Rebecca Jane, 32, has snared hundreds of unfaithful partners after launching her business in Manchester back in 2009 – using techniques straight out of a spy thriller.
Recalling one of her first investigations, Rebecca said: “A woman told us she thought her husband was having an affair with his secretary.
“He was in his 50s and she was stunning and in her 20s. She put an audio bug in his bag which we could dial into.
“At one point we rung it and we could hear them having sex in his office.
“Helpfully we could hear names being mentioned so there was no doubt who it was.”
Unimpressed with the “cold and unemotional” male spies she’d hired to trail her own cheating spouse, the former property developer found a gap in the market and retrained as a detective.
“It was the lowest point in my life. As far as I was aware, there were six women behind my back he was having liaisons with,” she told The Sun Online.
“One of them, I saw him kiss her and he still pretended it didn’t happen.
“I was distraught and they [the male spies] didn’t care. I wanted someone to fix things and not let me feel embarrassed about it.”
Now, Rebecca – who is mum to Peaches, four, and 11-year-old Paris – employees 40 plus staff across three countries who track misbehaving spouses, perform background checks, set up surveillance operations and honey-traps.
“Investigation is either built into you or it’s not. I look at every situation and see what could go wrong,” she said.
“You’ve got to think of every worst case scenario. It’s an analytical brain and it ruins you in your personal life, but in your professional life it’s amazing.”
Rebecca, who follows cheats on business trips, uses social media entrapment and cameras hidden in handbags, says her client base is split 50-50 men and women.
“But women cheat more than men. Women are far more unfaithful and paranoid,” she said.
“When men ring us they tend to be right about their partner’s infidelity. When women call, they’re not. That’s the pattern we’ve seen.”
There is no typical client. “We’ve had people take out loans to hire us,” she said.
“People can’t afford it but they see it as a necessity. We’ve also had the extremely wealthy.
“We’ve had a lot of celebrity clients – pop stars, footballers, household names…”
The team’s first case involved a woman who was convinced her husband was having an affair with his secretary.
“She was lovely but I thought she was just paranoid,” Rebecca said.
“This PA was really stunning and her husband was not. You’d never put them together.”
The agency used a small device that was able to record conversations to track his movements, which his wife had dropped into his work laptop bag.
“It was too emotionally draining for her so she asked me to ring up and monitor it,” Rebecca said.
“The normal working day went by and it was fine, then mid-afternoon they were literally having intercourse as I rang in. He actually said her name. It floored me.
“She was right all along – but it’s got crazier since.”
Rebecca’s weirdest case involved a gay man who asked the agency to trace his ex-partner who had stolen money from him.
“It turned out he was a transsexual who was working as a prostitute,” she said.
In eight years, there’s only one case the detectives haven’t been able to solve.
They specialise in honey-trapping – using a romantic connection to get information out of a person – and despite critics calling the practise unethical, Rebecca says it’s crucial.
“Many people think it’s a bad thing but we use honey-trapping to find missing children,” she said.
“We had a case recently where a dad had not seen his son for seven years. We honey-trapped the mother and found the son as a consequence of that. That’s now all going through the courts.”
Rebecca blasts pre-conceived ideas that they use femme fatales to lure in naïve men.
“It’s not Page 3 stunners. That doesn’t happen. We have to pair people who would naturally pair in real life,” she said.
“We’d never put anyone who is out of someone’s league. They have to be paired in height, lifestyle, appearance. There’s never any physical contact.”
Rebecca doesn’t feel guilty about the honey-trap stings, saying: “At the end of the day I just think they’re only going to do what’s natural. We don’t force situations. I don’t feel guilty for it.
“I’ve said it time and time again – if you’ve got nothing to hide, what’s the problem?”
Rebecca says spouses most often cheat with work colleagues or family friends, and spring is the time people tend to play away.
“It’s our busiest time. That’s when everyone comes out of hibernation,” she said.
“There’s generally a lot of devastation around Christmas. A lot of paranoid people find presents that aren’t for them around Christmas.
“In spring they all come crawling out of the woodwork. It happens every year.”
The team, who work on hundreds of cases every year all over the world, charge £50 an hour for surveillance – but their costs can run into the thousands depending on the techniques they need to use.
They’re yet to be rumbled during a sting – everything they do is legal and above board – but nosy neighbours are their biggest problem.
“Neighbours call the police on us. The person you’re investigating will never see you but the neighbours will rumble you. When they come up to me and ask what I’m doing I can’t tell them which sounds worse,” she joked.
Rebecca, who is currently dating after splitting from her second husband, will go to any length to get answers.
“I once sat in the porch of a derelict building in the middle of winter – it was snowing – to spy on this multi-million pound mansion,” she said.
But it’s all worthwhile when she gets answers for her clients.
“A lot of people are convinced by their partners they’re going mad and it’s all in their heads so when we tell them they’re right there’s sheer relief,” she said.
“There’s a lot of tears but there’s tears of relief and they can move forward.”
