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A Sydney-based private detective agency was contacted from the US with a unique request.
The caller represented the estate of a dead author – a biographer who left $500,000 behind in publishing royalties when they passed.
The catch? The only person named in their lucrative will was a long-lost distant relative, believed to be living in rural Australia.
With little to go off, the detectives had to draw on their decades of police experience to track down the man on the rural NSW-Victoria border.
Finding their target in the bush "with kangaroos for neighbours," the detectives turned up at his house out of the blue, telling him about his inheritance worth over $500,000.
"He freaked out. He thought he was getting one of those Nigerian prince letters," Danny Mikati, a manager at Precision Integrity Services, told 9news.com.au.
It sounded too good to be true.
"We knew it was going to have to be someone in person, saying 'here's a licence, we're registered in Australia, we're not a scam'."
They told the bewildered man to "look us up, and speak to the US firm that is handling it," Mikati said.
"We showed them all the evidence, and they knew who the person was."
After convincing their target that they weren't scammers, the private detectives were able to connect him directly to the US group to transfer over the fortune.
It was his lucky day, but just another work day for the detectives at Precision Integrity Services, who told 9news.com.au all about the often murky world of private investigations.
Going private after decades on the force
Before starting the business with his partner Anthony Macklin, Mikati was one of Sydney's most experienced detectives with NSW Police.
He worked counter-terrorism, arson, fraud and money laundering, taking on high-profile cases like the Cronulla riots and the Lindt-Café siege over his 17-year career.
READ MORE: The man who works through the night to return items lost on Sydney Trains
But the nature of investigations and the challenges of shift work had made life in the force difficult to sustain, he said.
However, walking away from the police didn't mean he had to waste the skills he'd gained there, with the work he's doing in private investigations eerily echoing his former life.
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He's still investigating historical murders, missing persons cases, and undertaking threat management for ultra-wealthy clients getting international death threats.
He's lost the authority to get a warrant, but Mikati continues to investigate cases.
A "national icon" hired the detectives to break into their home to test the security, giving him the ability to "play cops and robbers" for a living.
And when it comes to undercover work, Mikati hasn't forgotten how to hide in plain sight.
"I grab a ladder, a hardhat, and some overalls," he said.
"I can stay in the back of a business for three hours. No one asks me a question.
"In this day and age, unless you've been living under a rock, it's very hard for you to not have left some kind of footprint," Mikati said.
A question of ethics
Asked about his ethical approach to work as a private detective, Mikati agreed there is the potential for harm within the industry.
"We've had a lot of people subject to an AVO ask us to find or survey their partner."
Mikati told 9news.com.au that he strongly supported reforms to the industry that would hold private investigators accountable in the event that their work put victims of domestic violence at risk.
"To be honest, it's pretty stupid. There should be more laws against it," he said of the lack of regulation.
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