Episode Details

In the middle of a contested case, social media stops being a place to vent and becomes a source of evidence, for both sides. Investigator Jacqy Dougherty explains what that actually looks like from the desk of the person doing the searching.

Jacqy Dougherty is a business development associate with XG Consultants Group, a global investigations firm founded in 2001 and led by a retired FBI special agent. She joined roughly five years ago as a social media analyst and moved through international fraud and money laundering investigations before taking on her current client-facing role. The firm's work spans due diligence and background screening, surveillance, asset searches, litigation support, and a cybersecurity division, with resources in most countries.

Dougherty starts with how social media contradicts a sworn statement: the claim of no money alongside posts from an expensive trip, the alibi undone by a location check-in, the pattern that emerges from what other people say in your comments. She also covers the abuse side of the same tool, including exes who run fake profiles to monitor a former partner and send threats from accounts that look like strangers. Her advice for anyone in an active case is unglamorous and correct: lock your profiles down, including the payment apps that publish who you paid, and know that data brokers are selling your address and phone number to anyone with a subscription.

The second half is about hiring. What surveillance costs per hour, why the firm requires two investigators on it, and how often it does not produce what the client hoped for. The case where nothing turned up on a husband for weeks, and the counter-surveillance sweep that explained why. A custody case built on what a parent did for work, and the judge who was unmoved by it. What investigators legally cannot do, from hacking to wiretaps to pulling financial records without consent. And what a serious background check involves, which is court searches in every county someone has lived in, civil records as well as criminal, and a look at far more than the five platforms an automated screening tool covers.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• How social media contradicts sworn testimony in a family law case
• Why the comments on your posts can matter as much as what you wrote
• Fake accounts and burner profiles used to monitor and threaten a former partner
• The payment apps and data-broker listings that expose you without your knowing
• What surveillance actually costs, and why it takes two investigators
• What a private investigator legally cannot do, and why that protects your evidence
• Why a cheap nationwide database check is not a background check
• Why civil court records deserve the same attention as criminal ones

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How social media shows up in family law cases
3:00 Contradicting testimony, fake accounts, and burner profiles
5:00 Jacqy's background, and what a global investigations firm does
9:00 Why social media stops being a place to vent mid-case
11:00 Payment apps, data brokers, and locking your profiles down
13:00 What surveillance costs, and why it takes two investigators
17:00 Doing your own due diligence first
19:00 Weeks of nothing, and the sweep that explained it
21:00 A custody case built on a parent's job, and what the judge did
23:00 What a private investigator legally cannot do
29:00 Choosing an investigator, and what a real background check involves

Keep going 💜
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📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.a