Haywood Hunt & Associates Inc.

Private investigation across Toronto and Ontario

Haywood Hunt & Associates operates as a private investigation and surveillance business, with a head office in Mississauga and offices serving Toronto, Brampton, Vaughan, the wider Greater Toronto Area and the province of Ontario. It works for individuals and families and for corporate, legal, insurance and government clients, and it says its work extends nationally and worldwide through partnerships with firms abroad. The firm states that it is licensed, insured and bonded, and that it keeps ties with municipal, provincial and federal law enforcement.

Who does the work

The firm's investigators come from backgrounds in senior policing, detective work, corporate investigation, military intelligence and corrections. It says its business investigations team includes former heads of national police commercial crime and stock market fraud sections, together with a senior investigator from a major Canadian financial institution. Its cyber team is led by an investigator who it says is recognized by the courts on internet and social media matters and who served in a technological crimes unit. A separate surveillance services division is staffed by retired detectives, and the firm keeps skip tracing in-house rather than subcontracting it.

Where the firm's investigators look

• Corporate investigations and risk advisory, and fraud and financial crime investigations
• Asset tracing and financial intelligence
• Workplace, employment and WSIB investigations
• Family and relationship matters, including infidelity, child custody and support payment cases
• Locate services and people finding
• Online intelligence, including online dating investigations
• Surveillance

Evidence and confidentiality

The firm says it follows a legal method so that what it collects is admissible, and it delivers findings as photographs, video and a written report prepared by licensed office staff. It also says it spends a considerable part of its budget on data protection tools and secure storage to protect client information.

Advice on choosing an investigator

The firm publishes guidance for anyone hiring an investigator. In Ontario an investigator must hold a licence and work for a licensed agency, and it advises asking to see the licence and meeting at the office. It warns that low prices often mean cut corners, that fraud work and surveillance take real skill, and that an investigator may lawfully follow someone only within the law.

Haywood Hunt & Associates Inc. is a private investigation and surveillance firm with offices in Toronto and Mississauga. It works across the Greater Toronto Area and the wider province of Ontario.

What Haywood Hunt & Associates Inc. does

• Corporate investigations: risk advice and investigations for companies.
• Family and relationship investigations: casework for individuals and families.
• Asset tracing: tracing assets and financial intelligence work.
• Fraud investigations: investigating fraud and financial crime.
• Workplace investigations: employment and workplace investigations.
• Surveillance: surveillance work, reported with photographs, video and a written report.

Customers and markets

Individuals and families, and corporate, legal, insurance and government clients.

Key facts

• Based in: Toronto, with a head office in Mississauga.
• Licensing: provincially licensed investigators, as the firm states on its site.