Betrayal and more: Puglia is booming with private investigators.

"Stalking" is big business in Puglia. In the heel of Italy, from Gargano to Salento, private detectives are always in fashion, and the economic crisis, which has indiscriminately crippled all sectors for years, doesn't apply to detective firms. There are about seventy of them operating throughout Puglia, concentrated primarily in the Bari and Northern Bari areas, and in Salento.

From investigating financial fraud to monitoring company absenteeism, all the way to the more classic investigation of marital infidelity: for the private "007", in short, there is no shortage of work.

Aldo Tarricone, founder of Tarricone Investigazioni, confirms this trend. He now runs the company with his daughters Simona and Valentina, operating throughout Italy with two offices in Bari and Milan. "The role of a private investigator today is very different from what we commonly imagine. In our agency, for example, the agents are very diverse: men and women of various ages, who perform monitoring and shadowing activities, both in cars and on foot, depending on the situation. Obviously, it's essential to be above suspicion and discreet to do this job, regardless of gender and age. I don't want to fall into a cliché, but in our experience, women are often more intuitive."

What tools are used today?

"Technology certainly helps us compared to the past, allowing us to equip ourselves with innovative, increasingly high-performance and discreet equipment, such as cameras that can be easily operated with one hand, or microcameras that our officers can wear, hidden in buttons, watches, glasses, keys, etc."

I imagine you've covered a lot of stories over the years. Can you tell us about one of the most recent ones?

I can give you an example of a case in which one of our clients from Puglia suspected her husband had financed the opening of his lover's beauty salon, and on the day of the opening, our officers approached as mere onlookers, blending in with the crowd. Thanks to cameras hidden in glasses, watches, and so on, it was possible to detect that the man was not only present (though he was careful not to appear in the social media posts shared by the woman's friends and relatives), but was also speaking to those at the beauty salon, as if he were practically a partner. Smartphones are also increasingly becoming a useful tool, for real-time communication between officers tracking the target's movements, but also for taking photos and videos, always in public places, given that smartphones are now used by everyone and are therefore not an unusual device that can attract attention.

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