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An insight into the character, personality and passion of the leading figures in the Investigation and Intelligence industry who have shaped the way we gather, analyse and utilise information and intelligence.
There's a quote in an interview with Sam Altman the other day talking about
the changing of what fraud will look
like when I can
copy. At the moment, I can copy a person's voice. So you have these
fraud cases where people ring up somebody pretending to be their
child saying, mom, Dad, I need help, please help me. And
it's just sickeningly abusive
and that. But then when you. When AI will be
able to be mimic a person.
So you wouldn't know if you are on zoom with me or if you are
zoom on zoom with AI pretending to be me.
Hello and welcome to the Intelligence Advantage podcast where we talk
to the movers and shapers in the investigation and intelligence
space. My name is Gary Miller. I've been an investigative
lawyer for nearly half a century and I'm also the chairman of the
IfG, a network of international investigative and
asset recovery lawyers. I'm absolutely thrilled
to be joined today by my first lady
investigator. There are not many of them around, but I
am hunting them down and making sure that they get
full exposure on the Intelligence Advantage as indeed they
deserve. I'm delighted to be joined by Jessica Miller.
No relation, but a great surname, if I may say.
Jessica, who is the founder and director
of her own intelligence investigative Boutique
and has been in this space for over 15 years. Welcome,
Jessica. Hi. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you very much. You are
very welcome. So I have. I normally start
off with different questions for different people, but
I think with you, having looked at your
background, you speak six
languages, is that right, Jessica? English, Spanish,
French, Italian and Russian. And Russian. I'm trying with
Arabic at the moment, but yeah, a bit of a polyglot.
And would it be fair to say that when you
or the way in which you started learning languages was always
with the view of being some kind of
investigative person, being in that industry, or was it
just you wanted to be multilingual? I
really enjoy language. I enjoy languages. I enjoy how
they are of and are representative of a culture, how things
are phrased, it informs how people see the
world. And I think it goes back to childhood
story. I had a friend at primary school who was from Germany and I was
invited. So I was about five or six and I was invited around to his
house for tea after school and he and his mom just spoke German the whole
time and he would speak English to me. Obviously they were speaking German. I didn't
speak any German. I found this so stressful. I just started crying and my mum
had to come pick me up. That's A great story.
I think the. The love of language probably comes from a fundamental
fear of missing out. That's understandable,
but clearly you've got an unbelievable ear for it, which is.
Which does help. So. So tell us a little bit about
what made you
lean into or pick up an interest in the
investigation space. What was it?
So I joined the industry in 2009, and I think it's fair to say it
wasn't something that anyone really knew anything about. It wasn't the case that
investigations firms were going to job fairs at university.
There wasn't. Maybe there was some publicity, but frankly, it wasn't anything that I was
really looking at whether I did have. I always loved spy stories and
adventure stories and these kind of things. And I
remember somebody say, you know, a teacher saying to me when I was younger, when
you grow up, you are never. You're never going to do a normal kind of
job. I thought, oh, that's interesting. Why is that? Because you
weren't a normal student, is that right? I did. I was a. I think
it was my drama teachers. They probably thought, okay, prima donna that we've
got is probably not going to work in it, maybe.
But I. I graduated in
2009, so right into the economic crisis, frankly, when
I started university, I thought, maybe I'll get a job, I don't know,
in banking in some kind of research position.
But I always knew I wanted to do something that had a lot. That was
very international, had a lot of travel to it. And
2009 came around, graduating, didn't really know
what I wanted to do because the world that I'd gone, that I was expecting
to graduate into didn't really exist anymore. And like
quite a lot of people actually in investigations, I got an introduction to
a firm that was just setting up and I
was graduating in Russian and Italian. They needed a Russian
language researcher. And I thought, I don't really know what I want to do with
my life, but this looks interesting, so I'll give this a
go. And then 15, 16 years later, I'm
still here. So it clearly worked out. It found me, I think, is
how it gets. No, that's fine. And when you were studying
you, you briefly touched on it. Did you have any particular vision
as to what you wanted to be? Were you. Did you have banker, investment
banker written all over your forehead or what would actually. What
were your parents hoping you would be? I don't think
they'd never pushed for a particular
career or a particular path in life.
I always wanted. So my dad's in oil.
And when I was little, he was going off all over the world doing these
sort of oil deals and traveling, and car would come very early in the morning
and pick him up and off he'd go. And I thought, I want that. I
don't really know what it is as such, but that
light. I want to be the person for whom the car comes early in the
morning to go off to do exciting things somewhere else. That's
what I wanted. And that's not really something you can
take as a kind of career center. What would you like? I would like excitement,
please. And I think I'd like a 5A. That is
interesting because part of my
bits or part of the bits I've picked up over the last
two months of doing the podcast is trying to
identify certain things that we all, all of us in this
space have in common. And
so far, I don't think anyone's
disproved or come outside
of my classification is that investigators
and people in this space, we like thrill, we like stimulation,
and we like the chase.
And there are some people that would walk
a million miles to be away from that kind of energy and
stress. And then there are others like you and
like me, who are inexorably drawn towards
what the hell is going on. I've got to be there. I've got a. It's
a journalistic kind of voyeurism
kind of. Of gravity. Is that. Is that what you've got, do
you think? Yeah, I think you put it more eloquently than I would. I always
just say I'm kind of a really curious sort of nosy person
that needs to have a beacon for things where it probably doesn't belong.
Nosy is good. My wife says that she could be an excellent spy because
she is without doubt one of the nosiest people that you could
hope to meet. One of the loveliest, of course, but certainly nosy.
So you didn't actually. You'd read Spy? What? Which of the books. Do you remember
any of the books that you read that you thought, oh. That looks like fun,
so do you. There are. I guess it was in the kind of 19,
1940s or 50s, there were these books produced called Adventure Stories for
Boys, and my parents had them on the shelf. And I sort of thought, well,
what are the boys doing that I'm not doing? So I got these adventure stories
and read all of the Enid Blyton Famous Five and all of their
mysteries, and pretty convinced that if you dropped me onto an
island, I could Competently build a hut and survive. And then I
started. The guy, I can't remember his name, who did Horrible Histories, he bought out
a series of books when I was probably 11.
That was about. It was spy stories.
He'd gone and found MI6 operators and US
intelligence and things, and their stories are being captured and they are
evading capture or escaping. And I just absolutely
loved those books. They're thrilling and they're just complete escapism.
So why didn't you think of. Sorry to interrupt you. Did you ever think of
going into the intelligence service? No, because I
was, When I was younger, I was very shy, so I escaped into these books,
but the notion of saying, going out and sort of talking to strangers, I wouldn't
even phone up a takeaway restaurant to place an order.
So I escaped into them, but I didn't. It was
when I, you know, when I was older, I thought, I actually really like this.
But the time I thought, oh my goodness, that's a bit scary. So how do
you, how do you get over? I mean, it's a really, it's a real achievement.
So well done you to get over that kind of.
It's some kind of morphic kind
of fear, isn't it? What, what was it that made you.
Was it. Yeah, what was it that made you shy? Do you think you
just inherited that from whatever environment?
I. Maybe it's a possible personality, I don't know. But I think I would say
I moved around a lot when I was growing up, so it was always. I
went to six different schools. I was the new person
a lot. And so some people
in those situations sort of run in arms open, say, ta da, here I am.
You're lucky to have me, which is, my brother is like this.
I am not like that. I want to observe a little bit, test the water,
see what's the vibe, what's going on, and then make my approach.
And I think that just sort of continued, that sort of way of operating
continued for a while. But I also, I got fed up of
being, you know, who doesn't want,
you know, what thing is this? I don't want to use the phone. I'm like,
sort of ridiculous. So I, I just made myself do it. I think sometimes
you have to recognize with something that you don't
like, it's in your best interest to learn how
to, to manage it. The same with going to
conferences and things, big events I recognized when I was younger, oh,
I find this a bit terrifying. So
how am I going to manage this? Or learn how to manage
this. And I thought, okay, well if I am very good at whatever it is
I'm doing that I'm in that room, that's tick one. So for me, for myself,
I have the confidence to be here because I know I should be here. And
then the second one is just exposure. Just do it over and over and over
again. And then you, you learn to live
with it. I'm not the same as say some of my friends who must have
extroverts who just walk into a crowd of people and think. I imagine this is
you, Gary. Just walk into a crowd of people and think, hello everybody, it's me.
I'm probably not, I'm never going to get to that stage. But you never know.
You never know. Maybe, maybe. But yeah, I
just thought, okay, well I don't like this status quo. So,
so you're quite a, you're quite a self aware person to have started to
deal with something like that. Would you say that that has
helped you in whatever you do, what you do as an
investigator? Do you think that knowing
yourself and being aware of your strengths and weaknesses is
a really important part of it? I, I think it
is. I think one can become a bit too trapped by it as well. It
depends if you think, okay, I'm very good at these things,
so I will do more of them. But I will also then work with
and bring in people who are good at the things that I'm not very
good at. I think that's, and you know, a great level of self awareness
to have. If it goes too much into
that sort of introspection, you can trap yourself in there
if you think these are my weaknesses so then you won't try at
them. You know, if you think, well, I'm never going to be
an Olympic long distance runner, I'm never going to be mo far as to. Why
would I ever get on a treadmill then that's, it's very self limiting. So
I think that there's an ideal point of self awareness that is helpful in what
you do personally and also what you do professionally. But I think you should
also be willing to sort of push your limits or work
on your weaknesses sometimes, you know, rather than think, okay, this is me,
I'm static, I'm not going to change. That sounds
like a really good life philosophy. And are you
somebody that engages in any of the yogic
meditation? What do you do to relax and when
and to sort of de. Stress yourself? I would say
after anything we've said in the conversation thus far, do you think I would be
any good at yoga? Well,
funny you should say that, but I took it up about 20 years ago. But
anyway, clearly that's not you. You like to what? Tried. You've tried. Okay.
But it's finding that inner peace that you're finding difficult, right?
I think so. I tried yoga and I was at a very
nice yoga studio and we're all
standing on our heads and I'm leaning against,
standing on my head, looking around the room, all the other people standing on their
heads and I just thought, Jessica, you
asshole, just what are you doing? You are,
you are so this, there's. There's a level of pretentious that
I can put up with and this was several degrees. I thought, how have I
got here? What's happening? This is not me say, right.
That was my last ever yoga class. Okay. But I like to think that. How
do you de. Stress? How do you de. Stress? I
read. Reading is my. Is
your joy. My relaxation. Reading and music. I
love opera particularly. I try to find things where
my mind switches off and.
And those are the. I find it increasingly difficult. I think we're so bombarded by
tech and doom scrolling all this stuff to switch off. But the things that
will do it for me will be live performances and
reading. So tell me, who
has had the most profound impact on your career?
Putting your parents at the moment to one side, although you did mention they
didn't really have any. Put any pressure on you to
follow any particular career. But in the investigation
world that you've lived in, who has had a profound impact on you?
I think actually the person that had the most profound impact on me,
and I recognize this more now that I have my own business, actually wasn't
in investigations. I did an internship initially just
after I graduated, and I worked
for an events company in Padua for a few months. And I had a boss
there, a woman called Ariana, who was absolutely
fantastic. She ran a really tight ship. Tough, tough
boss, but also very
rewarding. Ran a tight ship, but a meritocracy. And
it was her business that she'd built it up from scratch. We were an all
female team, which was. It was a matriarchy. It was. It was really awesome.
And she had the biggest
impact on me, I think
in my career in everything in terms of how I approach
work. A lot of the values that I have
are those that I learned working for her. And I think for
someone to have such an impact on you in such a short time is
quite incredible. Can you give us an example of A couple of
the, of the things that had such an impact on you
in terms of the way she behaved and her values in particular.
Yeah, there was a nice evening, we were getting, we were getting ready
for a conference. Lots of the conferences, they took place in Venice. So what would
happen is you'd pack up the whole office and move everybody out less, you know.
Sounds tough to me. Sounds tough, I know, yeah, it was really, it was the
worst of times, honestly. So the office would get
packed up, we'd move out to Venice for the course of the, of the conference.
And there's so much behind the scenes work that goes into conferencing. Everything from making
people's name badges and packing up their delegate bags and all this stuff. It takes
so much time. Anyway, there was a Friday night, I was an
intern, I didn't have to be there, but everybody else was and I thought, well,
pitch in. These are my colleagues, I like these people and I want to help.
Say I'm late in the office, but that weekend I was supposed to
go to Florence to visit one of my friends.
And Ariana used to bring her son into the office after
school sometimes and he play in the boxes and stuff. He was really little and
he came over to me and he's like, oh, my mum wants to talk to
you. And I thought, oh crap, what have I done?
I'm just putting braces in a bag. Anyway, so I followed him to her office
and she's in there and she, she said thank you, thank you very much, you
worked really hard this week. Thank you very much. I'd like to buy your train
tickets to, to Florence. And I just thought she
didn't have to do that and I certainly wouldn't have
expected it, but it was that kind of.
When I, when I had my interview to go and work with her, she
explained how it worked and the thing about going to Venice and things. And I
said, oh, well, I get to go to Venice. And she said, well, if you
work hard enough then you're required, you'll go to Venice,
but if you don't and you're not, you won't. And I did go to Venice.
I worked hard to just show value and see that she'd get to
take me, I get to go too. And that just made an
impression on me, that way of working with people. But she would also
didn't suffer fools. If somebody wasn't working very hard, then that's sort
of shorter career span, I think, and
that's the only way to run a business, I think Is that
recognize talent, reward it. Reward hard work and
don't suffer fools that don't want to pull their
weight or contribute. And did she start
off with this concept of a
woman only business or did she drift into it or
you don't know her well enough? I never asked her. That's a really good
question. And we're still in contact. Maybe I will. Maybe I will ask her.
I'm not sure if it was something that was more organic. I don't really know.
But I just know I turned up at this firm that had been going for
a while and we were all women. So you've been
in how many different
organizations in that are in the
investigation space, Jess? So I have only worked
for two and then I set up my own. Okay.
So looking at those two organizations, one of them
I know quite well. Gpw.
What was your sense of the ratio of men to
women in the investigative investigation industry?
That. So my first firm, I was the only woman. There are
only four of us, but it was three guys and me. And
then yeah, joined gpw. That was
for the most part all male partnership. Towards the end there were a
couple of female partners that joined, but
it was that at the analyst level,
at the junior level, we pretty much have parity
between men and women. And that petered out
the further you get up. Sort of up the pyramid. A couple of
female case managers. And then you know,
at one point, sort of no, no female partners. And that
is from. From old colleagues I've had that had
moved to other investigations companies. From what I observed,
just looking around the market and it's small, we all kind of knew each other,
that it wasn't atypical. That tends to be the structure. Very,
very few women at the top. But quite a
lot in the lower sort of analyst
strata. Yes. And
is that as much to do with the
individual's choice or is it the classic
long standing sentiment that
women don't necessarily. I don't know
whether it belongs in the investigation industry. I mean I know
that if you look at
the rougher end of the investigative industry where you're
on the street a lot and you're around a lot
in and you travel a lot sometimes people would think,
which actually nowadays has proved to be a
fallacy. There's lots of unbelievably
powerful and strong and
women around who are able to take care of themselves. But what
do you think it is due to the fact that it peters
out as you get to the top of the industry? I
think part of it is that the
industry hasn't been around long enough
to have had many people go
from junior to partner. When I
look at a lot of the partners of,
particularly the boutique firms,
they themselves didn't necessarily start in corporate
investigations. They came to it after one or two
other careers and which
are, you know, a lot of people came out of the military, for example, or
maybe the law or banking, but all very. They came
out of industries that were very male dominated. They were men that set up in
this industry. And so the dynamic of what they came from and
where they came to remains the same.
It's also, it is an industry
that has previously drawn on
family relationships and professional
relationships and word of mouth, recommendation and
introductions in order to bring new people in.
So if you have companies that are set up by certain
types of people, they will then recruit
a bit in their own image. So you definitely bring in,
if you're not open, you don't bring in people from other areas or from different
backgrounds. You kind of shut off diversity. I think that's,
that's one of the issues now. I think the
world of corporate investigations and corporate intelligence is a bit
more open and it still
struggles hugely for diversity in
many areas. Do you know any other, any other
brave souls like yourself who have decided to
go out on their own and start your own business as a, as a
woman founder, or are you the only one?
I see only one other, also
called Jessica. I've never met her, but she set up her company, I
think, last year. Right. There are a couple of women in
security and
enclosed protection and things who. Started their own
business. Close Protection. That's impressive. Yeah.
So Hayley and Kate. Who
else is there? I will. I
probably missed a couple. They're not many of us. No. If I know that, I
know them by name or knew them personally and.
Whereas if you ask me to list all of the men in the industry, I
probably wouldn't. Wouldn't be able to. No, I get that. Is
there somebody in the female figure in the
investigation industry who has been a bit of, and is maybe
a bit of a role model for you? Is there somebody that you really look
at and think you know what, she's done really well
and I like her style, etc, etc.
Yes. And you know what? I've never met her. So. Okay, so we're
gonna, we're gonna correct that, no doubt after this podcast, but who is
it? Very, very briefly met her. So there
is a, there's a woman called Sam Walker who is at a
firm called Field Intelligence, but she was actually a Partner at gpw. And she was
at Kroll for a long time before that. And
when I was researching gpw, some reporting came
up about work that she had done on the investigation into
the. I can't remember the name of the guy.
God, Spanker. You know, the banking on the black prize
bridge. And Kroll took on that investigation, the part of his family who always
believed that it was murder, it wasn't suicide. Yes, and she worked
on that. There was some press reporting about her move to GPW and the work
that she'd done. And also having studied it, studied Italian. I found that case
fascinating. Just. Oh my goodness, who is this woman? This is
incredible. So I joined GPW and she was a part of that. I think
she came into the office one day and sat next to me. I didn't talk
to her. So scared like just Sam Walker. Oh my
God. But you've never,
it's interesting. You've never come across her at conferences or anything
like that? No, she. I think she left the industry for a while and now.
And now she's come back and then now I've recorded this podcast, I'll be too
embarrassed to reach out to her. No, you won't know it. She'll
think you've. She'll think you've. You've become a celebrity.
So you'll be right. The right person to, to
meet up with. So she's back at Kroll now, is she or. No, she's at
a place called Field Intelligence. Field Intelligence, okay, so.
Oh, what we forgot to mention, but we won't at
the outro is mention Strela and where that name came
from. Yeah, Strela
means arrow in Russian. And so much of my career has been
linked to work from the CIS or related to the CIS
region. And I wanted to choose something
which didn't sound like every other
investigations firms which are typically the names of the
founders or you know, really
tough sounding things like risk and threat
and this stuff in their, in their names. That's not really, that's not really. That's
not really me. But strel, I mean it means arrow.
So if you speak any Russian, it's a sort of, if you know, you
know what this means. And it works for an
investigations firm but it also, in English and the
other languages I speak, it also just sounds pleasant and I like that, you
know, dichotomy of something that sounds really nice but when you realize what it. Means,
you think, oh, so you know, I
met you once or twice, we've spoken a couple of times.
And I feel your energy is a gentle energy.
Isn't this, Ma'. Am. Slam, bam, thank you, ma'. Am.
And yet you. And maybe this is my bad and
my perception, but you work a lot
in Eastern Europe and you speak Russian and your name is designed
to attract Russians. That's quite a culture
clash or a personality versus culture clash. How do you
get on with a group of people, most of whom I have
met, not all of them, but most of them are really,
certainly when you are being instructed by them, are
absolutely just not just no nonsense,
but really quite tough cookies. How do you deal with
that cultural kind of roughness, if I can use that
word? Yeah, well,
gentle is not weak. No, agreed.
In cultures that
have value, strength, or kind of
machismo to them, being
somebody that will quietly and sit and listen to what a client has to say,
what they want, what their problem is, and being
unruffled by it, and then
calmly coming up with some suggestions about what can be done
goes a long way. And
particularly if it is how you are as a person. That is a
genuineness to. It also works. If I
came into a room and tried to have loads of bluster and throw
my weight around, it would look funny. I'm five foot three. But
it wouldn't work. But going back to your
point about recognizing your strengths and your weaknesses,
I'm. I'm not very judgmental. It takes a lot to
shock me. And I will quietly sit there and take in a situation,
then decide what to do. That. That works
because it's also. It's strong and it's in its own way,
I think you can't go in and pretend to be your client.
You have to. You have to be who you are. And that. And that works.
Makes sense. Makes sense. So you combat
maybe brusqueness with gentleness and
calmness. And eventually or sooner
rather than later, you get your. Your
personality comes across, which is
pretty cool, if I may say so, because most of the
investigators in this space are quite
forthright. And I wouldn't say they have your energy.
So I think that in your space, I think you are
carving out quite an interesting part
in it. So you are
even out there. You can also be
direct, even if you're being calm, even if you are trying to be,
as you put it, more gentle.
You can be very direct about what
your boundaries are in an investigation. What's going to work, what's not, what is
a good idea, what isn't a good idea.
It doesn't need to be done with
assertion. Yes, aggression no,
but you can deliver some harsh truths in a fairly
calm way, and people don't necessarily always see
it coming, which can be a bit of an advantage too. So I think.
So you're quite good at the tough conversations, are you? You
don't flinch from, I'm sorry, guys, this
isn't working, or no, I won't do that. Because in
my experience, a lot of
investigators time is spent telling clients that what
they're asking you to do is absolutely
either a breach of the law or morally wrong or just cannot be
done with the budget that they've got available.
Saying no in a way that doesn't lose you the client is
an incredibly important part of any job. But in investigation, it's
critical, isn't it? Yeah. And maybe it will lose
you the client, but you
can't keep a client at the cost
of your reputation,
your ethics, your. What you are,
you are building. You also can't, if you deliver,
if you make a lot of false promises, if you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we
can do that, we can do that, we can do that, sure, no problem. And
then you don't do it. You've lost your client because you are under. You
were over promising and under delivering.
So actually it's better. What's the most
bizarre. Sorry, what's the worst thing that you have been asked to do?
Make mentioning no names, that you just turn around and said, you've got to be
joking. I would
never put that on a public podcast, Gary. I see. Okay, fair enough.
If we wind it down a bit and come to something that was
only because, not that somebody I'm hoping, ever asked
you, would you mind putting a contract out on somebody? Because that's not
really investigation. That's a slightly different area of business.
Strategic problem solving, I think that.
Exactly. But would you please go out and place a
bug or hack into the account of. Is it something that people
ask you or have asked you? I guess now
the more. The more educated people are about what
you can't do, the less, hopefully they ask questions like that. But what's
the, as it were, the
example that you would like to share on a podcast?
So I wouldn't like to share an example.
What I will say is sometimes clients will come
with a very fixed idea of what it is that they want you to
do, because they sat around and they've
thought about the problem that they have and what, you know,
what they would do if they were able to do things. This is how. This
is what they want to happen and this is how it is and they come
to a meeting and they say we want X, Y and Z thing. And
for whatever reason those things might not be possible, but
then what you want to have a conversation around with the client about,
to have a conversation with them about is what are you actually
trying to achieve? So a blanket no
to a client sometimes is necessary
and they know what they want and if you can't do it, they're leaving. Other
times it's an opportunity to work with them, but
you have to turn the conversation around. So you say, okay, well
you want to do all of these things. What is it actually that you are
trying to achieve here and what is the problem? You've started from nothing and
you've gone to the finish line, but well, what's going on? And
then you can suggest things that are possible
and practicable and will assist them
and that's how you can work it.
So I won't give an example, but what I will say is if a client
comes to you with something utterly outrageous
that you can't do, there is sometimes an opportunity to work with them because what
they're actually trying to do is solve a problem. They're not trying to ask you
just to do something, something just because. And when you are
retained by, I don't know what
percentage, how much do you think what part
of your business is being retained by client direct as opposed to
being retained by a lawyer and introduced to the client.
It has become a real 50, 50 split.
And that can be from inter client referrals,
from your name being given out at a conference or you know, some event that
you're not even at. Sometimes lawyers refer
out their clients to me where it's an issue that's not
related yet to a dispute.
But the, really the, the pure private client
side of things has grown a lot since I first set up
the company. And that's been really interesting to you to see developers.
That's interesting. So when you are dealing with the
client instructing side of life,
to what extent do you think
that they understand the
parameters of what you can and can't do
or do they come to you with a fixed idea of,
of what they want you to do in order to help them solve their
problem? I think sometimes clients
come with absolutely no idea of what's, what's possible or what's not possible.
And a lot of private
detective TV shows
are distinctly unhelpful in terms of fostering what can be done and
what cannot be done. You see people posing as, oh, you
know, somebody from the Gas Board and I'm here to get into your house, go
and read them and say, you can't do that, that is illegal
and it's on TV and people think this is what PIs do, you know, do
all day. I'm going to pretend to be whatever British Gas and get in your
house. I mean, it's wild. So I can completely understand
why someone would come with no idea of what's possible or what's not, because they've
just spent ages watching whatever TV show and thinking you can
do all of this stuff. And
also clients might not know because it is
unnatural to have to deal with an investigator for
anything, be it a commercial problem or a personal problem.
It's not something anybody would ever expect to
do or to be in a position where they have to do it. So probably
won't have thought about what it would look like or what's possible, what's not.
So you actually get this opportunity to really educate clients as you work with them
about what is possible, where the boundaries are and what can be
found and what can't be found. And
in the course of the work you've done. This is a question that
I think I've managed to ask everyone. Has there been a time
when you feared for your personal safety?
Retrospectively, yes, but not
in the moment. Yeah, I can relate to that.
So can you talk to me without names? Talk me around that,
what that was. Now that you look back and think, gosh, that was a bit
dicey. I think when you are
driven out of a city by
somebody who's driving a little crazy on some very scary snowy roads and takes you
to a restaurant and you were the only two people in there to have a
conversation. I was so angry about
it. But about allowing yourself to be
in that situation, could you have done, on reflection, anything
differently? No, I was actually really angry at him. So why are you driving
like a lunatic? What are we doing here? This conversation is
going absolutely, that's absolutely out of hand. Everything can be
sorted out very, very nicely. What's going on?
I got into some kind of
Women's Institute level moral
indignation. That was what came from. I don't know
what happened, but tapped the surface and underneath it is just. Is
an aggrieved middle class English woman who just thinks
the situation is very unfair. And that was quite.
I think actually in that situation it worked because I think if somebody is doing
these things to try and sort of put the frighteners on you and
it doesn't work, they feel a bit Bereft.
They're the one that is destabilized. Was that person.
Was that person a prospective kind of
informant? Somebody that had information or. Sounds
like it. But what was the character? Not the
character. What was that person? Why were you speaking to them?
As part of a case, it was necessary that I went to have a conversation
with them. So they had something you wanted. What I'm saying is, is
that you would have approached them, they would have said in some shape or form,
yes, let's meet. And you would have
said, okay, where and how on earth does it end up with
you getting in a car, being driven up the. The left hand
side of a mountain? How does that work?
Suggested going out for dinner.
Oh, yeah, fine. I love it. It was
somebody I dealt with that I dealt with before. I see, so you did know
them. It's not as if someone listening to this will think, my
God, Jessica just met this random witness and jumped into his
car and, and she was lucky to get back with her life intact,
right? No, normally with, you know, if you're meeting witnesses or you're meeting
potential sources, it's a little bit like get online dating. You meet
them in. In a public place. Yeah,
so. So that's the. Is. Is that the only one you're
prepared to share with me or is that the one. Only one you can
remember in terms of you. Have you. Have any. Had any threats made against
you when you've got too close to the, to the. To something
that you people don't want you to find out about?
No, I haven't actually. Touchwood. Okay, well, that's good
news. So tell us about a particular
investigation. Obviously confidentiality preserve,
but the nature of it and
some of your fairy dust that you applied to that
situation, and lo and behold,
it changed the direction of the investigation
fundamentally. I want to understand a bit about the
way you think and how that impacts
or impacted a case that you're working on. There
was one where it's just asset recovery. So I do loads of asset recovery. That's
my favorite thing in the world. I love it. It's like a global treasure hunt.
And a small example would be
I obviously looking for somebody's assets and not really finding
them. The picture didn't. You know, sometimes a picture just doesn't add
up. You know, somebody's got money, you know, somebody. Something
about them, about their lifestyle, how they're traveling, and you just think there's
got to be something out there, because otherwise none of this works.
And I had some source intel about a Property
that all traveled into down to the south of France. They had a guy there
said, can you do some property searches for me to see if something.
Something comes up? And.
And then nothing came back. So I had to go to the lawyers and say
I got an extension to look at this, to look in this jurisdiction. Because I
said that I could really think there will be something there. And I had to
go back, tail between my legs, really sorry. There was nothing. Everyone's disappointed
around. Anyway, the guy in the
south of France called me up about a month later
and he said there is a property like. Oh, great.
Well, actually I was having a chat with somebody in the name of your.
Your subject was mentioned and, and this
property. And I went and had a look for you and he does own it.
Nor that had happened was that the registry had
misfiled it, filed it under the name of the lawyer, but not the name of
the owner of the property. And, and now we've got it. So that's not really,
not necessarily fairy dust on my part, but it just
shows if you've got, if you've got a gut feeling about it,
go with it. But I was, but it was fluky. There was a little bit
of fluke and a little bit of. What's
word. Yeah. Investigative nous to you to get so
instinct. So I, most of us have got an
instinct. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's. It's
really finely tuned. Do you have
that sort of nose for
when someone's telling you the truth or if someone's lying to you? Is that a
really a big part of your,
of your, of what you bring to the party as an investigator?
Yeah, I think I do have a good investigative
nous. I like to think that I've been in the, the industry now long enough
that if I didn't, I would have been rumbled. I wouldn't
have any clients. I certainly wouldn't be talking to you.
And it's a conversation that happens within investigators a lot about whether we are
born or we're made. I think we're bored. But
yeah. And it is. But you have to, you have to keep educating yourself. You
have to keep up to date with changes on structures and
tax treaties and which jurisdictions are popular
for money from, you know, individuals from whatever
countries. There's always a reason behind. So you, you get your,
your investigative now. So dealing with enough sources, talking to enough,
enough witnesses, the more time that you spend in
the field and learning what is possible and what is not possible,
if you're working with somebody and they say, you know, we can't do that
or you know, when you're being bullshitted, when you've been around
long enough. And
particularly in asset recovery work, we both
know that it's quintessentially
international. What's the. When you look around the world
at asset recovery. Big question. I know, but it's
actually not a huge community of lawyers in
different countries.
Can you share with me your view of how
lawyers, for example, in a civil law
jurisdiction think about asset recovery and fraud?
Do they? I found that they have a very different
perspective than Anglo Saxon English legal
system lawyers. But I wonder what you've come across and how
you feel they think about this problem of asset recovery.
I don't get instructed by civil
law lawyers very often.
Ever really. Okay.
The times were, the times where I have.
It's been to try and find jurisdiction in
England and I used to go, I
used to go out to Paris quite a lot to try and pitch in Paris
and never really got very far. Well, even
though I'm. Is French must be one of your languages, right?
Yes. Yeah. I found Paris
very, very difficult because why place to
pitch? I was, I was
told in one meeting, it's really funny, I was called an Anglo Saxon in, in
a meeting and I was, I was given sort of what's what in terms of
what's wrong with us. And it was that we're
too commercial. We're to the, the legal scene in, in
London, it's too commercial. We've got the litigation funders.
It saw a big litigation and
talk about money, which in French culture no one really
likes to talk about. So it was a bit of a
culture clash in that meeting. So turning up with the idea about
how you could do contingency fee arrangements or you could do the
litigation funding and work and stuff just seemed quite unpalatable.
But that's, I would say, put off. I haven't been back for a while.
Maybe things have changed now for Paris. But I found that. Which is in a
way was sort of a bit rubbish because actually there are some
on the white collar side, the government, particularly things that the state
prosecutors are doing in France when it comes to cracking down on illicit funds and
asset recovery, absolutely spectacular. And in terms
of looking at pitching as a investigator,
pitching for new business, et cetera, which
France wasn't too. Wasn't to your liking. What about
Italy? What about other countries that you've been to?
Have you identified particular
jurisdictions as places, particularly with your linguistic
talents that you think you Know what? I can create a niche
there because of who I am and the language I speak. For
example, Italian, I think you said you were working in Italy.
Are you well received, selling your. Your
services in Italy? Yes,
the places that I find quite exciting actually
are Italy and then also Spain, because particularly the
links that Spain has to. To Latin America.
What I went to pitch years ago, an Italian, not Italian, sorry,
Spanish law firm in, in London and
they had also video conferenced in or their litigation
disputes colleagues in Madrid and in Barcelon, they
hadn't met. Investigators of the scale
that we do investigations in London, the kind of investigations we do that international
asset recovery London leads. It really does.
More than America, you think? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Why?
Why? Tell me why. America is like 20 times the size of the
UK or England. You've got
a hundred, maybe a thousand times a number of lawyers.
Tell me why. Because
England, one of England's biggest export is
kind of intellectual, you know, intellectual services.
And within that, most importantly is
our legal system. And so
cases London brings in really
expansive, complicated
litigation to it because of how
our legal system, it's so
organic, you can try new things in front of the
judge here and we work on
precedent and that allows for consideration of new
things, of new arguments. And that has
made London such a hub for asset recovery. It's not something that is
generated. It's not necessarily cases that are generated by British businesses or
Brits and you're operating here bring in stuff from all over the world.
So where asset recovery investigations and the investigation
sector has grown hand in hand with the
legal sector in London, we have all become so
international and so used to dealing with really complex work.
What I find with America is that it's not that. It is that
the cases, you know, going for trial, New
Southern District in New York are less complex.
But America in itself is such an enormous market that even
investigations firms operating in the states operate within the
states. And I think
that's really the difference is
how we've developed and how the markets operate differently.
So are you saying because in a funny sense, because we
are compact and everything happens in a city and
in a set of courts, you get
more, you get a
better developed sense, a better developed course
of cases and expertise. Whereas in the US you've got
52, whatever it states and you might have an asset
recoverer there and there and there. And it's not brought together as
a body of experience. If you go to the state. Sorry,
do you think that's it? Is that what you're saying to Me or have I
got the wrong end of the stick? No, I think it's more that because America
is so vast, there are enormous cases
going on in America, but sit within America or the investigations.
So we're talking about domestic versus international. So it's
about more of an. An introverted market
because of the size of the scale of it. Whereas
London always looks outward for work.
Looks outward. That's the difference that I've found
when I've worked with lawyers in the U.S.
it is for the international network
that I bring to a case. Whereas
if you're an American, investigators on the PI side, they
have to be licensed by state. They will know they're one state
inside, inside out. And you have to look at America
operating as 50 small countries
rather than one big one. And what's
your favorite
way of. What's your preferred way of
selecting other investigators to work with? Because
although I know it's entirely.
You're entirely able to get on an airplane and go and investigate
somewhere else. However, a lot of people would feel that
they need to buddy up with an investigator in Rome
or in, in Florida or whatever. How do you go about
selecting which investigator you use to buddy up with?
There are. It depends on what I need first off. So if
it is somebody in a jurisdiction, because they can
go to the corporate registry and photocopy every single file that there is
and, and send it to me, that's that side
of things. Or I need a site visit done somewhere because
I just, I need a quick check on whether a company exists or what a
property looks like or whatever it will be.
Do I know the best person in that jurisdiction? Because I've worked with them previously.
After you develop your own black book of contacts
as you go over time and you're introduced to new people.
But the best way is
recommendation. So there are investigators that I
know well, where I say, oh, do you know a good contact in
Sweden? And they'll say, yeah, actually work with this person. And then somewhere down the
line someone will say to me, oh, do you know. Do you know the best
person in Portugal? I go, oh, yes, actually, this is this person that I work
with. So our names get banded around each other
really, really quite a lot. But it's that personal recommendation from people
that I know and trust and have worked with to then put
forward somebody else that they know and that they have worked with. And that's
the best way of
finding people. Random question, what would
you have been if you hadn't been an investigator? If I had
the talent, I Would have been an opera singer. Right.
I don't have the talent, so I wanted to be
an actress for a while. I wanted to be an actress, so maybe if I'd
put myself down that route, it would have been that.
So do you sometimes do
your own acting in terms
of going out and meeting people and
the classic sort of human intelligence, sitting there, going
in a bar, going in a restaurant and asking people for
information. Do you often sort of take on
different personalities to do that or not?
Not often, but I have done it, particularly when I was a junior,
I wanted to do all of that stuff. As you
progress in the industry, it is a little bit more
difficult to do because there's probably more photos of you or you've
got more of a. More of a public presence, depending on how
you do it. And you can get away with more things when you're younger.
But certainly, yeah, I've done undercover investigations.
I've been done my fair share of
undercover work. I think it's necessary,
I ascribe to. You
can't ask people who are working for you to do
something that you haven't done or wouldn't be willing to do yourself,
particularly if it's your juniors.
Because how are you supposed to guide somebody through something that can be sort of.
Can feel scary or intimidating or
uncomfortable or be higher risk? Not
necessarily to themselves, hopefully not to themselves, but also to the case
delegate for the case you're working on if you have never done it
yourself. So undercover is a really
interesting place
for most of film watchers and TV watchers. Anything
to do with an undercover operation, sting operation.
Can you think of a particular sting
or undercover where you were there as things came to,
as it were, fruition and, you know, either
your identity was blown or as you see in the
films, you get taken away or go off in a
situation so that it doesn't show that you were, as it were, the
informant. Have you ever. Can you explain one? Give me an example of one
of those. No, sadly, that's not happened. If only my life would say it
was so exciting. Exciting. Okay. And
in terms of the way the
investigation industry is developing, can you
see any
strategic changes that are happening that you
need to, as it were, take on board now as an owner of a
business, not as an employee leaving it
in somebody else's job? You are the boss. I don't know how
many co bosses there are. Maybe it's just you, but what is
it that you look at the investigation industry and say, you know, we've really got
to Change to take into account this, which
I anticipate happening over the next 10 years. I
think there are. So there are a couple of things. One
is when it comes to the work that we do is
obviously rapidly changing and
evolving tech. So there's a quote
in an interview with Sam Altman the other day talking about the changing
of what fraud will look like
when AI can
copy. At the moment, AI can copy a person's voice. So you have these
fraud cases where people ring up somebody pretending to be their
child saying mom, Dad, I need help, please help me. And
this, it's just sickeningly
abusive and that. But then when you, when
AI will be able to be
mimic a person. So you wouldn't know if you are on zoom
with me or if you are zoom on zoom with AI pretending
to be me. That's a good question. Am I really interviewing or
confident conversation with Jess or are you an AI generated
version of Jess? I think an AI, I would like to
think an AI generated version of me would give better answers.
Maybe, but I don't think yet maybe I'm wrong. I don't think yet they could
have that sense of humor that you clearly have. So it's
tech. Anything else? What about people? Is recruitment an
issue? Do you have to look at what's going forward and say how on earth
am I going to compete with the larger
companies on the block? Yeah. So when it comes
to on the people front, it
is shifting
mindset amongst generations of what
the notion of a good or bad client. When I hear about
I don't have and I build my team so I don't have employees, I'm
not working with Gen Z as they are called,
but more a generation that
is just so much more vociferous and so much more willing to call out, call
out behavior that they don't, that they don't agree with or
corporations they don't, they don't agree with. So
what will, what does investigations look like?
If there are industries that you have employees and they don't, they
don't want to work with them because they don't, they don't agree with them. And
so I think that's one thing that I think
about what the industry will look like or
who it will attract. Also,
we are not diverse as an industry and I'm not sure if
firms out there, the bigger ones have more active policies about how
to increase their diversity. But as
the work becomes more. It already is very international.
But as wealth shifts, clients
change. Work will only
ever, I think really only ever be international from this point because of the way
the world is.
You need to look more like your
clients. You need to be more reflective of the world that you are in, not
just reflective of a tiny little piece of
one cities society, which is a bit
how investigations looks at the moment. I think that's going
to have to change. Did you just say that you don't have any.
Sorry to interrupt you. Did you say you don't have any employees? The people you
work are sort of services
or you work together with other people who are also independent
service providers. So I build my teams according
to what I need for a client mandate. So once I, I've, once I've scoped
it and I still, I do an enormous amount of investigation myself but once I've
got the kind of the lay of the land then I bring in the
expertise that I need. Be that in I
know forensic tech or I need an investigator in a
particular jurisdiction to go and get things that I can't do remotely and
bring in, bring in the experts that I need to get the job done.
Do you see yourself growing into a gpw,
Jess, and having a group of employees and as it were
putting a flag in the sand as a corporate
body with employees or that's for the next five years. That's not
you? The answer is I don't know. I'd
need business partners to be able to do that and I always generally
keep an eye out because it gets
stressful and lonely when you are trying to figure out case
on your own or running a big asset recovery and all of the responsibility kind
of is and the, the dynamism and the ideas are just you
generating all of this stuff. And
one person can do maybe one and a half person's work. Two people can do
the work of like five people or six.
So there is, there's a lot to be
to be gained from having somebody else to work with. So I'm always, I was,
I'm always on the lookout for potential partners to come into
strela. So. And wouldn't it be cool if, if, if
people, when this podcast goes out, people
think that it would be cool to combine with Jess and in
more cool for a women's only
investigative agency to be
created. That would be super cool, wouldn't it?
I don't know. I mean notionally yes it would be
but I don't, I don't want
within investigations women only things. I just want more
women. It's like I don't.
If you have an all women's investigations Agency. Yeah.
What it shows is that it has to exist because there's no space for
women elsewhere. What I want is when I, if I
look at an investigation, spell them and they don't have any
senior women or they don't have any women on their
advisory board, what you are perpetuating is the idea
that women, women can't do this at any level
or that the people that you take advice from
or should go to advice for are
older men. And that doesn't help. It doesn't help younger
female investigators are coming in. Certainly doesn't, you know,
doesn't help me. So what I
would like is just space for women across
the board. So in other words, it could be that a women's
only investigation agency will actually
militate against what you would like to see, which is many, many, many more
women who might be in one business spread throughout the
industry. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think having to
say we're going to, we're going to do this and it's, you know, only women.
Their concept is like, well, is there not, is there not space for us
elsewhere then that we need to. There's more stuff about
if there's not a seat at the table, go and create your own table, blah,
blah, blah. No, I want, I want to seat at the table with everybody else.
Move. I love it. Last
question, because I have over
spilled into your day,
Jess, for which I apologize. In light
of everything you're talking about in terms of diversity,
what difference can you make and are
going to make in terms of improving
diversity in the investigation industry? As Jess Miller,
the first one, honestly is existing and very
openly and I am a big user of social
media, LinkedIn, particularly to talk about what I do and
do you share my opinions on things and to talk about why
more women should, should come into investigations, why we are good
investigators. So I think there is the adage
of you can't be what you can't see. I think is very true.
And that's not just an investigation thing. That's across all industries. If you look up
and you see the C suite and the board are all men and you're a
woman, you think, oh, well, that's going to be fun.
So I think by continuing to
show up, that is the,
it's an easy thing to do, but it's also a really important thing to do.
I get introduced to other people if they know women that are interested in getting
into investigations. I'm really always open to have conversations
with people that are just graduating from university, women particularly who
who want to get into, into the industry about what
it's like and giving them any assistance that I can
possibly do in terms of introductions or
guidance on kind of on how to do it. So making, you know, making myself
a bit of a, like a bit of a sort of,
I don't know, pinpoint putting my, putting my flag in the sand as a woman
in investigations in that way. So who
knows? Watch this space and there may be an association,
I know there's association of Corporate Investigators. There might be an association
of Women Investigators. There needs to be something
that I think, according to you, and indeed according to
me, needs to spread the word. Boys and girls at
university need to know that this is
an industry and a vocation as well, that
anyone can do it, regardless of and indeed that
as many people will say, that women have an excellent investigative
instinct and they need to
think more about it as a career. Yeah, 100%.
It's a fascinating, fast paced, thrilling,
intellectually
challenging, captivating, challenging industry
industry to be in and I really enjoy it.
So, yeah, more people need to know about it.
Well, we've come to the end of this lollipop and
I've really enjoyed it. Jess. One of the things I really get out of
these podcasts is,
unsurprisingly, perhaps unless I happen to be interviewing somebody or
talking to somebody that I have known for years, I get to
know people and I get to know what they think and how they, how they
think and what makes them tick. So I've really enjoyed it.
I hope it wasn't as painful as maybe you thought it would be.
And I just want to thank you for your time and sharing what you
have. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
Bye bye now. Bye. Thank you for
listening and if you enjoyed this podcast, please click and subscribe
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