Facebook useful for private investigator

A Kalispell private investigator who has helped develop security standards in other countries and appeared on a reality TV show says Facebook has become his new best friend in tracking down the people he pursues.

Charles Pesola, owner and manager of Moonlighting Detective and Security Services, said he has caught every person he’s ever put on Facebook, whether that person has an account or not.

“Facebook is a tool and it has nothing to do with you,” he said. “You could go completely offline and I’m still going to catch you on Facebook.”

Last year, Pesola bailed out a man on a $30,000 bond, but the man disappeared from the Flathead Valley without paying. After a little on-the-ground detective work, Pesola believed the man had traveled to the opposite side of the state, either Sidney or Miles City.

“I don’t like taking long trips if I can help it and I don’t like taking long trips if I don’t know where I’m going,” Pesola said.

The man had jumped bail on a Friday, and Pesola put about $20 dollars of ad money toward sponsored Facebook posts in both towns showing the man’s face on a wanted poster. More than 21,000 people saw the post. Pesola said calls flooded his phone lines over the next few days. By the time Pesola departed for Eastern Montana on Sunday morning, he knew where the man lived, what he was driving, what girls he was flirting with at the movie store, what movies he rented, even what he liked to buy at the grocery store.

“People like helping people find criminals that are causing problems,” Pesola said. “People that are just tired of being stolen from, tired of seeing drunk people on the road, tired of seeing drugs in Kalispell. They’ll see them and they’ll tell me.”

It took Pesola nine hours to traverse the state to Sidney, then just 20 minutes to arrest the man and turn him over to local authorities.

Pesola was recently reappointed to the state Board of Private Security, and said he is honored “to be a part of shaping and maintaining” the security industry.

As a member of the seven-person state advisory board, he helps advise the Department of Labor and Industry on security matters such as what the state applications for security positions should require and what defines a security guard and a private investigator. Pesola said the amount of information available online today has prompted new strategies, technologies and psychologies for the security industry.

In his office in downtown Kalispell, his desk is stacked with legal papers and letters. A monitor on the back wall shows who’s entering the office, which staffs between six and 14 depending on the time of year. Moonlighting provides detective, security and bail bond services, so his phone rings often, sometimes someone requesting bail money, sometimes people looking for a service.

One of the biggest boosts since he took over the business in 2012 was appearing on the Animal Planet reality show “Rocky Mountain Bounty Hunters.” Pesola had just a small part on the show, which aired in the spring of 2014 and 2015, but said the exposure was a tremendous help to his online networking.

“We didn’t become a TV celebrity of any kind, but we did get some notoriety,” Pesola said. “If I go knock on a door trying to catch someone who jumped bail, people will often say, ‘Hey, you’re that guy from the TV show.”

Pesola said the reality show prompted his Facebook account to swell with followers from all over the country. He still gets calls from all over the country, including New York, Texas and California, where people request detective or bounty hunter work.

The benefit from this new, far-reaching network is a web of people who are able to assist with capturing whomever may be on the run for jumping bail or to escape a warrant.

In January 2015 Pesola got the chance to apply his expertise to an entire country. The Mike Mansfield Economic Development Fellowship from the University of Montana reached out to the Board of Private Security, asking for someone to travel to Myanmar and explain the professional standards used in the United States.

“In America, we have too much regulation, but over there they have nothing,” he said.

Pesola, who manages a small staff compared to some security firms in the state, was paired with a woman who runs a 600-employee security company. He spent two weeks traveling from region to region, speaking with Ministry of Borders leaders, the chief of state police and several other high-level government officials about why the U.S. implements standards that screen security guards before they’re hired.

“That’s for accountability; you don’t want Joe Blow off the street to carry your diamonds,” he said.

Pesola said providing the initial infrastructure for an entire nation of people was humbling.

“God has put me in places that I have no idea how I got there,” he said. “I was part of growing the infrastructure of a country. It was definitely one of my all-time best experiences.”

As busy as he is, Pesola is innovating new ideas for his business all the time. His newest addition to the firm, “Escape from Moonlighting,” is an escape room-style game where teams of four have 60 minutes to solve a series of puzzles in a small room in order to open the locked door. Pesola said he wants to offer the game to Kalispell residents as a rainy day activity.

At one point during his interview with the Daily Inter Lake, Pesola took a call from a phone scammer, who asked Pesola to get to his computer because the caller had been updated about a virus and needed some personal information. Pesola told the man he was in his car and would be at his computer soon. Pesola asked the caller some unassuming questions: What kind of car does he drive? Do they make that car in his hometown? What’s the weather like there today?

Pesola has spoken with this specific scammer and dozens of others before, each time stringing the phone call along as long as he can before eventually setting another time the scammer can call back. He takes a margin of enjoyment from his prank, but he’s ultimately providing another security service.

“The longer he’s on the phone with me, that’s less time he’s scamming grandma down the street,” he said. After about six minutes, Pesola asked the man to call back in a few hours and continued to scroll through a multitude of emails.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.