Sign up for my free daily newsletter, The Current, at GetKim.com. Hey, thanks for tapping into this episode of The Current. Today, we've got a really fun throwback episode of this podcast. You don't want to miss this. And while you're at it, if you could help us out and leave a great five-star rating and review, I would so appreciate that. All righty then, let's get to it. Enjoy this podcast. All right, so is your partner acting a little sketchy? Do you think he or she could be fooling around? Are they hiding their phone? And maybe you just have like this gut feeling like they are up to no good. Okay. If you answered yes to any of that, you really need to know about Steffa. She's known as the fave investigator on Instagram and TikTok. And let me tell you, she has this massive following, like 500 million people follow her. And I had a chance to look at some of her videos. And let me tell you, they are so good. Here, take a look at one. My wife to follow her husband. she found a random number in his phone and he's been acting weird lately so he ended up going to a coffee shop I went to waited for him to come out and I thought this man was an angel but if you stay tuned he meets up with a girl later he shows up to a car wash I go inside get a little snack you know just make sure he's not talking to any girls in here and then I said absolutely I'm gonna sit in this massage chair and watch him he ended up sitting next to me next to a girl but that is not the girl but then he ended up departing and he went to a laundromat and when I say this is my first time seeing someone cheat in a laundromat it is my first time seeing someone cheat in the laundromat thank you to whoever's tied this was because i needed to hide behind it a little bit they ended up taking off together handing and kissing and they went to in and out they ate inside and then they departed to a residence which is probably her residence so you know this is my time of course i got myself a little protein burger and chilled outside of the house waiting for them. I ended up calling the wife, letting her know, and she said that's all she needed to know, and surveillance was discontinued. Yes, that's Steph A., and Steph is here joining us. Hello. Hi, how are you? Okay, your videos are amazing. How did you get started in this? Thank you. So, I've always felt like I was made to be a PI. I kind of grew up around it. My dad was law enforcement. And one of my best friends growing up, his dad, his dad owned a private investigation company. And then it kind of just was like, you know, when I was younger, I was helping my friends out following their, you know, boyfriends and girlfriends, and I just had an interest in it. So I went to school for criminal justice. And I started actually working as a loss prevention agent, which is, I'm in the cameras inside of a department store, and I'm catching people shoplift. So I did that for seven years. And I was like, you know what, I love the camera. I love watching people like, why not try the whole investigation. So I ended up finding an entry level position, got in there. And I've been doing it for about 12 years now. I ended up starting my own company about six years ago. That's awesome. I love that you hold an old school Sony Handycam. Yeah, yeah. They always make fun of me for that. They're like, why do you always hold an old school? But I love the old school cameras. The zoom is so much better on them. and that's all kind of what you need you know if you're doing surveillance in the vehicle but I do use other things when I'm doing surveillance on foot like covert cameras and stuff like that like what kind of cameras covert like covert cameras so you know when I first started in the industry like I was so gung-ho and I was like I'm gonna get the cameras that my keychain had a camera in it my you know I had a pen that had a camera in it and honestly what you really need is just your iPhone the quality of an iPhone is so good now and everybody is walking around holding their iPhone. There's a lot of vloggers out there. So it really is like the best covert camera because everybody's using it. So you don't look like you're actually, you know, surveilling somebody or, you know, you could probably put the phone on a, on a selfie stick too. Right. And pretend that you're taking a pic, like if you need to get like a high place or something like that, you know I usually wear a jacket that has a pocket in it and I put my cell phone right in here, and it just kind of shoots out. I just have it recording the whole time, and everywhere I walk, it's kind of shooting. You know, and they came out with the Meta glasses too, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which I just purchased. So I think that's gonna be a good asset too. Well, especially, yeah, because you can be like walking around taking all kinds of videos and just Right right and sometimes you know some cases require me to videotape them driving um so just having them on while i driving works well too okay so so tell us about a typical investigation i mean somebody reaches out to you on social is that how it starts yeah so now that i've been posting since on social media 99 of my cases are coming from tiktok or instagram um so they basically reach out and i ask them like some questions on like What are the behaviors that are different from your spouse? You're saying, you know, there's a lot of people reach out to me when they kind of already know something is going on. They saw a text message. They saw a receipt in the pants. They're acting funny. It's always kind of like a switch up. You know, we're creatures of habit and we tend to do the same thing over and over again. But all of a sudden, you know, I had a case that he's like, my husband is now doing his hair all the time and he's at the gym. And this is very different from what he usually does. You know. You're normally sitting on the couch with a beer watching the game, right? Exactly. Now he's like flicking his head, you know, his hair to the side, he's going out, you know. So, yeah, and it's just usually a lot of it's just like very intuition or they've already had a little bit of like some clues into like, okay, something is going on and I want you to further research this doing surveillance. So what would you say are like, you mentioned some of the clues, like, you know, maybe like, you know, acting differently, hanging out on their phone more than usual, getting, I would imagine, secretive. Suddenly you can't look at their Venmo purchases. What are some telltale signs? That's funny that you said Venmo, because Venmo is like one of my top things that I look at that nobody really suspects because people leave it so private and I can see transactions going back and forth of, you know, kissy face, lunch or something like that. Um, another thing that I tell, if you have access to, um, the email, a lot of things that people purchase now are coming through receipts are text messages or emails, you know, you're not getting like hand receipts anymore. So that's a really good one. Also the maps app. When, if you're say you're with your spouse and you're kind of suspecting something and you're like, Oh, like we're going somewhere. Let me see your GPS. Let me put the address of where we're going in the GPS. you can actually scroll up and see every location for the past month he's been to, that he's GPS to. So those are kind of a little bit of the things that I, you know, I tell people like, well, if you have access to their phone, if you have access to their email, these are some of the things that you can see, especially like with a lot of Apple products. They're all connected, you know, so even if you're deleting your messages on your iPhone, they're still on your iWatch, you know. um and also there's a thing on the text messages i say well do you go into your recently deleted messages oh yeah this is that they have access you know to their spouse's phone which a lot of them do a lot of them have their passwords which also then you have like shared notes google docs i mean yeah you know someone someone reached out to me recently telling me that i guess now on apple tv if you hit a certain button saying share all your photos your albums can go into the Apple TV and it can pop up on the screen. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's another one. It's like, wait, who's that? When would, where, when were you, when were you at that park? How did that really happen? So what do you think is the most craziest case that you found? I mean, the one, what's the standout? I, I, I do want to play the video with the dad, so that can't be it. So, yeah, no, actually it's, it's not an infidelity case. I was hired by a company that reached out to me that they just hired their employee and the employee threatened to come back and hurt the manager. so I was hired for a week to follow this person making sure that they didn't get close to their where they worked or the manager's house so I mean I feel like that was the craziest and most stressful um surveillance I've ever done because I'm on this guy for a whole week and I can't lose him you know and the pressure of not trying to lose somebody during traffic or especially in the LA area is super difficult um so yeah I did a whole week and just making sure. And anytime he would get close to his employment or, you know, to her residence, I would have to call PD and let them know. So I was in communication with you know law enforcement and everything So yeah that was one of like one of the biggest cases that I was just like okay this is That would be hard Yeah Especially driving around LA trying to find trying to follow somebody Right. It's difficult. It really isn't art. A lot of people are like, oh, I can follow. It really is an art to stay on someone's, you know, blind side, not follow too close, not follow too back to lose them, you know. Well, here, let's show the video with the dad, because I liked this one too. i've been doing my own thing love has always had a way of having bad time like you sing too this has to be one of my favorite cases so i got hired by a daughter wanting me to follow her dad he's in his 60s he's always leaving for the weekend and she thinks that he's cheating on her mom all right i'm gonna call this man frank because frank was living his best life on this case okay Frank ended up taking off. He got in his car. He was dancing a little bit and he took off. Frank ended up at the mall. He went straight to the bar. And when I said this man had about three drinks, he was people watching. He was saying hi to everybody. He was doing a little dancey dance and there was nobody with him. He was all by himself. So I said, if Frank is going to enjoy himself, I'm going to get myself a little snack to enjoy myself. I got two comments this week. One from this guy saying that he hates how I sing in the beginning. Sir, don't be mad because I got a better voice than you. The second comment said, if you keep eating every day, you're going to get bigger and then i was like shit he's right i'm so concerned let me step on this scale and the funny thing is is the scale went down sir so i guess the only thing that's actually getting bigger are my pockets back to frank frank hit the wetzel pretzel line which is a genius idea because then he headed to the movie theaters i let him go inside i stayed back because i wanted to do a little shopping before he came back out i updated a daughter and she's just like can you just stay on him i don't care how much it costs like i really want to know what he does frank exited the movies and he heard the band playing so he did a little two-step over there and started dancing a little bit by himself. At this point, I'm like, Frank, we need to wrap it up because I'm tired. We've been hot here all day. But Frank was not done. He just started moving his little shoulders. He was by himself the whole time, didn't meet up with anybody. And he was just doing his little two-step. Finally, Frank went to the valet. I waited for him to walk out. And there he goes by himself. I updated the daughter. Surveillance was discontinued. And I just let her know her angel of a dad just wanted to be alone. Okay. I mean, when you set that up, I thought for sure, like, you know, he's having a few cocktails, he's getting loose, Lucy's gonna go meet this girl. But as it turns out, Frank just wanted some alone time, right? Don't we all we all want some a little self care day. Yeah, exactly. So now is this is are these the videos that went have gone viral? Or are there other ones? Yeah, Frank was one of my biggest ones. And which is interesting, because everybody likes like, they're like, Oh, we love the tea and everything. But everybody actually really took a liking to Frank and being like, oh, like we just want our alone time. But yeah, this is one of our, one of the biggest ones that went viral. And actually the other one that went pretty big too was, um, I followed a wife and she just went to Ross and she went shopping and went to Starbucks and didn't do anything either. Um, so a lot of people are liking to see, you know, some of the tea, the good ones, but also these refreshing ones that like people are not cheating to. You know, I guess because, you know, you can get a little paranoid, can't you? With all the tech around us all the time. No, absolutely. And I don't think that, you know, people are seeing my videos and the messages that I'm getting and the emails that I'm getting like, hey, I saw your video and, you know, the way you said that he was acting in this video, that's how my spouse is acting, you know, so, you know, they could get a little paranoid by watching some of my videos too. So do you have to get their permission to post these videos up? Yeah, so a lot of these cases are older cases. I didn't think that this was going to get as big as it did, honestly. And so now, you know, I do have a contract and a lot of the people are saying, hey, we really want to stay discreet. We don't want, you know, so I think we got to kind of move into shifting of probably like doing reenactments, exactly how everything goes, you know. But yeah, it got bigger than I thought it was going to get. And so how many cases are you doing at a time? Right now I working six days a week So Monday through Saturday And sometimes it depends on what the case is I do a minimum of four hours And then if they want to extend more but sometimes it takes two days Sometimes it takes three days Sometimes you just on the first day you don find that they cheating and they not doing anything You can be like my husband staying late from work on this day He actually is staying late from work So they hire me again on another day that he says he going to stay late for work So these cases can run weeks So are there any any cases or anybody that contacted you and you got the scoop and you like I don really want to do this Yeah, I have. I have. I actually don't let it get to the point where I'm doing the case and then I'm like, I don't want to do it. I usually have a conversation with them before even accepting the case, you know. And if I feel like it's not something that I can do for them, or it's a little like, for instance, a girl wanted me to follow her ex-boyfriend. And, you know, she saw a picture with him with another girl that he said, you don't need to worry about her. I would never be with her. Now she's with her. He's like, I just want to see what they're doing. And it's like, but that's your ex-boyfriend now, you know? So I'm not going to be following and doing something like that for you. It's time for you to move on. Yeah, exactly. It's just time. How much, how much do you charge for this? It's a one 15 hour minimum four hours. You know what? I think this is great, you know, and I love, I tell you, I love your personality when you're doing it that, you know, that you're singing and you're talking and you're, you're kind of like, it's kind of like a little bit of voyeurism that, you know, but you are the front person and you're really talented, Steph. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's really nice to see. I wanted to like, I wanted to show people what I do for a living, but also like everything that I do in my car, sometimes it's a waiting game in there. You know, so everything I do in my car, the eye patches, you know, the self-care, the singing, the eating and all that stuff. Like that really is what's going on in there. And so I'm waiting for somebody to come out, you know, and I just want to kind of have like a comedic approach to this whole thing. Because it could be I'm sitting in a car for 10 to 15 hours and it does get really boring. Yeah. It's like, okay, now what are we going to do? All right. Exactly. Okay, so, but I do like it when you had on your little eye patches. I thought, yeah, I'm like, you know what, I need to find a use for those. I need to be able to put those on more often. Yeah, and so many people now are sending me videos and pictures of themselves like, I have my eye patches on today, which is nice. So where do you see yourself a couple of years from now? Yeah, so the plan is, it got bigger, like I said, than I thought, you know. So my face is out there, obviously, my private investigator. So I think it's time to start my own team. And I want a whole female, like a whole female private investigation team. I think that'd be really cool that I'd have my girls to go out and do surveillance. And yeah, that's what I see. And I see myself maybe, I've always wanted to do like comedy and, you know, I was going to be a stand up comedian and stuff like that. So I have a lot of other things that I want to do too. I love doing surveillance. I really do. But I think having a badass female team going out there is my next goal. You need to have a great name for Mount Two. Oh, yeah, right. That's going to be really key because when you start doing this type of stuff, I mean, when I first started out, my husband came to me and he said, call yourself the digital goddess. I said, oh, my God, that is so pompous. I can't call myself the digital goddess. And I said, what am I going to do? Go to a party and say, oh, hi, I'm the digital goddess. And he's like, he's like, no, everybody needs a moniker. Just call yourself the digital goddess. So I went on the air and I said, you know, hi, I'm Kim Command with the digital goddess. And he came blowing in to the studio. And he said, if you can't say it like you mean it, then don't say it at all. Okay. Well, I got mad at him for talking to me that way. Okay. So then I got on the air and said, I'm the digital goddess. And then he came in and goes, that's what I'm talking about. I love that. I love that. Super supportive. Yeah. And so now it's, you know, people write me notes and people call, you know, when they're on the air, they'll say, hey, you're my digital goddess. And I'm like. I love that. I'm like. So, yeah. So you need to come up with something like that. I need to come up with a really good name. Yeah. You do. I really do. Right now, just for me, they call, they say I'm the three S's. And it's snacks, surveillance, because I'm always eating. And then self-care. you know so it's really cute but yeah I definitely need to come up with something really good well congrats on all the success thanks for sharing your story with us and and keep us posted yeah I will definitely thank you for having me thanks Steph hey thanks for tuning in it's been a blast and I'll be right here waiting to share more with you very soon
