CASE OF 'NOT SO' INJURED TESTICLES

I had a case where this male was claiming a large sum for a work related injury that he claimed was interfering with his sex life, due to damage to his testicles, as well as lower back. In effect the largest part of the claim centred on his alleged depressed mental state as a result of the injury. This in itself was not gruesome, though all men are acutely aware of how sensitive such parts are. The result of the failure of his “little guys” and presumably the whole system was responsible for relationship difficulties, causing him to be single, depressed and unemployable and so it went on. Proving psychological claims to be false isn’t easy, because you’re trying to establish court admissible evidence of a person’s mental state, based on the most scant of observations or other scraps of detail.

I had nothing to go on, so I selected the ad pretext.

‘Hi, I am calling about the ad.’

‘Eh? What ad?’

‘I just got this number to call about the ad…’

I paused hoping for something that I could use to work with, but the phone remained silent.

‘Is it still for sale?’ I finally inquired, trying to keep the conversation flowing, though I knew this specific detail of conversation was now limiting my pretext options slightly.

‘What is selling? Oh, you mean for flat?’ he replied, in a strong accent. BINGO. He’d thrown me a line.

‘Yes, I am calling about the flat’ (of course!)

‘Why you didn’t speak to agent, I thought he is to handle the selling?’

‘Yes, I did, but they suggested I call you to see when would be best to come and see it, because I was hoping to do so tomorrow if that was all right?’

‘Oh. Maybe I think John was going to show people, but its ok you come if you want, we be home all the day tomorrow’

Within a few seconds I had an ‘in’, and a very good in. I was being welcomed into his home, able to talk to him with a nice clean pretext. I also didn’t miss the royal ‘we’ in his phraseology, which suggested he was living with someone and if true, would immediately discount his claimed ‘living on my own’ statement in his court claim for damages.

The following day I turned up with my girlfriend Andrea. For this approach I felt it would be less intrusive to have a woman with me, and figured we could tag-team the job. When we arrived, we found a fairly run down apartment building. I guessed the flat was a rental, not for sale, and there were no signs outside either. I knocked on the door and we were let into the flat by our subject. He seemed happy to see us, though was still scratching his head over how we got his number because he had not given it to the estate agent. It was a point that was soon forgotten as we chatted amicably. He told us that the flat came furnished, and I immediately zeroed in on the bed. ‘So this bed is included?’ I asked, gingerly pressing down near a corner to test the springs.

‘Yes, bed is included’ he replied

‘I see… ahh, because Andrea kind of likes to spend a bit of time… in the bed you see, but we really hate soft mattresses and weak springs’. With any pretext it is always good to steer close to the truth if possible, as it increased believability. My statement about Andrea fitted this ethos perfectly.

Andrea feigned coyness, saying ‘Chris! Do you mind!’ but it was all part of our (totally unrehearsed) show. He laughed at my comment and to our great surprise, took a little jump onto the mattress and bounced a little up and down. I was recording everything he did with my covert video camera, and was trying hard not to laugh as I thought about how the client would react on seeing the tape of our injured subject being so active on his bed. I was trying to hold my pin-hole camera steady, and aimed at our subject as much as possible to capture any movement he made. I wondered if this job could get any better, because it was going rather well so far.

‘It must be work, this bed, because Anka now expecting’ He said in his broken English with a coy smile. My mind suddenly stopped, as for the first time I registered what he’d actually said. I thought I must have been dreaming, and had to hear it again. ‘Sorry?’ I asked, my heart beating faster. He could not be serious.

‘Yes, Anka is expecting child in few months, this is why we need bigger place’ he continued. Andrea and I exchanged glances. BINGO!

We thanked him for his time, and left, saying we would consider the flat and perhaps contact the agent later. We now knew he worked casual night shift. We had observed him in good spirits. We knew he was active enough to do a little jump onto the bed, and best of all, we knew he had a girlfriend… who was PREGNANT! This fact did seem to make his claims of either impotency or testicular failure a little harder to believe. This, coupled with his happy home life and, as we also discovered, casual employment, was responsible for a significant ‘variation’ in the final payment figure he received from the insurers.

This great pretext was responsible for identifying a fraudster who was trying to rort the system. Had we followed the more conventional approach, such as interviewing him or his girlfriend (whom we didn’t even know existed), the result would have been very different. ‘No, we have not sex for year now. Nothing works. You ask Anka’ would probably be the reply to such direct questioning, and if we even knew of her existence she would have readily agreed to this as well.

The pretext however comes in silently under the radar of human defences, setting up a scenario that will ultimately, but indirectly, harvest valuable information. Some lateral thinking and a degree of luck had allowed us to ‘make’ a good pretext opportunity. By then disguising our focus, wrapping and delivering it with precise timing, we were able to ‘hit the mark’. Sometimes the best prepared pretext will fail, yet with others, the results will be phenomenal. Like so much of investigation work, there are no guarantees, it is all about probability, trying every angle to maximise the probability of success.

© Chris Cooper

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