Philip Becnel gave a lecture to the students of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic at The University of Baltimore School of Law. Philip’s lecture focused on documenting real-world investigations, as detailed in his and Alexandra Becnel’s latest book, Principles of Investigative Documentation. ...

Philip Becnel published an excerpt of Principles of Investigative Documentation in Pursuit Magazine. The article, called “A Memo to the File,” relates an experience when a client rudely chastised one of our investigators because he did not like the content of a report she wrote. The attorney’s behavior spurred Philip ...

Philip Becnel gave a presentation to the investigators and other members of the Global Ethics and Compliance Division of RTX, a multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate. Philip’s presentation touched on the benefits of theory-directed investigation, methods to distinguish between facts and factual inferences, as well as some of the fundamentals ...

Principles of Investigative Documentation, Second Edition, came out yesterday. A collaboration between Philip Becnel, Alexandra Becnel, and former-Dinolt-investigator-turned-attorney Scott Krischke, the book details how to document an investigation using what Philip originally coined as the “Five Principles of Investigative Documentation.” The authors reworked the Second Edition into a pseudo-memoir in Philip’s ...

Philip Becnel was interviewed on the Sound of Pursuit podcast about his latest book, co-authored with partner Alexandra Becnel, Principles of Investigative Documentation. Philip and host Hal Humphries discussed what we call the “Five Principles of Investigative Documentation” and how the act of writing reports makes one a more conscientious ...

Philip Becnel, our managing partner, was interviewed for an episode of ABC 20/20 titled, “The Confession?” The story documented the case of Christopher “Chris” Johnson, who in 1998 found his fiancée, Andrea “Andi” Cincotta, dead in their closet and decades later was charged with her murder. Dinolt Becnel & Wells Investigative ...

The legal field remains male-dominated, but that has been changing rapidly. Dinolt Becnel & Wells partner and part-time law student, Alexandra Becnel, was quoted in The Baltimore Banner. The article explores the surge in women in law and the reason for the increase, particularly in the context of the last ...

Alexandra Becnel published an article in the University of Baltimore Law Review called, “Eroding Atkins v. Virginia: How the Courts Are Allowing Persons with Intellectual Disabilities to Be Sentenced to Death.” The article, about how the Supreme Court undermined what should have been a bright-line rule in Atkins because of ambiguity over how to define ...

Following a guilty plea for wire and securities fraud by Danny Boice, the founder of Trustify, the now-defunct “Uber for private investigators,” The Washington Post quoted our founder, Philip Becnel.  ‘I knew it was a scam,’ said Philip Becnel, a partner at a D.C. private investigations firm and early Trustify critic. ‘I knew that there ...

Private investigator and mitigation specialist Alexandra Becnel presented a training via Zoom to the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office (SADO) in Detroit, Michigan. The attorneys, investigators, and mitigation specialists at SADO work tirelessly on behalf of people sentenced as juveniles to die in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Miller ...

Our Managing Partner, Philip Becnel, was featured on the Dream Jobs segment of the “The Why” on Newsy. During the interview, he talked about how he became a private investigator in D.C. and about different types of surveillance. ...

Managing Partner Philip Becnel was quoted in an article in The Washington Post called, “Stop enrollment fraud? D.C. school officials are often the ones committing it.” Residency fraud is when parents who live and pay taxes outside of the District enroll their children in D.C. schools. Investigative journalists for The Post examined ...

As private investigators, we’ve helped attorneys evaluate potential healthcare fraud claims against nursing homes, hospitals, physicians and other providers over the years. The vast majority of this research involves examining information already made public by state and federal agencies. But this information isn’t just for legal and healthcare professionals. It’s made ...

Only Philip Becnel could write such a stimulating article about investigative ethics. In his Pursuit Magazine feature, called “Re-examining Private Investigator Ethics in a Divided Political Era,” our managing partner divulged a never-before-reported piece of news relevant to the Trump/Russia investigation and provided a tantalizing forecast into his new novel, ...