillance team was featured in the November Clip of the Month following surveillance on an Italian citizen involved in litigation filed in the U.S. This assignment featured unique factors which presented opportunities for a few advanced techniques to be employed overseas.

Multi-Crew Surveillance

Due to the narrow, one-way streets of Northern Italy, as well as the subject owning a motorcycle, multiple investigators were deployed on this assignment. The subject’s ability to quickly turn and bypass traffic was remediated by multiple surveillance vehicles employing a rotating tail during the course of surveillance.

This proved extremely effective and allowed our investigators to capture over an hour of footage showing the subject riding on his motorcycle in a single day.

Public Records

US background data vendors have essentially zero coverage overseas. Moreover, the digitization of public records is a generation behind the US, even in advanced industrialized countries like Italy. Thus, navigating the maze of the local Lombardy bureaucracy was critical to obtaining public records.

The team was able to uncover filings related to the subject’s carpentry business outside Milan prior to initiating surveillance. This verification allowed us to accurately predict the route the subject would take during his commute and position our investigators accordingly. Additionally, our local records searches revealed a prior injury claim filed in Italy for the same body part involved in the subject’s U.S-based litigation.

Summary: A thorough understanding of the locality and the availability of records can prepare surveillance teams for success even prior to deploying boots on the ground. Additionally, we continue to find subjects who return to their country of origin, or vacation overseas, have a reduced surveillance awareness because the perceived safety of distance. As a result, the larger investments in overseas surveillance have been paying dividends to US-based clients.