As the recession takes a hold more and more people are struggling to repay debt. Personal debt in Britain is increasing at a dramatic rate and is now approaching the 1.4 trillion pounds mark. However for one sector, business is booming. These are the private investigators charged with tracking down non payers of debt.



"Why should people get away with not paying?" says a spokesperson for the Bankruptcy Advisory Service, which counsels bad debtors. "There is an issue of financial morality: some people do borrow either in the full knowledge that they can't repay or that they have no intention of repaying."

Employed by banks, building societies and some accountancy firms (who themselves are employed by lenders) private investigators are hired to see whether debtors have any hidden wealth.. They can trawl and search all sorts of databases to discover the size of a person's debts, track down their quarry, including credit reference agencies. Private investigators can also work out how much equity people have in their homes by looking at the number of mortgages registered against that property and its current value. All of this perfectly legal and is happening every day.

Investigators may move to more devious, complex surveillance if basic searches suggest the debtor has access to substantial assets. And some, it seems, are not afraid to push the boundaries to the limits.

The most well known tactic is "bin spinning". This means trawling through someone's rubbish in search of information such as bank accounts, balances, investments and pensions. This will then provide their clients with a complete financial picture of the individual. A spokesman for a major investigation firm says he knows of investigators who have taken away rubbish sacks in the early hours of the morning, gone through their contents entirely, copied anything found which could be significant and returned it all to the bin. Again, this is all perfectly legal, he adds.

A former private investigator, who has recently left the industry and wishes to remain anonymous, says he used illegal methods "all day every day" for his financial clients. "Every single detective or investigator breaks the Data Protection Act at least once a week. If they say they don't, they're lying."

He admitted that he would make hundreds of phone calls a day, pretending to work within certain organizations. Each call would provide him with a tiny piece of confidential data that over time built up like a jigsaw puzzle to provide a fuller picture of a debtor's finances.

However, these tactics could fall foul of the Government's Information Commissioner, according to a representative of trade body the Association of British Investigators. He says "They are getting tough with people who break data protection laws. In some cases they are prosecuting investigators." Another investigator says of his industry: "More are breaking the law than not breaking it. The banks will say "we didn't know", but it's difficult to argue that if they're expecting to receive accounts and balances."