MELBOURNE has been revealed as a hanky-panky hotspot as suspicious husbands and wives hire private detectives in record numbers to spy on their spouses.

Private eyes are being paid thousands of dollars a week to trail unsuspecting partners and catch them in secret trysts with their lovers.

Private detective and former policeman Steve Murray said infidelity was booming in Melbourne. There is a one-third increase in clients hiring him to out love cheats compared with previous years.

He said most of his agency’s spy cases have confirmed clients’ fears of a spouse’s bedroom shenanigans with someone else’s wife or husband.

One man spent $11,500 having his wife followed when she walked out on him. Investigators discovered she had a secret policeman lover.

“It’s going on everywhere,” Mr Murray said.

Another private detective, Charles Rahim, said his agency’s infidelity cases have also jumped by at least a third this year.

He said people were also queuing to have their partners take lie-detector tests to prove their fidelity. Up to 70 per cent of men failed the test.

“It’s so big now, this cheating, it’s unbelievable,” he said.

Mr Murray said: “People are more aware of things – they’re able to check text messages on mobile phones.

“I don’t think we’re as stupid as we used to be.”

Mr Murray, who specialises in infidelity cases, said three-quarters of those contacting private eyes were women. Most clients were aged 35 to 50.

He said men were more likely to be cheating, but also were more likely to follow two-timing wives and girlfriends themselves.

He said Christmas was a danger time for cheating, as boozy office parties fuelled many illicit liaisons.

Mr Murray said deleting all voice or text messages from a mobile phone was a classic sign of cheating.

“You go to check your husband’s phone and it’s got no messages – even the sweet ones that you’ve been sending him – because he has to delete them all,” he said.

“The other classic sign is when the phone rings and he goes into the other room to take the call or goes outside.

“It’s telling you he doesn’t want you to hear that phone conversation.”

Other possible signs of an affair include moodiness, wanting more or less sex than usual at home, wanting to try new things, and accusing the other person of being paranoid.

Relationships Australia senior counsellor Rosalie Pattenden said infidelity affected one-third of couples.

But she said television shows such as Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City were more likely to help people spot cheating spouses than encourage copy-cat affairs.

“People are being more informed of the warning signs. When they see it on television, it makes them think,” she said.

“That’s when they’re more likely to hire a private detective.”

By DEANNA BOYD
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

Four men working with a reality TV show aimed at exposing infidelity were indicted Thursday on criminal charges stemming from the filmed confrontation of a woman outside an Arlington fitness center over her relationship with a Fort Worth police captain.

A Tarrant County grand jury indicted Joey Greco, the host of Cheaters, and Hunter Carson, the episode’s director, on charges of assault with bodily injury, unlawful restraint and hindering apprehension.

Walter Earl Woods, 36, and Thomas Daniel Gibbons, 19, security guards contracted by Cheaters, were indicted on charges of assault with bodily injury and unlawful restraint.

The four men did not return messages left through Bobby Goldstein, creator and executive producer of the Dallas-based show.

The charges stem from the May 4 encounter between Rafael Gutierrez Jr., 41, and his estranged wife, Maria Gutierrez, outside the Bally’s Fitness Center at 2306 Collins St., where she worked.

A private investigator hired by Rafael Gutierrez had filmed Maria Gutierrez and Capt. Duane Paul engaged in sexual conduct in an unmarked city vehicle at Vandergriff Park on three occasions. With a Cheaters TV crew of about a dozen employees in tow, Rafael Gutierrez confronted Maria Gutierrez about her alleged affair with Paul.

The indictments allege that all four men were a party to an assault on Maria Gutierrez when one of the security guards hit her in the leg with his own leg as he tried to restrain her.

In addition, the indictments charge that Greco, 45, and Carson, 29, hindered apprehension by providing Rafael Gutierrez with a means of leaving the scene before officers arrived, despite learning that he had a protective order against him.

Goldstein called the charges “just nuts” and joked, “I’m hiring Denny Crane from Boston Legal.”

“I’ve watched the tape from every angle, every camera, and it looks like someone there is trying to get their names in the paper,” he said.

Goldstein called the criminal charges a first for the television show, which airs on the WB Network.

“Only in Cowtown!” he said.

All the charges are Class A misdemeanors, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

Sean Colston, chief of the family violence unit of the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, said arrest warrants will be issued for the four men.

Excerpts of the confrontation and the private investigator’s footage from the park were shown to the media during a news conference by Cheaters in May.

In the footage, Maria Gutierrez can be seen talking on a cellphone when she is surprised by her husband and the TV crew. Arlington police have said she was talking with a Grand Prairie police investigator about repeated problems with Rafael Gutierrez.

With her husband hovering over her and yelling at her in English and Spanish, Maria Gutierrez tried to go back into the fitness center but was blocked by the Cheaters security guards.

A co-worker eventually helped her get back inside.

At the time, Rafael Gutierrez was awaiting trial on accusations that he had assaulted Maria Gutierrez twice in February in Grand Prairie, and a protective order prohibited him from going to his wife’s workplace.

He was later arrested for violating that protective order — a third-degree felony because he is also accused of assaulting her there. Court records show that Rafael Gutierrez was indicted Thursday.

The two previous assault charges are still pending.

Rafael Gutierrez did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Goldstein told reporters during the news conference in May that his crew members were unaware of the protective order against Gutierrez until they were filming the confrontation.

He has said the show did not feel that Gutierrez was a threat to his wife at any time.

Fort Worth police investigated Paul’s actions. In September, Paul was suspended for 90 days and demoted from captain to lieutenant.
Deanna Boyd, (817) 390-7655 dboyd@star-telegram.com

Most Americans carry cell phones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset. Tracing a Cell phone

In recent years, law enforcement officials have turned to cellular technology as a tool for easily and secretly monitoring the movements of suspects as they occur. But this kind of surveillance – which investigators have been able to conduct with easily obtained court orders – has now come under tougher legal scrutiny. In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cell phone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing “probable cause” to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants.
The rulings, issued by magistrate judges in New York, Texas and Maryland, underscore the growing debate over privacy rights and government surveillance in the digital age.
With mobile phones becoming as prevalent as conventional phones (there are 195 million cellular subscribers in this country), wireless companies are starting to exploit the phones’ tracking abilities. For example, companies are marketing services that turn phones into even more precise global positioning devices for driving or allowing parents to track the whereabouts of their children through the handsets.
Not surprisingly, law enforcement agencies want to exploit this technology, too – which means more courts are bound to wrestle with what legal standard applies when government agents ask to conduct such surveillance.
Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on. Even if the phone is not in use it is communicating with cell phone tower sites, and the wireless provider keeps track of the phone’s position as it travels. The operators have said that they turn over location information when presented with a court order to do so.
The recent rulings by the magistrates, who are appointed by a majority of the federal district judges in a given court, do not bind other courts. But they could significantly curtail access to cell location data if other jurisdictions adopt the same reasoning. (The government’s requests in the three cases, with their details, were sealed because they involve investigations still under way.)
“It can have a major negative impact,” said Clifford S. Fishman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and a professor at the Catholic University of America’s law school in Washington. “If I’m on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime, or, worse, might have a hostage, real-time knowledge of where this person is could be a matter of life or death.”
Prosecutors argue that having such information is crucial to finding suspects, corroborating their whereabouts with witness accounts, or helping build a case for a wiretap on the phone – especially now that technology gives criminals greater tools for evading law enforcement.
The government has routinely used records of cell phone calls and caller locations to show where a suspect was at a particular time, with access to those records obtainable under a lower legal standard. (Wireless operators keep cell phone location records for varying lengths of time, from several months to years.)
But it is unclear how often prosecutors have asked courts for the right to obtain cell-tracking data as a suspect is moving. And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests.
Legal experts say that such live tracking has tended to happen in drug-trafficking cases. In a 2003 Ohio case, for example, federal drug agents used cell tracking data to arrest and convict two men on drug charges.
Mr. Fishman said he believed that the number of requests had become more prevalent in the last two years – and the requests have often been granted with a stroke of a magistrate’s pen.
Prosecutors, while acknowledging that they have to get a court order before obtaining real-time cell-site data, argue that the relevant standard is found in a 1994 amendment to the 1986 Stored Communications Act, a law that governs some aspects of cell phone surveillance.