Do RL Investigators work in SL?

Hi,

I am in the real estate business in SL (via an alt) and I am in partnership with a former tenant of mine. Things had been going really well up till about 2 months ago.

Since then, the volume of deals and good bargains has fallen dramatically, and at first I thought it was the SL economy doing something strange. I then came by some information that several of the deals that we were close to securing had all been snapped up ahead of us by the same guy (not a bot, the avi turned up and had a regular conversation, and whose birthday corresponds to the start of these problems).

I am very suspicious indeed that my partner is snapping up these bargains using an alt, and effectively cutting me out of the partnership. As I started this company I would be less than pleased if this indeed was the case.

I do not want a frontal confrontation with my partner (in case he isn't doing this), so I would like to find out, discreetly and confidentially, if this is the case (and I hope that they are not).

I know there is no direct way of knowing what alts a person has in SL, but after looking through the forums it does seem that there are ways/techniques.

I have done a search and found that there are many outfits in SL claiming to be private investigators, who perform this kind of work, but I would really prefer a genuine RL licensed private investigator, who also does work inside SL.

Does such a person/company exist? Can anyone give a recommendation?

TIA

Yes there are.

A friend of mine is a licensed RL private investigator who did work for RL clients inside SL, including discovering the alts of residents. Unfortunately he is not able to perform any work right now due to health reasons.

My best advice is to look through the hits you got for private investigators, and see who is charging RL rates and who is charging SL rates. My guess is that the ones charging RL rates are more likely to be RL companies, and I would IM them and ask them directly if they are in RL too, and licensed.

I hope your fears are unfounded, but it is highly suspicious that it is the same person getting to all your deals just ahead of you. Have you scanned your property for chat bugs? Try conducting all your conversations with your contacts and your partner in IM only for a while, and see if the problem reduces.

Front

This is interesting

Seems to me that your business relationship with your partner has already tanked. Whether or not, they are doing what you suspect. Your suspicion alone means that you don't trust them. Without trust no relationship can succeed.

If you find out that your partner is screwing you over then what? You kick them out and/or sue them. End of relationship. And if your partner isn't screwing you over and they find out that you put a PI onto them then they're going to dump you. End of relationship. Or they stay on and never trust you again, despite what either of you may say to the contrary. They may forgive you but thats not the same as trust. As you may forgive them if they are doing the nasty on you. But trust them again? Probably not.

By your own admission, the business is beginning to tank the way its structured currently. And thats the bottomline when it comes to counting the cost.

If I were in your position I would seriously consider winding up the relationship now. Salvage what you can and start over. Thats the way it goes sometimes in relationships, business or otherwise. You'd probably be a lot happier and more successful on your own I think.

If it hadn't tanked before posting to the forums, one might reasonably suppose it has now. Even assuming disguised with an alt name and maybe a change of industry, this seems a situation the partner might readily recognize.

That is, unless the post was intended as a "shot over the bow," in which case, well, carry on.

Tabliopa, the technique is not to put a PI on the partner, but on the suspect avi. This way if the result is negative the partner will never know that a suspicion was raised, and if positive then, and only then, will it be time to dissolve the partnership.



Qie, I believe that it is a fact that only a small percentage of the SL population visit the forums, and not all of those come to Resident Answers, and not all of those read every post. I think that if the OP is using an alt to ask a question in the forums, and disguising the nature of the business/problem, it is highly unlikely to near impossible that the partner would ever find out. In my experience, people who are heavily involved in business in SL have little or no time for the forums. Not one of my business associates that I have spoken to have ever used the forums, and I only started visiting once I had sold my own businesses (I also visited before I started my businesses, for advice, but just did not have the time once the businesses were going).

I think that if a business is suffering, that otherwise was a successful business, then the OP is quite right to have this turnaround investigated. If it is the partner, then they know what to do, if it isn't then they can concentrate on how this new avi is getting to the deals ahead of them (my money is still on a chat bug), or how/why the business model is failing.

I do hope the OP lets us know the outcome of all this.

All true. But the reason I mention it is that, in posting, one would surely *think* about whether the partner would see it. In most cases it certainly would be a reasonable judgment of probabilities that the partner wouldn't see it, but on the other hand, the judgment may plausibly be that the partner (or somebody who'd inform the partner) *would* see it--perhaps it's known that the partner is one of those rare business-oriented forums readers--in which case the intended consequences would be quite different.

Maybe the OP can just set up a deal without including the partner. If this mysterious AV shows up and steals the deal anyway, then it can be reasonably supposed that it's not an alt of the partner. If the deal goes through and the deal doesn't get stolen, that might be an indicator of the partner's guilt.

did you get the amount of $$ that you wanted for the land?

if so, then it shouldn't matter.