Q&A: A chat with private investigator Bob Wojtylak

By Eric DuVall / duvalle@gnnewspaper.com

Magnum, meet Bob Wojtylak, Lockport’s only private investigator.

A snoop, sleuth and seeker of misdeeds, Wojtylak, or WoJo for short, has set up shop on East Avenue in Lockport. He and five fellow investigators make up Checkmate Investigations.

WoJo’s tales are the subject of this week’s Q&A;:

QUESTION: How long have you been in the business?

ANSWER: I’ve been doing it about 15 years.

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Q: How did you get started?

A: Actually, I was a military police officer. So I had some investigation background in that. Then, after getting out of the military, a manager of an investigation company asked me if I wanted a job. So I said OK and off I went. I’ve been doing it ever since.

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Q: What’s the most interesting part of your job?

A: Interesting part? We do a lot of workman’s comp cases and we catch insurance fraud like that. That’s what makes it really interesting. They can’t work and we catch them working. A lot of it, they exaggerate their injuries., which is also insurance fraud.

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Q: Who is your typical customer?

A: We have so many, we do a lot of work for insurance companies and private individuals. We do a lot of matrimonial work. Some pre-employment background searches. Things like that.

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Q: The matrimony side of things, is that where you take pictures of philandering husbands?

A: Yep.

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Q: How does that particularly go?

A: Usually we sit down, we’ll meet with the client, get some personal background, see what’s going on. Then we’ll set up a surveillance schedule to go out and see what we can see.

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Q: What’s been the most interesting scenario you’ve caught someone in?

A: I think the biggest one and the proudest one that I’ve had was catching a guy that told his wife he was going golfing with his buddies in Canada. Instead, he took his girlfriend to Ohio... for the whole weekend.

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Q: What is the typical reaction from your clients when they get the news?

A: You can sort of see it in their faces. By the time they come to us, they already have a feeling something’s going on. Basically we are just to confirm it and prove it. What we get is the proof for it. Basically, you can see it in their face that they’re hurt.

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Q: Have you ever found yourself in a dangerous situation as a result of this line of work?

A: I’ve been shot at. I was doing a workman’s comp case and I was hiding out in the woods behind this guy’s house as he was working on his house. It was a cloudy day and the sun just happened to come out and reflect off the lens of my camera and he caught it. He went in the house and when he went in the house, I moved to a different position and he came out with a shotgun and shot where I was originally standing. I’ve been chased and had people try reaching into my vehicle, trying to take the camera, stuff like that.

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Q: How close is your job to the movie stereotype?

A: It’s not, it’s not at all. If I did what the movie portrays, I would get caught every single time. What they show when you go to follow somebody, you can’t do that or you’d get caught. There’s tricks to the trade on how to do it. And there are times when we still get caught, but most of the time we don’t.

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Q: What kind of equipment do you use? What’s standard?

A: Standard equipment is an eight millimeter camera. We use Sony digital cameras, but we also have wireless, what they call pinhole cameras. The lens is the size of a pencil tip. We can hide these cameras inside things. Maybe a cigarette pack, a suit case, a purse.

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Q: What’s your favorite private eye movie?

A: Magnum, PI, when I was a kid I used to watch that a lot. I always tell people, we don’t have Ferraris, we don’t have a helicopter to our beck and call. It’s just funny that way.

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Q: Have you seen that show “Cheaters” and what do you think of it?

A: I think the surveillance part where they actually catch the people on video tape is excellent work. “Cheaters” actually hires private investigators to do that work so what you’re actually seeing is a real private investigator doing his work. I don’t like the face-to-face confrontation afterward. I think that is strictly to make a show, for ratings. I don’t believe in it.

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Q: How much does it cost for your services?

A: Depends on what they need. Each case is different. On a matrimonial case, it depends on what’s got to be done. We might have to travel long distances, so we might have to spend the night. Or doing cell phone traces. Somebody has a history on their cell phone, we can run traces on that. A workman’s comp case, that’s different because that goes through a insurance company and they have contracts.

Contact Eric DuVall at 439-9222, Ext. 6251.

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