Working PIby Tony Jones, Senior Editor
There are many paths for private investigators (PIs) to take. While some are generalists, many choose to develop specific specializations.
Often, PIs build their businesses around a few particular areas of expertise, such as background checks, asset locates, criminal defense, skip-tracing, undercover, surveillance, digital forensics, cryptocurrency, crime scene forensics, and so much more.
When you think of the myriad skills and specializations that PIs can pursue, bounty hunting likely isn’t something that immediately comes to mind.
But when it comes to the bread and butter of the work, many private investigators and bounty hunters actually have a lot in common. For starters, they generally share very similar skill sets—and use the same technologies and database services to conduct their work. The pathways to the profession also have much in common (ex-law enforcement, ex-military, ex-security, etc.).
Further, many bounty hunters are actually licensed private investigators, too. In Texas, for example, it’s required for a bounty hunter to hold either a PI license or a certified level-three security officer license in order to operate.
The caveat-defining differentiation, though, is making arrests.
Is the added adrenaline rush and danger of apprehending a potentially dangerous fugitive worth the squeeze when 97 percent of the work is pretty similar to many private investigations?
If you’ve wondered what it’s like to be a real-life bounty hunter (not just one on TV) and how their day-to-day compares with a PI’s, this article will shed light on exactly that.
Working PI sat down with Carlos Urrutia, owner, and Patrick Boyter, investigator, of Bad Moon Bounty Investigations, a Texas-based private investigation and bounty hunter firm, to explore the PI synergies and better understand the mindset, workload and operation of the bounty hunter’s world.
Vocational Overview
Bounty hunting, otherwise known professionally as bail enforcement agents (BEAs) or fugitive recovery agents (FRAs), is difficult to peg as a vocation since there is little standardization from state to state, and regulatory oversight is literally all over the map.
In all, 23 states require bounty hunters to be licensed, while some have regulation over the profession but don’t require licenses. Four states—Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon and Wisconsin—have bans on the practice, according to BountyHunterEdu.org, a website that provides information on state licensing, firearm certification and license-continuation requirements for bounty hunters and bail bondsmen.
As a result, figuring out the number of bounty hunters working nationwide is difficult, with estimations ranging from a few thousand to 15,000 or more.
Nevertheless, the role of BEAs is pretty universal: They are called into action by a bail bondsman or other guarantor (such as an attorney) to recover a defendant freed on bail who skips out on an ordered court date.
As a quick reminder, bail is money or property that will be forfeited to the court if an accused individual fails to appear for a hearing or trial. Bail bondsmen come into play when a defendant can’t afford to post the full bail amount. The bondsman posts a surety bond to guarantee payment to the court in the event the defendant misses their court date and typically charges the client (the accused or often a family member) a 10 percent fee.
When the defendant out on bail misses their court date or flees, the bondsman is on the hook to pay the full cash bond. To avoid forfeiture, the bondsman either has to hire a bounty hunter (usually for the same 10 percent fee) to locate and return the fugitive to court or do it themselves.
Depending on where you look, there is a narrative that suggests it can be difficult to carve out a comfortable living as a bounty hunter. When you consider that the median cash bail amount for felonies is often cited at $10,000, it’s understandable why that may be the case. It takes a lot of jobs at $1,000 (without expense recovery) to run a profitable business.
With that in mind, how is it that an operation like Bad Moon Bounty can thrive, and why would skilled investigators like Urrutia and Boyter find the pursuit rewarding?
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Beating the Narrative
Urrutia launched his company about eight years ago through an organic process after proving himself in the field. Breaking into the business can be difficult because bail guarantors want someone with proven experience. Urrutia started off in the profession doing some security and private investigative work, and even ventured to unregulated states to cut his teeth in bounty hunting, with the ultimate goal of establishing an operation in his home state of Texas.
“I did whatever I had to do to get my foot in the door,” says Urrutia. “It’s a hard market to get into in Texas. I went to all the different bail bonds, different lawyers. I offered to do my services for free just to prove I knew what I was doing. I did that for a while, made some good contacts, built a reputation and was able to get steady work. Then I started bringing people onboard, people I had worked with in the past and trusted.”
Through diligence and proven results, Urrutia says he secured a large contract with one of the biggest bail bonds operations in Texas. Though much of Bad Moon Bounty’s work flows through that relationship, the company accepts contracts from other bond agents and defense attorneys. Today, Bad Moon Bounty works throughout Texas and occasionally out of state via two dedicated teams of four investigators, one based in Fort Worth and the other in San Antonio.
“We’re literally looking for hundreds of people at any given time of the day,” notes Urrutia.
To handle that kind of caseload, Bad Moon Bounty’s teams work collaboratively while also offering specialization to each investigation based on their strengths. For example, Urrutia says one of his investigators is so skilled on the phone that he’s literally talked fugitives who’ve been on the run for years into turning themselves in. Another investigator excels at door-knocking, working through dozens of case files by visiting addresses, talking to neighbors and piecing together clues to bring cases into focus. Urrutia specializes in dead-end cases in which there’s almost nothing to go off of.
The Mindset
Urrutia says the investigative, information-gathering, puzzle-piecing and interview skills that are central to PI work tend to help individuals excel as BEAs. Those with more of a security background sometimes erroneously view the position as more of an action job and thus can have a more difficult time adjusting to the tedious aspects of the work, he notes.
Others have arrived at Bad Moon Bounty from completely outside the sphere of private investigation, law enforcement, security and military and thrived because they were driven and eager to learn.
“You need a good work ethic,” explains Urrutia. “If you don’t have the discipline or mental fortitude to go through it, you’re just not going to do well. It’s not a 9-5 job that you clock in, clock out, and it’ll be there the next day. It takes an extra thought process, an extra mode, like determination.”
The No. 1 attribute to succeed, he says, is patience. “A lot of people have a misconception that bounty hunting is action and adrenaline,” notes Urrutia. “It is 99 percent investigation. It is not what it’s portrayed to be like in movies and television. Yeah, that action does happen, but you’re talking about weeks of work for about 30 seconds of adrenaline when it comes to making the arrest.”
So, while it’s easy to be attracted to the pop-culture romanticism of springing into action to apprehend a high-profile fugitive, the bulk of the work is making phone calls, tracing family members, skip tracing, running license plates, social media sleuthing, interviewing and spending endless hours in cars obsessing over the details of the case and what’s happening in your surroundings. “You’re living through those binoculars and cameras,” emphasizes Urrutia.
“With a lot of bad bounty hunters I’ve dealt with, ego and pride are like a stench on them,” offers Boyter, a security specialist and military veteran who served in Iraq and has arrested more than 100 people as a bounty hunter. “They think they’re so cool. They think they’re bad asses. Ego doesn’t make you good. Your team makes you good and the people around you. It’s about patience and being a good team player.”
Humility
Finding and apprehending a fugitive is ultimately a long game. To progress through a case requires diligence, keen observations, creative thinking and a strong BS meter. When you’re questioning the associates and family members of someone who’s skipped bail—parties who are likely inclined to protect the defendant—a skilled bounty hunter has to decipher falsehoods and pay close attention to what’s not being said. Every detail counts.
Thus, when questioning someone in a residence suspected of harboring the target, Urrutia says bounty hunters have to absorb everything around them. He likens the pursuit to “a massive chess game,” in which sometimes “you know you’re being lied to, but you have to let them think that they’ve fooled you.” If you see cigarettes, how might that relate to the fugitive or someone close to them? How many toothbrushes are present? What kind of clothes are around?
Ultimately, it’s about following facts and not drawing false conclusions, though even the best can get fooled. Mistakes, Urrutia says, are part of the territory. It’s what you do with them that counts.
“I’ve been doing this for so long that I can see a mug shot and tell if a guy is going to run, if he’s going to fight,” asserts Urrutia. “But there are times I’ve been completely wrong, too. I’ve believed what the person was telling me and it turned out to be a complete lie. So, it’s about always learning from the mistake. If a mistake is made, we address it. That’s how you improve and hone your skill. It’s not about finger-pointing. It’s a mistake. This is what happened, so how do we learn from it?”
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Need for Restraint
As a case progresses and a bounty hunter gets closer to moving in on a target, another key characteristic to success is showing restraint. BEAs have to conduct interviews in uncontrolled environments, so applying techniques to help keep the situation under control is paramount.
“You gotta know when to bark and when to bite,” notes Urrutia. “Don’t start escalating. Don’t be hyper aggressive. If you catch them in a lie, you have to know the right time to prove them wrong.
“You have to be able to deescalate,” he continues. ” You’re going to have heated exchanges with ex-girlfriends, boyfriends, family members who are yelling and angry. You have to deescalate the situation—calm everyone down.”
This is crucial when an apprehension takes place. While Urrutia says it’s critical to shut down any potential issues, once he knows he and his team are safe, he’s all about showing them respect.
“But up until we’re safe, I’m dictating the situation and shutting down whatever problems there might be without ever escalating,” explains Urrutia. “I don’t raise my voice unless I need to raise my voice. I’m making these arrests without having to pull a gun, without having to scream at them to get on the ground.”
TV Elements of Truth
Though Hollywood overdramatizes what it’s like to be a bounty hunter, Urrutia says he was a fan of watching those portrayals growing up and still finds them entertaining today. Despite the fictional exaggerations on screen, there are some elements of truth. For example, Boyter says bounty hunters are typically armed with at least a taser, and the rush of adrenaline when an arrest goes down is pretty true to form.
It’s just that the lead up to that action doesn’t make great entertainment. “This job is so much more boring than people realize,” says Boyter. “They expect it to be this huge adrenaline rush, kicking down doors, arresting people, getting in brawls. Those happen, but that is like 1 to 5 percent of the job. Some people start this job thinking they’re going to be kicking down doors, but the reality is we’re sitting in a car for six and half hours for three days straight.”
Another aspect that has some shade of the truth is chasing cases associated with high bail amounts. Boyter says he can work up to 40 files at a time and prefers to give priority to the highest bonds. Rather than concentrate on cases in the $5,000-$20,000 range, it’s more lucrative to tackle cases from $50,000 to $500,000. As a commission-based job, if he catches a fugitive with a $100,000 bond, the 10 percent fee is worth $10,000.
Of course, as the bail amounts increase, so can the danger in pursuing an arrest. In most cases, Bad Moon Bounty deploys a team of two to get someone in custody, but there are times—such as dealing with a crack den with heavy drug traffic—when a full team of four or more may be necessary, notes Urrutia.
The higher the stakes, the higher the risk, so there also have been times when the company has looped in a SWAT team or worked alongside U.S. Marshals. One such case carried the highest bond value Urrutia has been associated with—$1.2 million—which was tied to a criminal with cartel connections and a human-trafficking background who was facing two aggravated kidnapping charges involving a mother and child.
The case took months to solve and eventually led Urrutia and his team to a ranch in Mexico after cornering the fugitive’s sister-in-law and grilling her for the information. With an exact location in hand, Bad Moon Bounty brought in U.S. Marshals to get the defendant into custody.
“I still have a picture of him on my desk because I looked for this guy for so many months,” says Urrutia. “It took so much time and was so tedious that I felt like I knew him personally. After we finally got him into custody and everything, I missed him.”
Value of the Hunt
Ultimately, investigators who value the minutia, consume details and think creatively to piece all the disparate pieces of information together have an opportunity to thrive as bounty hunters, but it helps to find the tedium engaging, notes Urrutia.
The love of the hunt leads to the big and memorable moments, whether recovering a notorious criminal or spending a bunch of hours in the rain and mud with a partner (Urrutia actually did this). In the end, the arrest puts a cap on everything and makes all the effort worth it.
“The action aspect is fun and brings closure,” says Urrutia. “You feel extremely good after you spend weeks, months on one person. When you finally catch him, there’s no better feeling. But it’s the miserable parts of the job that I love the most. You’ve gotta be a glutton for pain I guess.”
“It’s never boring,” he adds. “Even when you’re in a car all day, just on stake out, it should still engage you. You’re still thinking and looking at everything— what cars are coming, who’s coming in and out, seeing the neighbors. Even the most miserable parts of the job are the most fun—piecing everything together. That’s the best way I can describe it.”
To learn more about the work that Bad Moon Bounty Investigations does, you can follow their Instagram account, here, where they regularly post about fugitives they recover.
About the Author
Tony Jones is Senior Editor of Working PI magazine, published by OREP, a leading provider of E&O insurance for real estate professionals. Based in San Jose, California, he has nearly 30 years of business publishing experience and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Arizona. To reach him, email tony@orep.org.
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