Most growing businesses are told to take every client they can get. Mitchell Dubros, founder and lead investigator at Investigation Hotline, has spent more than three decades doing the opposite.
Mitchell was recently featured on MSN alongside four other entrepreneurs, sharing the philosophy that has guided Investigation Hotline since it opened its doors in Toronto in 1994. The rule is simple: if a case isn’t ethical, isn’t legal, or isn’t likely to actually help the client, he says no. Even when it costs him the fee.
The Cost of Saying No
Turning away paying work isn’t the growth strategy most consultants would recommend. But Mitchell has spent his career watching what happens when investigators don’t hold that line. He has seen firms overpromise results they can’t deliver, pad their credibility with fake reviews, or take on any case that comes through the door as long as the client can pay.
Investigation Hotline was built to do the opposite. That means staying transparent with clients from the first phone call, setting realistic expectations about what an investigation can and can’t uncover, and walking away from cases where the answer is more likely to hurt the client than help them.
It’s a slower way to build a business. It also means turning down revenue that a less selective firm would happily take.
What That Approach Has Built
The payoff shows up in the numbers that matter most for a firm built on trust. Investigation Hotline has grown into one of Canada’s highest-rated private investigation firms, with more than 260 genuine Google reviews, a 4.9-star rating, and an A+ accreditation from the Better Business Bureau.
None of those figures come from a marketing push. They come from three decades of clients getting what they were told they’d get, and nothing more than that.
A Case That Shaped the Approach
One case Mitchell points to involved a high-performance offshore racing boat connected to a $100,000 insurance payout. Mitchell tracked the stolen vessel to Florida and reported its location, but the report went nowhere and the boat disappeared again. Something about how the insurance adjuster handled the case didn’t sit right with him.
Rather than let it go, Mitchell located the boat a second time and moved quickly, alerting local authorities before it could vanish again. The vessel was seized.
The case became a lasting reminder for Mitchell that fraud doesn’t always originate where people expect it to. Sometimes the investigation has to look past the obvious suspect and toward the people positioned to benefit from a case going cold.
Why This Matters for Anyone Considering an Investigation
Hiring a private investigator is an act of trust, often at a moment when someone already feels like they can’t trust much of anything. Whether it’s a suspicion of infidelity, a concern about a business partner, or a missing person case, the person making that call is usually looking for clarity, not just an outcome that confirms what they already believe.
That’s the standard Investigation Hotline works to. An investigation that only tells clients what they want to hear isn’t worth the fee, and a firm that takes every case regardless of merit isn’t one clients can rely on when it counts.
Mitchell’s approach, turning away the wrong cases so the right ones get done properly, is part of what separates a firm built for one-time transactions from one built for three decades of repeat trust.
Read Mitchell’s full feature on MSN, alongside four other entrepreneurs. For more on Investigation Hotline’s approach to ethical, licensed private investigation across Toronto and the GTA, get in touch for a confidential consultation.
To learn more, contact Investigation Hotline at
