Forget about your preconceived notion! Today, big PI firms do most of their work for the financial industry. They’re accountants, lawyers, and former FBI agents looking to uncover financial wrongdoing, stock manipulation, and embezzlement. They’re supposed to be beyond reproach. Their very names on a report throw fear into the biggest tycoons.

But based on my experience, the central casting smutmonger fits them better. In fact, I think it’s too good for them. As far as I’m concerned, the whole PI industry is nothing but a heap of excrement irresponsibly ruining people’s lives. Before you pass judgment one way or another, let me continue.

Our written report came back fine. It mentioned we were negotiating a settlement with some state attorneys general. We had agreed to refund money to some Internet customers who were unhappy with what they were getting. This was standard for our industry, though, and the negotiations with the state, the underwriter already knew, were just about amicably concluded. The report mentioned a handful of unpaid parking ticket collection disputes and lawsuits in which I’d been involved in over twenty years in the publishing business, but these had all long since been taken care of or were too trivial to be of substance. And it mentioned some ongoing IDT litigations that our attorney assured them were minor in nature. Everything seemed okay. They even gave us a copy of the report to keep.

At one point, one of the bankers asked Jim and I if we knew of any pending federal investigations of our company.

“No,” I said. “That’s ridiculous. If any investigator told you that, they’re just looking to make business for themselves by coming up with dumb leads to follow up on. Don’t you think if we were under investigation we would have heard about it?”

“Listen,” Jim told the underwriter. “I’ve been at the highest levels of government for over twenty years. I have friends in high places. They all knew I was leaving my law partnership to become president here. I assure you, if there was any investigation going on of IDT, they would have called me to give me a heads-up. And no one called. So there is no investigation. Do you understand?”

“Well, that’s good enough for me,” said the underwriter. We’d cleared the last hurdle. We were home free.

To our surprise, though, a week later the underwriter suddenly pulled out. The report was bothering them and they had some “other conflicts” they couldn’t work out right now. Maybe in a few months.