It’s a dark November night in Los Angeles. The car in front is lit by its rear lights only. After driving for 20 miles, it stops, suddenly, in the middle of the street. A man in a dark t-shirt gets out and runs towards an apartment. A woman appears and jumps up, wrapping her legs around him. They start making out before going to get tacos and, later, returning to her place.
At 6 a.m. the next morning his car is still outside the woman’s apartment. A few hours later, they emerge holding hands, heading to a local farmer’s market where they kiss and hug publicly.
The whole time a private investigator named Stephanie A., who goes by Your Fav Investigator online, has been sending videos of the interaction to the man’s wife, who she says hired her to sleuth for suspected infidelity. Once presented with the video evidence, Stephanie says she never heard from the wife again, but the video remains on her social feeds. While the man’s face is obscured and no personal information is revealed, the video of his misdoings has been “liked” by over 85,000 people on Stephanie’s Instagram. Infidelity stake-out videos on Instagram and TikTok titled ‘Trust your gut… CASED CLOSED!’ and ‘Pickleball or cheating?’ are her bread and butter.
“I love everything about [being a PI]” Stephanie, 39, explains over Zoom. “The investigation prior to the case, the adrenaline rush during surveillance. I really enjoy helping people find peace of mind or clarity in their situations.” She did not want her last name used due to the nature of her work.
“It’s like riding shotgun into someone else’s drama.” Stephanie A., private investigator
With a family history in law enforcement, and a background in loss prevention, Stephanie is at the vanguard of a new wave of very online private investigators, often focused on outing cheaters, with each of them sharing the ins and outs of the PI life to massive TikTok followings in the US and beyond. And true crime-obsessed audiences are eating it up.
“People love the tea. It’s like riding shotgun into someone else’s drama,” says Stephanie.
Once relegated to hidden-camera reality shows like Cheaters, dozens of prominent social media PIs have sprung up over the last few years, focusing on topics like insurance fraud, missing persons, and even high stakes heists. But by far the most viral videos center on infidelity, with the most popular internet PIs carrying out surveillance and even background checks on men their clients have deemed suspicious.
“It still shocks me how bold some people are, not just lying and cheating openly in public, but sleeping over and playing house while their spouse is out of town,” says Stephanie, who has been working as a private investigator for 12 years.
The boom in these investigations comes at a time when online shaming around cheating seems to have reached a fever pitch, the most recent example being former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, who was caught tightly-embracing his company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts on July 16.
The couple scattered from the jumbotron’s gaze—Byron literally diving out of frame—prompting Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to quip “either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”