We, as the good guys, sometimes need to present ourselves are someone we are not when serving court papers. When we do this it’s called pretexting.

What is pretexting? Simply this… posing as someone we are not to get information or serve process papers.

Of course, it’s easy to be nervous when we do this. First and foremost, we (the “good guys”) tend to be honest so misrepresenting ourselves may not be very natural or uncomfortable to us.

Secondly, we don’t want to mess up! The downside to failing during a pretext is not small. At the very least we have tipped the subject and they will be WAY more prepared to defeat our (or other investigators!) future efforts.

In other words, getting caught using a pretext can cost you the whole case! No wonder it’s easy to be nervous when pulling a pretext.

So how can you still pretext when your nervous? Simple… roll your nervousness into the pretext. This week’s video gives an excellent example and shows you how.

Because pretexting is an important part of process serving (and a lot Private Detective work in general), I have a whole section dedicated to pretexting on the Private Investigator course The Investigator’s Ultimate Guide to Process Serving.