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As a private investigator, former Dio girl Julia Robson (2000) has busted an organised crime gang in Malaysia, reunited separated family members, conducted surveillance on cheating spouses, and done background checks on reality show applicants. She tells us more about her fascinating career. How did you become a private investigator? After school, I did a gap year in the UK and when I returned to New Zealand, I wanted to study criminology, but it wasn’t offered at the University of Auckland, so I joined the NZ Police. Even though I was still young, I wanted to become a detective. My senior sergeant at the time told me to take two years’ leave without pay to get some more life experience. I returned to the UK and ended up getting a job as a corporate investigator. I’d never had any interactions with private investigators before and I really didn’t know what they did. The company I worked for mainly investigated trademark infringement, but the cases were incredibly interesting and not the type of thing I could have worked on in New Zealand. Their clients were major fashion brands and I had to
travel around fashion fairs throughout Europe to gather information and evidence about counterfeit products and brand protection using covert methods. This could be as simple as looking for fake Disney toys, right up to posing as a fashion buyer to prove backdoor stock was being sold in Italy for unethical distribution within the UK. With my two years’ leave from the NZ Police nearly up, I was planning to go back to my police job in Auckland, but I did a detour to Melbourne on the way back. That was in 2007 and I’m still here! So yeah … things didn’t quite go as planned.
How did you set up your own investigation business? My first job in Australia was working for a private investigation firm that did all the stuff most people think investigators do: cheating spouses, locating debtors, serving divorce papers etc. I hate that
line of work as it’s very hard to get satisfaction from people’s misery. Around 2008, some of my friends started online dating. It was quite a taboo thing back in the day, so most people didn’t admit they were on there. My friends, and other clients, started asking me in confidence to tell them more about the dates they were meeting online. As a young, computer-savvy female, I was completely different to most other private investigators who were all mainly retired male ex-cops who barely knew how to switch a computer on! I realised I had quite a niche in my industry and so I started my own company, Online Investigations, in 2012. I work with an ex-undercover cop fulltime, but I have subcontractors all around the world who specialise in different areas. I call on them, depending on what the job requires. DIO TODAY
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