About Us

McGarrahan Investigations is a specialized boutique agency known for its ethics and expertise in investigations supporting law firms, businesses, investors, and government agencies in complex civil litigation and due diligence matters.

Our services are grounded in more than twenty years experience as investigators developing unimpeachable information from public records and resources, private archives, and personal interviews.

The way we develop that information goes far beyond simple open source or database searching.

  • Our backgrounds prior to becoming investigators – in investigative journalism and publishing – taught us early to be meticulous and comprehensive; to think creatively; to tell complex stories in a clear and compelling manner; and to be timely, efficient, and effective.

  • Our experience in public records research predates the electronic availability of information and is grounded in the hard work of dusty hand searches through old courthouse files, but continually has expanded as we consistently incorporate the most up-to-date tools and databases available, including, most recently, OSINT training with Bellingcat.

  • Our rigorous training in the sensitive craft of conducting interviews gives us a rare ability to connect with a wide range of witnesses, another skill that sets us apart.

We are highly skilled at conducting comprehensive fact research; identifying, locating, and interviewing key witnesses; and gathering admissible documentary evidence. We are known for precise reporting, strategic thinking, and intelligent analysis. In all our actions, we take great care to be ethical, meticulous, and efficient.

Beyond our own staff, our firm also is allied with an international network of licensed investigators experienced in a broad range of specialties, able to provide expert assistance in any matter.

Clients regularly include us in their strategic teams and often engage us on multiple cases; repeat business and client references have helped us build one of the most effective specialty agencies in the country.

CASE STUDIES

We never discuss the details of our work, but here are some examples of our accomplishments.

Product Liability

In the defense of a $300 million product liability claim concerning a fire that destroyed a fishing ship, our investigation uncovered a hidden tragedy at the heart of the case, dramatically changing the tenor of the dispute to our client’s unassailable advantage. Through detailed interviews with the ship’s crew members, we identified and located long-hidden videotape evidence of a hazing incident overseen by the vessel’s commanding officers that was taking place on the ship’s bridge at the same moment the fire was burning below decks, factually contradicting the commanding officer’s statements under oath about his prompt response to the emergency. Our client won at trial in federal court.

Trade Secrets

On behalf of a Fortune 500 company, we investigated a conspiracy by former company executives to sell proprietary and confidential financial information to our client’s competitors. By reconstructing carelessly redacted phone logs of the renegade executives that had been turned over in discovery, and through extensive investigation in public records and witness interviews, our investigation ultimately recovered a USB drive loaded with stolen financial information that had been secretly distributed at a meeting between the former executives and the competitors – irrefutable documentary evidence important to our client’s victory at trial in state civil court and to a related criminal prosecution.

Whistleblower

On behalf of qui tam counsel and plaintiffs alleging fraud related to government contracts, we have undertaken extensive research to identify and locate potential witnesses and conducted in-person interviews to provide counsel with a full understanding of the scope and quality of evidence and testimony available for litigation. In one investigation, we documented a pattern of Medicare fraud by an extended-care chain that subjected elderly patients to unnecessary surgical procedures to maximize reimbursement payments, in violation of the patients’ basic human rights. Our work in this matter assisted in the recovery of tens of millions of dollars for US taxpayers.

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

On behalf of a publicly-traded multinational corporation, we conducted extensive research in overseas public records, including business and court filings, regarding allegations that our client had engaged in business dealings with individuals connected to organized crime. Our investigation meticulously uncovered and documented a constellation of intertwined shell companies and investment vehicles involving organized crime enterprises active in our client’s field of operations, and we traced these enterprises directly to our client’s primary competitor, which was the employer of the critic who had alleged the FCPA violations. No enforcement action was taken against our client.

Background Research

In a high-stakes state court civil lawsuit, we were retained to investigate an expert witness testifying for the opposing party, a major international corporation. Through research in county-level real estate documents, we documented that the expert and the opposing party’s chief financial officer were engaged in a business agreement relating to their adjacent vacation homes – a connection neither the expert nor the opposing party had disclosed. Additionally, in a meticulous review of tens of thousands of pages of court filings, we documented that in a previous case this expert had been excoriated on the record by a federal judge for providing false testimony under oath. These results were advantageous to our client during the expert’s deposition, and the case settled before trial.

Defamation

Throughout a 20+ year client partnership with a preeminent US defamation attorney, we have led numerous complex investigations in high-stakes, high-profile cases, with notable victories resulting in tens of millions of dollars for plaintiffs. One landmark case, brought against our client in a foreign jurisdiction, concerned events that occurred in the early 1960s in a US city neighborhood that had since been completely torn down. We were able to identify, locate, and interview hundreds of witnesses who had socialized and worked in the neighborhood and obtained sworn statements from eyewitnesses providing credible relevant testimony. We also unearthed historical documentation, including items from state and city archives as well as memorabilia saved by ordinary people in their basements and attics. These witness statements and evidence were key to our client’s victory in court.

Criminal Defense

On behalf of a major corporation facing federal criminal charges of conspiracy and money laundering related to tobacco transactions, our investigation uncovered crucial facts that destroyed the credibility of the government’s main witnesses. The government’s case, brought by the United States Attorney’s office, had been based on a two-year 150-agent investigation by the FBI and DEA. Over the course of six weeks in the remote rural town where the tobacco sales had taken place, we carefully worked to establish trust and open lines of communication within the community, and through deeply informed in-depth witness interviews, we gathered the information that turned the course of the litigation. After a week-long federal trial, a jury acquitted our client of all charges.

Ellen McGarrahan

Founder and managing partner Ellen McGarrahan earned a degree in history at Yale, and started her career as a journalist at prominent newspapers in New York City, Miami, and San Francisco.

After a decade as an award-winning investigative reporter, Ellen began working as a private investigator in San Francisco, training with a high-profile international investigations consultancy in the Bay Area tradition of the “intellectual detective” – an investigator with a background not in law enforcement, but rather in journalism or creative professions requiring analytic intelligence and strong writing skills.

In 2000 she founded her own agency, now known as McGarrahan Investigations. She is licensed as a private detective in California and Illinois and works nationally and internationally from the firm’s US and London offices.

As a reporter, Ellen trained with the legendary Joe Conason atThe Village Voice and with two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Gene Miller atThe Miami Herald, developing deep experience in public records research and witness interviews.

In her decade as an investigative reporter, Ellen

  • Helped discover and document hidden real estate assets in New York that dictator Ferdinand Marcos had secretly bought with stolen wealth

  • Discovered and documented a practice of illegal physical punishment of prisoners in the Florida prison system, based on Department of Corrections records obtained under public record request laws

  • Discovered and documented a near calamity involving a tanker laden with poisonous chemicals that lost control as it approached the Golden Gate Bridge, in a story that was honored for public service reporting by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

In addition, Ellen also wrote a regular Sunday political column forThe Miami Herald, covering the state’s hot-topic issues and players. As a reporter and investigator, she has conducted thousands of interviews, talking easily with politicians, death row inmates, celebrities, or ordinary people on the street.

Ellen also is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction bookTwo Truths and a Lie, an account of her deep-dive reinvestigation of an infamous Florida death penalty case and its implications for the American criminal justice system. Published in 2021 by Random House,Two Truths and a Lie was named a New York Times Book Review  Editor’s Choice and was a finalist in the Best Fact Crime category of the 2022 Edgar Awards.