Before engaging a private investigator, talk to a lawyer

Juan Antonio Matiz Monroy — Lawyer, Universidad de los Andes · Specialist in Criminal Law, Universidad Sergio Arboleda · Professional licence 294.746 (C.S.J.)

Bogotá D.C. · Published: August 2026 · Reading time: 12 min

When someone needs to know something they cannot find out on their own, almost always the same impulse appears: engage a private investigator. Sometimes it is a criminal matter; other times a suspicion about a partner, a business associate who does not add up, an employee, a person who has to be located. With the impulse comes a half-formed idea: to have someone —or to go out oneself— and gather messages, recordings, photos and surveillance.

The intuition is understandable; the execution, almost always, is dangerous, and the damage is threefold. Information is obtained that is of no use. Legality and the chain of custody are broken —the record of who held the evidence and how it was preserved—. And one can end up committing an offence, with or without proceedings in play.

That is the paradox worth understanding before the first step. The same activity that can solve a problem makes it worse when undertaken without legal direction. The private investigator exists in Colombia, has a scope and has limits; it only works if the first step is taken with the lawyer.

1. A private investigator in Colombia: the law authorises investigation, and defines who may do it and how far

When doubt presses, people think the first thing is an investigator or a WhatsApp archive. The idea is not absurd. Someone facing criminal proceedings feels the prosecution has the whole apparatus of the State. Someone suspicious of a person close to them feels the truth is one phone away.

Within criminal proceedings, the law recognises that impulse. Ley 906 de 2004, in its articles 267 to 273, allows the person under investigation to search for, collect and package physical evidence with their lawyer. These are the objects, documents and traces that can serve as evidence. The victim, from their side, has an equivalent power.

The condition is in the same block and is usually overlooked. Article 273 subjects everything gathered to an examination of legality, authenticity and chain of custody. The power is the right to produce material that must then survive judicial review.

Outside proceedings the rule is narrower still. A private person can find out what is publicly accessible and what others tell them voluntarily. The limit is other people’s privacy and their personal data, protected by article 15 of the Constitution and Ley 1581 de 2012.

On that authority the figure rests. The private investigator is a technical professional who gathers information for a private party applying forensic science. They locate and interview people who speak voluntarily, identify and handle physical items, document visible facts and order the evidence. In criminal proceedings they support the defence or the victim; they do not replace the prosecution or the judicial police.

One misunderstanding is worth clearing at the outset. The serious investigator is not a “detective” who spies, follows people, taps phones or gets into restricted information. That image, taken from fiction, describes exactly what the law prohibits and punishes. The serious investigator does the opposite: gathers by lawful means and leaves the information in a condition to be used before whoever it concerns.

The scope in Colombia is therefore precise. Within proceedings, the investigator may do what the law allows the party under articles 267 to 273, subject to article 273. Outside them, they may document what is public and what is volunteered. In no case do they have judicial police powers, compel anyone to speak or access restricted information.

There the misunderstanding is born. The person hears “I can investigate” and understands “I can find out anything, any way”. What follows is the price of that reading.

2. Exercising that power badly costs three times over

Think of the typical case. Someone takes screenshots, records a conversation without saying so, asks an acquaintance to “get hold of” the other person’s phone, or engages someone who promises to “trace” an account. Each of those gestures has a different cost, and all three are paid even if there is never a trial.

The first cost is information that is of no use. A screenshot with no date or verifiable origin, a recording nobody can say who made, data taken from someone else’s account. None of that can be used in a complaint, in a divorce, in an employment claim or in a negotiation without exposing how it was obtained.

The second cost is criminal, and it does not depend on intention. Getting into another person’s account or phone is unauthorised access to a computer system (article 269A of the Criminal Code). Intercepting another’s messages or calls is interception of computer data (article 269C); using another’s personal data without authorisation is breach of personal data (article 269F).

The three offences were introduced by Ley 1273 de 2009 and are committed just the same where the victim is a partner, an associate or an employee. Whoever set out to find things out ends up under investigation themselves, and this time with solid evidence. Whoever engaged the investigator answers too for what they commissioned.

The third cost is the worst: the evidence that did exist is damaged. Evidence obtained in breach of guarantees is void by operation of article 29 of the Constitution. In criminal matters it is also excluded by article 23 of Ley 906. And it drags down what derived from it —the fruit of the poisonous tree—, including lawful evidence that depended on the first.

To that is added technical damage. An item handled without chain of custody, regulated in articles 254 and following of Ley 906, loses an authenticity no later expert report recovers. The phone examined before the forensic copy and the photograph taken without fixing the location are everyday examples.

The risk, then, is not in the power to investigate. It is in exercising it without anyone having decided first what needs to be found out, what it will be used for and by what lawful route it can be sought. That decision is legal, and a lawyer takes it.

3. Exercising the right requires a prior step: a lawyer’s advice

The power to investigate does not come alone. The law recognises it in the party together with their lawyer, and conditions it on the result surviving a legality review. That is why the investigator is not a substitute for the lawyer: they carry out a technical task within a plan it is not for them to design.

Without that plan, even a competent professional gathers material no one will later be able to use. The lawyer defines what has to be proved, for what and by what lawful route it can be sought. Only with that hypothesis does the investigator know what to collect and how to preserve it.

There is also a technical reason for the collection to be done by the investigator and not the lawyer. If the matter reaches, or may reach, a judge, the judge weighs only what is produced before them, with the opportunity to contest (articles 16 and 379 of Ley 906).

An object does not speak for itself: it comes in through a witness who explains how they found and preserved it. That witness testifies from personal knowledge, that is, about what they themselves saw and did (article 402). Whoever collects may have to testify.

If the lawyer collects the evidence themselves, they become a witness for their own client, and one cannot be advocate and witness in the same trial. That is why a suitable third party collects while the lawyer keeps their role intact: deciding what is to be proved and how that evidence will come in.

The exception avoids unnecessary fears. Public documents —deeds, official certificates, court decisions— are presumed authentic under article 425 of Ley 906 and article 244 of the General Procedural Code. Obtaining and producing them makes no one a witness, and the interested party or their lawyer can do it.

From all the above follows the right order. The question is not which investigator to call, but what needs to be known, what it will be used for and what can lawfully be obtained. Sometimes the answer is that the route is not an investigator but a complaint, a formal request or evidence sought before a judge.

Where the investigation is born of a consultation, the path is always the same. What to find out and for what is diagnosed; what the investigator collects and with what technique is designed. Then collection takes place under legal direction and the information is built into the strategy of the case.

The firm provides that legal direction as a service: advice on the investigation of offences, with coordination of the investigator from day one.

4. Conclusions

The law authorises investigation, but defines who may do it and how far. Within proceedings, articles 267 to 273 of Ley 906 de 2004 allow the party, with their lawyer, to collect physical evidence. Everything gathered is subject to an examination of legality, authenticity and chain of custody. Outside proceedings, only what is public and what others volunteer is available.

Exercising that power badly costs three times over. The information obtained is of no use, and unauthorised access, interception of data or breach of personal data may be committed. The evidence that did exist is also damaged. Evidence obtained in breach of guarantees is void under article 29 of the Constitution and drags down what derives from it. That is why the investigator does not replace the lawyer: they carry out a technical task within a legal plan.

Deciding what needs to be found out, for what and by what lawful route is the purpose of the initial consultation. Sometimes the answer is not an investigator but a complaint, a formal request or evidence sought before a judge. Where it is, the firm provides that direction through criminal investigation advice, coordinating the investigator. If you are the victim, that work can form part of victim representation.

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