Francois McKinnon: Welcome to the Miami PI Chronicles podcast. I’m your host, Francois McKinnon from McKinnon Investigative Team, and I’m Oscar Santamaria of Optimum Investigations.
Oscar Santamaria: We created this podcast with the goal to educate, inform, and entertain aspiring beginner and seasoned professionals in the investigative field. With over 60 years of combined experience, we offer invaluable insights and lessons learned. While we may not have all the answers, our knowledge can certainly benefit anyone interested in this dynamic profession. So sit back, listen, and enjoy these episodes. Please don’t forget to like, share, and follow. Hey Oscar, how are you?
Francois McKinnon: Doing pretty well. How are you doing? I’m doing well. How was your Thanksgiving?
Oscar Santamaria: You know what? It was a different Thanksgiving than I usually have, but it was okay. I mean, you know, there was a little bit of vomiting. I’m not gonna lie. Overindulgence. Yeah. You know, we usually have Thanksgiving for years, I’m over three decades at my sister’s house. She’s got the biggest place, Diana, that can accommodate our family. And you know, so every year it’s about the same thing. And this year at the last moment, I found out it was going to be a little bit different. She wasn’t hosting anything because she had to undergo a little procedure. So I had to do it on my own. And for the first time or no? Yeah. For the first time.
Oscar Santamaria: So I told my brother, my oldest brother, he can come over that I would prepare something and I don’t cook, but I checked on Google and they said that this grocery store we have here called Publix actually does a catered meal. And I called them up and they told me that you had to order it 72 hours in advance. And I was calling them the day before Thanksgiving. So I ended up going over there because you told me that they would, I told you, I said, hang up with me and call them immediately and go there physically. Right. And he did.
Oscar Santamaria: Well, I went like later on that evening because, you know, I procrastinated a little bit, but I did go and I went to the deli and I remember telling the lady, how crazy would I have to be to think that I can come up here the day before Thanksgiving and have you guys cook me a turkey? And she goes, yeah, you’d be pretty crazy. So she goes, well, luckily enough, we had a cancellation on one of our orders and we have one here for you, a full box of turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, everything in a big box. And I was able, I got the last one. And so that is amazing. That is amazing. And you got through, did you get through a cranberry sauce?
Oscar Santamaria: I did. It did come with cranberry sauce too. So it all worked out. Well, I did buy an apple pie and a pumpkin pie for good measure, but then we had it for lunch and my son was going to go, he started dating this girl and he was going to go to have dinner at the parents’ house and I didn’t want him to show up empty handed. So, you know, I still had the two pies, the apple and the pumpkin. You gave him the pies to look good for good measures. I gave him one of the pies and I’m like, take the apple pie because you know, the pumpkin pie is mine. It’s Thanksgiving. You have to have pumpkin pie. And of course you took the pumpkin pie. And so I had the apple pie and I had a lot of helpings. I’m not going to lie. I had a lot of helpings and I got a little sick that evening, but I survived.
Francois McKinnon: But listen, you’ve been working out so much lately that, you know, it’s kind of a, I’m kind of glad that this thing worked out. Cause I feel proud of myself that I told you, I said, I literally said, hang up with me and call or go to the store. Maybe you’ll get lucky. And then I was texting you whole foods. I really did get lucky. I’m telling you, I got the last box and you know, sometimes procrastination pays off. Oh, I don’t believe that. Lesson learned. For anybody listening, don’t listen to them.
Oscar Santamaria: That’s what I told my daughter, my daughter was with me and that’s what I told her in front of the lady. And she’s like, well, I guess so. Oh, you were with her at the store. And I went with her to the store and I was like, we got to figure something out here. Either they have to have something or I got to figure something out for us. Or you order a lot of big chickens already cooked. You know, that was plan B. Toss it in a sauce. They’ll never know. You know, it’s Turkey. It’s the same kind of bird. Anyway. What about you? I hear your daughter was down.
Francois McKinnon: Yeah. Isabella was down here for a week and it’s always stressful when she comes, not because she is, but it’s just stressful because of the fact that it’s her and she flies down all the way here and then we hang out and we want to make it the best. So listen, we had a Turkey night on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, which was lovely. Again, this year we bought it from Whole Foods or Publix. I’m not quite sure. I don’t do any of that. But Christina came out with the best Turkey we’ve ever had. And I actually said that during dinner. I said, this is the most wonderful Turkey we’ve ever had over I don’t know how long we’ve been married, man. It’s gotta be over 34 years or something. And she said, well, that’s nice of you to say, because I didn’t cook it. The store did. And I told you my oven was on the fritz.
Francois McKinnon: Well, it came out, they cut it up without me. I usually do all of that. And then they toss it in some butter that we do not have in our house. They bought butter just for that. They sauteed it. It was the best dinner. The next day we went to our friends Maria’s and David’s and we had Thanksgiving. Now this is on Thursday night. You have to remember Isabella’s leaving at five o’clock in the morning, five 30 in the morning at the airport in Nashville. So I had to take her. So we’re having wine and having, I mean, Maria is the hostess with the most, she had everything you can dream of. And then some, and she had like an appetizer that was called million dollars seafood or something. And it had King crab leg, it was a dip, cricket, let’s shrimp and lobster. And every time you dip, I was like a score. It was delicious. It was awesome. So it turned out to be a lovely evening and they’re the nicest people. So we ended up spending about four hours there. And then we came back home because Isabella had to go fly in the morning and I had to go to sleep.
Francois McKinnon: So it was a lovely, lovely evening, but I gotta tell you this. We’re talking once we came back home, you know, obviously she was packed, you know, her clothes are here in Boston. So she started asking me about in high school, these wonderful young ladies that I used to hang out with. And I was very lucky to hang out with them. They were all very pretty, very intelligent, you know, but they introduced me to doing seances. So that’s kind of hearing from the spirits and stuff. And you and I are both investigators. And if I tell you, you know, me, I wouldn’t tell you any shit. If I tell you this was on the on point, whatever they said that was happening actually happened. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like what happens? Well, a glass telekinesis, a glass flies off the table, no hands nearby. Freaked me out a little bit. We’re on a ski trip in Killington, Vermont, and they decided to do one of these. And then, you know, I’m always okay to move forward and do something, and learn.
Francois McKinnon: And we did one of these and during the seance, one of our friends said, looked at her one of her best friends in the eyes and said, you shouldn’t go skiing tomorrow because you’re going to break your left leg. So she was not really into it, you know? So she disregarded it, whatever. And then the next day the girl broke her leg in three different places, but the other leg. So it’s got, but I’ll tell you what, you know, that law enforcement now uses psychics to get down to cases to try to get some kind of direction. And my buddy, the super investigator, Ken Brennan, we had the discussion about this and he said, he totally believes in that. He said, when you have a cold case, a homicide or rape or something to that effect, because you have nowhere to turn, you know, that’s why they call cold cases. So you hit a dead end and then, oh, they’re open to anything. And now the States and law enforcement, local law enforcement pay for it. So what are your thoughts on that?
Oscar Santamaria: I have certainly heard of psychics being brought in on investigations, especially when there’s absolutely no other leads. So, I mean, I guess it can’t hurt. I’m a skeptic. I do need to get the facts. I do believe that maybe in some cases, some people have that ability, but it’s also one of those industries, I guess, if you want to call it that that’s probably has a lot of scammers in it as well, because they’re preying on people’s emotions. You know, the fact that they need some sort of reassurance. And so I am a skeptic, but you know, if you have no other leads available to you and you have somebody who’s been actually helped law enforcement in the past, I mean, I guess it can’t hurt.
Francois McKinnon: Well, listen, the people that law enforcement, the FBI, the local law enforcement, it’s mostly from what I hear it’s from homicide cases, cold cases and stuff, and they swear by it. And that’s something that I never thought I would say in my life, but they actually do. And listen, doing these seances and reaching out to other spirits and stuff, I swear to God, that was something that I never thought I’d be on board to do period. And I’ve always been skeptical of everything. I want to get proof and results and stuff and have something that makes sense. And I’ll tell you what, man, people go by that. And when I listened, when you’re sitting with these beautiful young ladies and, you know, we were like 16, 17 years old, not afraid of anything. And you see stuff like this happens in front of you, you start paying attention and then you go to your bed at night and you go, Hmm, maybe they had something going on here specifically the next day when the girl broke her leg.
Oscar Santamaria: Well, you know what? I think I’m going to hold off a little bit before I approach my clients with my on-staff psychic people, but you know, who knows if I was ever in a jam and there was room in the budget and I had nothing else to do, I would take a stab at it. It can’t hurt. Well, listen, in our kind of industry, you need to have some kind of a lead and sometime it’s dead. And when you’re talking about these kinds of investigations, anything, where you get one lead, they’ll take you somewhere that you need to go. And I mean, after I did the seances with the girls in Canada, I was truly impressed because I don’t get scared easily. And when you see the stuff in front of you, you go, Oh my God, this is weird. And it cannot be happening. And it’s actually happening. And you see the results, whether it’s immediate or not.
Oscar Santamaria: So how does that work? So is it the same thing every time? Is there a Ouija board? Is there a crystal ball? It’s a very serene environment. Everybody sits down and holds hands and then concentrate on one person that passed away that they care for. People like top FBI investigators and profilers use these psychics. So what else? I want to touch a little bit on ChatGPT. I don’t think we’ve touched on it enough. It is something that’s going to be with us now in the future. It’s something that’s emerging. And it’s something that can definitely help us in our industry. I use it all the time. I use it for blogs, helping me write blogs. I use it for other things and I’m going to get into that in a little bit, but something that I did today was I asked ChatGPT what it could do to assist private investigators with their type of work. And I didn’t read through it. So I’m going to go through it with you guys and then tell you in my own personal experience how I’ve used it.
Francois McKinnon: Well, you turned me on to chat and I’ll tell you what, I’m a big fan. Thank you for that. It’s been very helpful for my websites and everything else. I do remember you had to do a press release and I told you about it for the first time and you did the press release. I know what a right press release, but I wrote it. And then when I turned it over, you have no idea how much better it was. And it took you what? Three seconds, right? Yeah. Four or five seconds. Yeah. So I asked the question, you know, how can it help? And it says, here are several ways it can be useful. The first thing I said is research and information gathering. ChatGPT can help you identify where to look for public records, including court documents, property records, or business filings. Although it cannot directly access private databases, it can guide investigators on how to search them effectively. Also background checks. It can help draft detailed background check reports by summarizing relevant publicly available information. Examples of that are social media and news reports and legal filings.
Oscar Santamaria: General research. AI can assist in gathering general information on topics like criminal activity patterns, legal regulations, or even specific people or businesses that might be relevant to a case. Case strategy and analysis. It can help investigators analyze case information by organizing evidence, identifying patterns, and suggesting possible leads to pursue based on the gathered data. Brainstorming leads by inputting facts and information. PIs can use ChatGPT to brainstorm new potential leads or areas to investigate that may not have been considered. Anyways, there’s a whole bunch of things that ChatGPT can be used for. There’s other things. I’m just, it’s just so many that I’m just going to go with what I’ve used it for in the past. So I remember a few months back I had to hit all of these certain addresses. I was trying to find a person who was in default of a loan on a Ferrari. And I had to hit all these different addresses. The Ferrari finance company sends you all of these addresses they want you to hit. And there was like 10 of them.
Oscar Santamaria: So what I did was I went to ChatGPT and I told them to put it in order, you know, so that I’m not going all out of my way. It would have taken me a long time to figure out how to put it in order. Oh, to map out your route? Yeah, to map out my route, one after the other. And it did that within just like two seconds, something that would have taken me probably an hour to do myself. On MapQuest. Remember when we used MapQuest? Yes, I remember. We had to plan everything, but it didn’t do that. It just told us, okay, go from A to B to C. But yeah, you’re right. And also, if you’re not very good at writing your reports or emails or really anything, a business letter, what you want to do is you want to go into ChatGPT and maybe just write, hey, can you revise this and write something and it’ll immediately revise it for you. It’ll just make it so much easier. If you have a report written out, just put in the sections of the report that you want to do, cut and paste it, put it into ChatGPT. It’ll kick out the correct grammar and punctuation and everything else. And then you just cut and paste it and put it right back into your report.
Oscar Santamaria: So there’s things that you can use it for. And I want people to be aware that it’s out there and it can make their lives easier. Well, I know that you’re a superhuman when it comes to report writing. So for you to do this on the AI system, you probably recheck it to make sure that your information is correct, because they make mistakes. This is the new part of intelligence, and we’re not sure yet what is going to do. What I’ve seen so far is pretty awesome. I’m a big fan. It’s not perfect, and you definitely have to check it. And you can make edits to it, which I would always suggest you do. But it can really make your life easier. So why not? It’s there. It’s available to you. I don’t pay anything for it. I don’t know how that is. If I somehow went through a loophole, it says something on mine that stay logged out, which I do, because I don’t really have an account. And I’ve been using it now for a couple of years. And I’m satisfied with the results.
Francois McKinnon: You know, Oscar, they’re going to pick that up, their AI. Everything you said, you’ll be cut off by tomorrow. Well, that’s okay. Then I might actually consider paying for it. But it’s out there. It can help us consider using it for something, anything. It can even design a logo for you. I think you have to pay for that version, though. Yeah, but that’s okay. It’s minimal versus spending $150 for a guide or a girl to knock out a logo for your company. If you give them specific details, they’ll really do it. They’ll do a great job. You know, but as far as PI goes, listen, ChatGPT is a great thing. It’s one of those things that are cutting edge. AI is just going to continue to help and it’s going to transform industries. I don’t know how, for example, legal clerks or people who do legal research, maybe even paralegals, are going to have a job in 5 to 10 years. Because in 10 seconds, the legal research that they do is you’re going to be able to put that question into some sort of AI and they might have one designed specifically for lawyers or other industries. You’re going to be able to get that information in seconds as opposed to hours or even days that a human would do. It’s changing every single industry. You might as well use it and kind of change with the times.
Francois McKinnon: Well, listen, we’ve had a great show and we have a lot of great things to discuss next week. I look forward to doing the show again. I wanted to thank you, thank our friends and everybody who’s listening to our show. With that said, Oscar, always nice to see you. Have a good night and we’ll talk later. Thank you for listening to the Miami PI Chronicles podcast. For all of your investigative needs in Florida, please contact McKinnon Investigative Group at 954-513-7414. That’s 954-513-7414 or visit us at www.miginvestigations.com. Thanks again for listening and please remember to share, follow and like our licensed surveillance updates.
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