We've been digging stuff up professionally since 2009—and just for fun long before that.
In 2009, we started working in a space that journalists came to call "justice as a service." The idea was that most legal problems you face in life do not entail high enough stakes to justify hiring an attorney. So the problem was--and still is--if you can't justify hiring attorney, but the stakes are high enough that you can't really just walk away, who can help you?
Back then, the answer was almost no one. So, we were one of a handful of "justice as a service" startups that launched a web-based app to help solve legal problems for people in this area that lawyers have always ignored. Each of these "legal tech" startups focused on a particular niche to start--parking tickets, airline tickets, etc.--and we focused categorically on legal issues that followed purchases. We started with cell phone contracts, expanded to all telecom contracts, added widely-despised contracts such as gym and alarm contracts, and then we eventually moved into business-to-business contracts. Today, the majority of cases that Veeto handles are for early termination of residential and commercial real estate leases.
Veeto spunoff Fairet as an online-first, fixed-price private investigation service.
Today, we are one of the few legal tech services from that era still in business. Our legal service is called Veeto, and people hire usually hire Veeto to get out of contracts and get attendant refunds. The average ROI for a customer who hires Veeto is greater than 30x, across all case types that Veeto handles, and this stat, perhaps more than any other, does a good illustrating why it made mutual sense for someone to serve this market: customers get a good value for their money, and the company finds a large market of unmet needs.
Fairet entered the picture because, in the course of handling Veeto cases, we became quite adept at "private-investigation-type" things: finding facts relevant to the case, doing due diligence on opponents, finding assets, checking identities and backgrounds, etc. Without realizing it, we had basically become high-tech private eyes. Our clients recognized this, of course, and eventually we decided to unbundle our PI services from Veeto in order to better serve our existing clients. The idea was that, sometimes you might not need Veeto to get you out of a $50,000 contract, but you might need to do some due diligence on a potential business partner, or get evidence on a cheating spouse, or make sure that your online date isn't a serial killer, etc.
So we launched Fairet as a spinoff from Veeto, with the core differentiators of being an online-first PI that offers fixed prices instead of the cost-unpredictability of hourly rates.
Given the particular era in which we grew up, we know how to find stuff fast and online.
This gives us a cost advantage over most other private investigators. For example, you don't need to pay us $100/hour for the time it takes to drive somewhere and sit around watching someone. There are more cost-efficient methods which are just as effective, and we designed Fairet to pass that cost-efficiency on to you. That way, we get to dig (which enjoy), you get answers (which you need), and everybody gets what they want.
3 sample cases we've helped investigate...
Case # 1
Due Diligence On Opponent's General Counsel
Our client's opponent was a $5 billion real estate company, and the case pertained to breach of a real estate contract. The case was being handled personally by the opponent's general counsel, and before we stepped in, the general counsel was arrogant and pushy. Our client was concerned that they were losing ground in the negotiation to this trained and experienced attorney.
In this particular case, the client hired both Veeto, Fairet, and our "legal assistant in your inbox" service called Hubscriber. So we were deeply involved in all aspects of the case. Our first objective when we stepped in was to find a way to push on the general counsel, to make him uncomfortable, and to put his back against the ropes (the way that you a boxer do to his opponent when he is more aggressive than his opponent). This is often hard to do when your opponent's representative is an experienced, polished executive, especially at a company that large.
I won't go into all of the details, because part of is proprietary and confidential. But the big break in this case came when Fairet found evidence of the general counsel's past ownership of multiple illicit websites. We determined that these websites were apparently aimed at celebrating certain forms of sexual assault (I'm being intentionally vague here to protect the guilty). This mattered because our client was professionally involved in helping victims of precisely the same kind of sexual assault those websites appeared to celebrate.
Armed with this information, and couched in a very specific cases strategy, we revealed to the general counsel what we had found. In short, hilarity ensued, and the general counsel tucked tail and settled--quickly! That was a fun case.
Case # 2
Deep Background Check On Adulterous Ex
Our client's ex-spouse cheated with multiple partners during their marriage, and a previous private investigator had already obtained video evidence of one of those affairs. This case was in North Carolina, which is the only place in the United States where an alienation of affection law remains. So, using the previous private investigator's video evidence, our client had filed a six-figure lawsuit against his ex-wife's philanderer.
But then, during the settlement and custody negotiations, the ex-wife's lawyers advised her to break it off with the philanderer, even if temporarily, for the sake of "optics" should the case proceed to court. The ex-wife broke-up with the philanderer, and then, days later, he committed suicide (leaving behind, by the way, his own wife and three kids). This was not only tragic but a problem for our client's pending alienation of affection claim, as a claimant can only sue a "natural person" under that law, and an estate is not a natural person. With the philanderer's suicide, the lawsuit died.
Months later, our client and his ex-wife, through their attorneys, finally signed settlement and custody agreements. Our client thought that this would mark the end of the saga.
Within days, however, the ex-wife reappeared, and this time, with a new "serious" boyfriend. Everyone wondered how she could have found this new boyfriend, and gotten so serious, so fast. The new boyfriend had reportedly cashed out tens of millions of dollars from the sale of his previous company and was now retired. Before the divorce from our client was even official, the ex-wife and this new boyfriend bought a piece of land together and built a $2 million house.
Sensing that it was possible that this new boyfriend was one of the other people with whom the ex-wife had been having an affair with during her marriage to our client, our client hired the same PI to try to find evidence of this to pursue a new alienation of affection claim against the boyfriend. In short, that PI could not find any evidence.
By the time we stepped in, the ex was engaged to the boyfriend, and our client asked us to do a deep dive online to find some evidence of an affair with the boyfriend. We not only found that evidence, but we also found evidence of the boyfriends net worth (assets), and with that evidence, our client was able to file a new alienation of affection claim against the now-fiancee.
Case # 3
Digging Up Contact Information For Opponent's Personnel
"Who should I contact, and how?" This question is one of the first a claimant must answer in any case that requires issuing a demand to an opponent--which is most cases.
The problem is that companies who tend give you reason to sue them make it cumbersome for your to communicate with their personnel. Instead, they try to direct all legal correspondence to some faceless PO Box so that (a) it's laborious just to get a snail-mail letter out the door and that (b) there is no known person at the company you can hold personally accountable for the ensuing conversation.
In general, it is really helpful to know who the human being is that you're talking to, and that's why we like helping with this type of case. It's not a long engagement, but the fruits of our labor, we know, can make huge different not only in the subsequent timeline of the case but in the effectiveness of our client's negotiations.
Think about it. This seemingly small question--of who at a company you should contact and how, when you have an issue--becomes a big problem when all you have are no-reply email addresses and PO Box snail-mail addresses. You need a person to be held personally accountable for the resolution you're seeking. Because we charge fixed, low prices, this is a type of case we are designed to handle, whereas most private investigators would try to charge you $400 minimums and unpredictable hourly rates--you might know the rate per hour, but not the total hours the job will take.
Fairet likes to start small.
Need to find something? We're happy to help.
Fairet offers 10-minute micro-consultations to help you orient your case around an investigation plan, which could then equip to hire the right PI. As a perfect example of our low-, fixed-price approach to fees, we charge a fixed price of $32 for the micro-consultation ;)
You can book that micro-consultation call below.