In 2016, it was right before the presidential election,
and there was a news conference playing
talking about Donald Trump’s tax returns
and them not being released.
Trump told the Associated Press in an interview that, quote,
“There’s nothing to learn” from his stack of 1040s and W2s.
Why won’t he release his tax returns?
And that was when I realized, well, this is a perfect example of that,
of what someone could do.
Someone could easily get his tax returns through this system.
So I said, “Well, let me see what I can do.”
And a quick Google search,
and I got his Social Security number,
a little bit of information about him.
I put it into the system,
but not wanting to alarm anyone, I put my own phone number in it.
I left my IP address open so they could see who I am.
And then it did, in fact, send up red flags,
as I realized later when the FBI was raiding my house
and stealing all of my equipment
and interrogating me about
trying to hack the tax returns of Donald Trump.
[The Fraud Private Investigator]
My name is Jordan Hamlett, and I’m a private investigator.
All throughout high school, I knew I wanted to be a PI.
It’s just I didn’t think it was a career that was realistic
or anything you could ever actually do
until one day, just out of nowhere, I was looking in the newspaper,
and one of the first things I saw was
an ad for a PI who was looking to train an apprentice.
And the next thing I know,
I’m on my way to Mississippi to do surveillance on someone.
The types of cases I’ve worked over the years,
it's been anything and everything,
ranging from background checks
to serving subpoenas,
to missing persons,
murders, arson, finding fugitives,
cheating spouses, domestic cases, and child custody cases.
But by far the most common type of case that most PIs are hired for
is investigating insurance fraud.
In Louisiana, the oil field is a big deal here.
Manual labor, working offshore, like, backbreaking work,
and so there’s a lot of chance for injury when that happens.
It usually starts with someone who gets hurt,
and they get a few weeks off, and they’re paid on disability.
But after a little while,
some people start to look at that as a golden ticket.
So cases like that were kind of the norm for a long time,
where it required tons of hours of surveillance and man hours
trying to catch these people.
But there started to be a shift in the business over the years
as social media became more of what it is today
and more ingrained in everyone’s life
because it got to a point to where
they basically do the surveillance for you.
And the thing about catfishing is there’s always a bigger fish,
which was me.
It just took a matter of making fake accounts,
friending some of their friends,
and then suddenly I’m an attractive woman, and they’re friending me,
and they’ll tell me everything in Messenger within minutes.
But one thing I started noticing over the course of these cases
was just how vulnerable a lot of this information was.
I could come across government websites,
police websites, courthouses,
things of that nature that have sensitive information
that wasn’t secure.
So when I would come across these things,
I would report them to the government agency.
I’d say, “Hey, there’s a flaw in your website
that I’m able to access open case files.”
Whenever I would report these things to people,
they would absolutely get right on it
and try and change the information and try and protect it.
That’s why in 2016,
it was much to my surprise when I found myself
being investigated for fraud by the federal government
for doing just that.
I’d come across a flaw in the IRS web tool on the FAFSA website
and realized that you could get anyone's personal tax information
with very little information.
And so I attempted to report that to the IRS,
but if you’ve ever tried to contact the IRS,
you know it’s pretty much impossible to get in touch with anyone.
And so, at the time in 2016,
it was right before the presidential election,
and there was a news conference playing
talking about Donald Trump’s tax returns
and them not being released.
That was when I realized, well, this is a perfect example of that,
of what someone could do.
Someone could easily get his tax returns through this system.
So I said, “Well, let me see what I can do.”
And so I did it. And then it did, in fact, send up red flags,
as I realized later when the FBI was raiding my house
and stealing all of my equipment
and interrogating me about
trying to hack the tax returns of Donald Trump.
So the irony wasn’t lost on me
of the fact that I was now being investigated for fraud.
And I was immediately open with them,
“This is what I did.
This is why I did it.
And this is what you need to fix because this is dangerous.”
But the problem with that was they were too busy trying to prosecute me
that they didn’t actually do anything with that faulty web tool.
And three months later, it ended up being exploited
in exactly the same way I warned them about.
And millions of dollars of fake tax returns were filed,
thousands of people’s information,
because the tool was being exploited
in exactly the same way that I had warned them.
And they had this congressional oversight committee about it,
where the IRS claimed,
“Well, we didn’t think it was that serious of a flaw.”
But the fact of the matter was
the only reason they even caught it when they did
was because they were monitoring it after I told them about it.
And they finally did take this web tool down,
so in a way, I did do what I set out to do,
and I got them to take it down and fix it.
I just wish it hadn’t have taken the path it did
and ended up with me being sentenced to 18 months in prison for it.
My experience in prison was a lot like
just kind of the whole process of going through federal indictment,
that whole trial.
In federal prison,
you start to see a lot of people in the same position
who didn’t get a fair sentence.
They didn’t get a fair trial.
They were screwed left and right.
Now, just like in real life, tons of them are criminals,
tons of them are frauds.
But then there are also the people who were defrauded themself
and were taken advantage of
by a system that’s supposed to protect them.
I have a much different take on my work.
Now, I see on the other side
some of the biggest frauds out there are these insurance companies
and these big organizations
and these big governments.
I do investigative consulting to help personal injury claimants,
to help advise them on what to do,
and make sure that they’re not being taken advantage of
by some miscreant PI like myself
or some insurance company who’s trying to take advantage of them.
I help them make sure that they get what’s fair to them
and not be defrauded by these companies
that should be protecting them.