The Freelance File: Licensing Exposure Across Three Fronts

Ranking by exposure, not by how 'small' the job felt.

1. Accepting a client outside the licensed structure (most serious). Tennessee licenses agencies and individual investigators, and investigative work must be performed under Commission-issued authority. An individually licensed employee who takes a private cash client is performing work outside the agency that employs her and without an agency license backing the engagement. This is the kind of conduct that threatens her license and the agency's, and unlicensed/unauthorized activity is criminally enforceable under the Private Investigators Licensing and Regulatory Act.
2. Directing an unlicensed person to do investigative work. The assistant's record pulls and pretext calls are investigative activity, not clerical work. It compounds problem 1 and adds a second unlicensed actor.
3. Pretext calls to utilities. Obtaining protected account records by impersonation invites fraud and impersonation exposure independent of licensing, and it contaminates any information obtained.
4. Advertising. Using an unregistered trade name and displaying a license card implies a licensed entity that does not exist and misleads the public.
5. No retainer, no file, cash only. A records and accountability problem that will look like concealment if the Commission ever asks.

Severity turns on two questions: does the conduct create unlicensed practice, and does it create a separate crime? Items 1-3 do both.

The distinction the assistant is drawing does not exist in the way he thinks.

The regulated activity is gathering information about a person for a client - the source of the information (public or private) does not change that. A courthouse terminal is not a loophole; it is a tool. Assembling a locate or background product from public records for a paying client is precisely the licensed service the Commission regulates.

What the assistant may do without a license: clerical and administrative tasks (filing, scheduling, scanning, answering the agency phone, opening mail) and, if the agency has properly registered him as a trainee or employee under Commission rules, investigative tasks performed under direct supervision of a licensed investigator. What he may not do: independently contact third parties to obtain information, use deception to obtain records, or exercise investigative judgment on an unsupervised matter.

Dana's response should be operational, not theoretical: stop the calls immediately, write down what was said on each call and to whom, notify the agency's principal/qualified manager before end of business, and treat any information already obtained as unusable until counsel or the principal decides otherwise.

1. Move or drop the engagement. Either decline the friend's matter or bring it into the agency with written authorization, a proper client contract, and the agency named as the contracting entity. Why: work must sit under a licensed agency; a side file is the core violation.
2. Stop and document the assistant's activity. Written memo of the calls, dates, numbers dialed, and what was represented. Why: if a utility or the target complains, the agency's response depends on a contemporaneous record, and the memo shows corrective action rather than concealment.
3. Correct the advertising now. Remove the license-card photo (it also invites misuse and identity theft), change the profile to the registered trade name or delete the business claims, and make no claim of a license or affiliation she does not hold. Why: misleading advertising is independently actionable and is the easiest violation for a regulator to find.
4. Create a file and accounting trail. Retainer, invoice, time records, disposition of the $400. Why: cash with no paper reads as a second set of problems.
5. Escalate and self-assess. Consult counsel and the agency principal about whether disclosure to the Commission is required or advisable. Why: voluntary correction before a complaint is filed mitigates; discovery after a complaint does not.