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October 21, 2026 · By Martekei Plange

How to Hire a Private Investigator in Tampa

To hire a private investigator in Tampa, verify two Florida licenses before you talk about the case, then put the question you need answered in writing. The person who will do the work should hold a Class C private investigator license. The business you are paying should hold a Class A private investigative agency license. Both are public records. A confident voicemail is not a substitute for either one.

I am Martekei Plange, owner of Aftermath Investigations in Tampa. The firm brings more than 23 years of combined investigative experience, and I am a member of the Florida Association of Legal Investigators. This is the checklist I want a new client to use on us, and on anyone else they call. It is general information from our practice, not legal advice. If you have a lawyer, that lawyer decides what the case needs.

What you are actually hiring someone to do

Section 493.6101, Florida Statutes, defines private investigation as obtaining information about specific kinds of matters. The list includes a person’s identity, habits, conduct, whereabouts, and character; the credibility of a witness; the location of a missing person or an heir; the recovery of lost or stolen property; the cause of a loss or injury; and evidence to be used in a civil or criminal case.

That is a fact-finding job. It is observation, research, interviews, and a written record. It is not a promise that a spouse will be caught, that a missing person will be found, or that a judge will rule a certain way. When a firm guarantees an outcome, treat the guarantee as a reason to slow down.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services licenses this work under Chapter 493. FDACS is the agency that can tell you whether a license is current. Start there: Search for a licensee.

Class A, Class C, and the intern license

FDACS publishes the classes in plain language, and the statute says the same thing. Any person or company in business as a private investigative agency needs a Class A license, and that license covers one location. Any individual who performs the services of a private investigator needs a Class C license. An intern who does investigative work needs a Class CC license and must work under the direction and control of a sponsoring Class C, Class MA, or Class M licensee. Section 493.6116 says a sponsor may not let an intern operate independently.

A Class C applicant has to show two years of lawfully gained, verifiable, full-time experience or training in investigative work or a related field. No more than one of those years can come from college coursework or law-enforcement training. The applicant also has to pass an examination on Chapter 493 before applying. Those requirements are in section 493.6203. They are why “licensed” means something more than a business card.

Individual licenses such as Class C are valid for two years. A Class A agency license is valid for three years. Section 493.6111 is the source for those terms, and it also says the agency license number has to appear in print advertising and in any written bid or offer. Ask for the number on the proposal, then check the expiration date on the FDACS record. A license that existed five years ago is not the question. The current record is.

Our own numbers are agency license A1900174 and investigator license C3100582. On the FDACS search, a one-letter license is entered as the letter, a space, and seven digits, so the lookups are A 1900174 and C 3100582. Individual home addresses and phone numbers for investigators are restricted from the public record under section 493.6122, so the search will not hand you a home address. It will show you the license.

How to look someone up

Use the FDACS page linked above, or the Division of Licensing search at licensing.fdacs.gov. Search the person and the agency. While you are on the site, read FDACS’s own description of private investigation licenses so you know which prefix you are looking at. C is the investigator. A is the agency. CC is the intern.

Then ask the firm to confirm three things in writing:

  1. The Class A number, the Class C number of the person assigned to you, and the expiration dates.
  2. Whether a Class CC intern will do any of the work, and the name and license number of the sponsor who directs that intern.
  3. The office address the Class A license covers. A Class A license is for one location. If the pitch is a post office box and a phone that never answers, keep going.

You can also read who owns this office and compare that page with the FDACS record. The public record and the marketing page should describe the same person and the same agency.

Questions worth asking before you pay

A useful consult is short and specific. These are the questions that change the quality of the hire:

  • What question will this investigation try to answer, in one sentence?
  • Which methods will you use, and which methods will you refuse?
  • What do you need from me in the first week, and what should I stop doing myself?
  • What is the retainer, the hourly rate, and which expenses are extra?
  • How often will you update me, and who else will see the file?
  • What will the written report contain, and can my attorney receive it directly?
  • If the useful answer arrives on day two, do we stop, or is the time already sold?

Bring a one-page timeline, the names and addresses you already trust, and any court date. If a lawyer is in the case, ask the lawyer whether the investigator should take instructions from counsel. We would rather work from a lawyer’s scope than from a late-night theory that has to be walked back.

Florida licensing rules treat an unauthorized release of information gained in this work as a ground for discipline under section 493.6118. Ask how the file is stored and who receives updates. A court order or another legal duty can still require disclosure. Confidential does not mean invisible to a judge.

What the first payment covers

Most investigations at this office start with a retainer of $500 to $2,500. The retainer is applied to billable time and expenses. It is not a flat fee for a result. October 2026 starting rates are $100 an hour for a standard investigation, $150 an hour for a complex investigation, and $95 an hour for surveillance by one investigator. A two-investigator surveillance team is $175 an hour. Travel time is $85 an hour, mileage is at the IRS rate, and tolls or parking are at cost. Report writing is included unless the report becomes extensive, in which case report time is $85 an hour.

Those figures, and the surveillance half-day and full-day blocks, are on the October 2026 price list. A longer explanation of how a Tampa case is budgeted is in how much a private investigator costs in Tampa. Get the rate and the retainer in the same email as the scope, before anyone goes into the field.

The consult itself is free. Call 813-372-1672 or use the contact page. Office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, at 4412 Orient Rd Ste 1, Tampa, FL 33610. We work cases statewide.

Offers a licensed investigator should refuse

Chapter 493 and the criminal law draw lines that a retainer cannot move. The longer explanation is in what a private investigator can and cannot do in Florida. The short version, for the hiring decision:

  • Section 493.6118 makes impersonating a law enforcement officer or another public official a ground for discipline. That includes a badge, a uniform, or lights meant to look official. Amber lights are the narrow exception the statute names. Anyone who offers to “flash a badge and make them talk” is offering a licensing violation.
  • Section 934.03, Florida Statutes, makes it lawful to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication when all parties to the communication have given prior consent. Secret audio of a private conversation is the request we decline. Video of activity that can be lawfully observed from a public place is a different assignment, and it still has to be scoped.
  • Section 934.425 prohibits a person from knowingly installing or using a tracking device or tracking application on another person’s property without that person’s consent, outside a list of narrow exceptions. Those exceptions include certain law-enforcement uses, a court order, and an owner or lessee tracking that person’s own vehicle. They do not include a general permission slip for private investigators. The statute also presumes consent is revoked when the people involved are married and one of them files a petition for dissolution of marriage, and when either person seeks an injunction for protection under the sections named there. Court-ordered monitoring is a separate service and follows the order. We do not quote a homemade GPS price, and we do not hide a tracker on a car you do not have authority to track.
  • Hacking an email account, a phone, or a social media login is not an investigative method. Trespassing and taking documents from a home, a car, or a desk are not either.

If a proposal leans on any of those, you do not have a pricing problem. You have the wrong firm. Illegal shortcuts can hurt a custody case, a fraud case, or a civil claim, and they can create a separate problem for the client who asked for them.

Reports, testimony, and your attorney

Ask what the report will look like before the surveillance day, not after. A usable report states the date, the time, the place, what was observed, and what was not observed. It separates observation from guesswork. Photos and video should match the narrative. Your attorney, if you have one, should be able to read it without calling us to translate adjectives.

Investigators can testify about what they saw and how they documented it. The court decides what comes into evidence. Our October 2026 court rates are $150 an hour for testimony, with a three-hour minimum, $125 an hour for deposition preparation, and $250 an hour for expert-witness services. Those rates are on the court and legal section of the price list. Hiring an investigator does not hire a lawyer, and it does not hire a particular ruling.

For family cases, the useful work is usually a pattern: where a parent was, who was present in public, whether a schedule matches what a pleading says. Your lawyer should frame that question. We can plan custody investigations and infidelity investigations around it. For a locate, say whether you need a current address for service, a welfare check on a missing adult, or an heir search. Those are different jobs, with different public-record paths. Skip tracing starts at $125 and is described on our skip tracing page.

A simple way to compare two firms

Put both proposals next to each other and score only what you can check:

  • Both license numbers resolve on FDACS, and neither is expired.
  • The proposal states the question, the methods, the retainer, the hourly rate, and the expenses.
  • The agency license number is printed on the proposal, which is what section 493.6111 requires of a written offer.
  • The firm will say no to hacking, secret recordings, impersonation, trespass, and an unauthorized tracker.
  • You know who does the work, who gets the updates, and what the report includes.

Price is the last line you compare, not the first. A lower retainer that buys an unlicensed freelancer is not a savings. Our services page is the map of what this office actually takes. If your matter is a LiveScan appointment rather than an investigation, that is a different counter and a different price, covered in Level 2 LiveScan fingerprinting in Tampa.

Sources

The statute links are the Florida Senate’s 2025 publications. Check the current section if you are making a legal decision, and ask your attorney when a court case is already filed. The prices in this article are Aftermath Investigations’ October 2026 published starting rates.