Private Investigator Ken Gamble

For more than two decades international private investigator Ken Gamble has been successfully tracking and capturing some of the most elusive con artists and fugitives in the world. From kidnapping to fraud to financial scams that total in the millions, Gamble has stayed one step ahead of the competition leaving a trail of criminals behind bars.

Most recently on May 11, 2009, the powerful combination of Gamble’s unwavering commitment, expertise and heart resulted in the return of a young girl into her Australian mother’s arms after she was kidnapped by her Egyptian father at the age of four. Gamble first learned of the case in April 2007 when the story aired on Australia’s A Current Affair when he watched the segment about a fruitless effort to find and rescue a little girl kidnapped by her strict Muslim father and living in hiding in Egypt. Gamble knew that he not only could but had to do something to help right this tragic wrong. Gamble was retained by the show to work on the case and started a long and complex search with the desperate and heartbroken mother, which ultimately led to the rescue of her daughter.

Sometimes my job brings me into contact with people who are not entertainers. I recently had the opportunity to work with private detective Ken Gamble. He was in Los Angeles taking care of some business and needed new photos, so of course I am available to anyone who needs pictures for any reason. The native Australian visited with me after our session and I learned a little about what it’s like to travel the world over spying on people.


AM: Hello Ken, Do you think you have developed a good sense of intuition from being a private detective?

KG: It’s funny you ask that because it does happen after years in the business. You actually develop a sense of intuition that is almost psychic. You get feelings about things and you go looking for different avenues and different leads. It’s built over years and years of watching, analyzing, and researching.

AM: Can you tell when people are lying?

KG: No…I don’t think any human being can tell if someone is lying. Certainly with some people it is more obvious than others. One of the things I have learned with my job is you can never tell when someone is lying. I’ve had some of the greatest Conmen on earth lie to my face and anyone would believe them. I don’t even believe in the lie detector test. In many countries in the world lie detectors are not admissible because people can beat them.

AM: Did you start off as a private detective or did you do something else?

KG: Originally I wanted to be in the police. I spent three years in the Army reserve as a young man. I wanted to be in the police, but I left school in the year ten when I was fifteen. I didn’t have the education to go into the police. At that time you had to have a year twelve education so I was not qualified educationally.

AM: Did realize you wanted to do something like that?

KG: I was always fascinated by detective work, spying on people and following people. I saw an ad in the paper one day about private investigation and that sparked my interest.

AM: What did you do to get started at this point?

KG: I started researching it without a hope that I would ever get in the business. Then my great uncle came to visit one day and he was in it for over twenty years. He asked me if I would consider getting into it. I said, ‘I would love to Uncle Ray, but how do I do it?’ He said, ‘Let me make a phone call.’

AM: Who did he call?

KG: He got me an interview with an agency in Sydney. I produced all my references and background. They were looking for young recruits at that time for training in surveillance. Once I got started I was put on a team with ten guys who were doing a lot of work on the Italian Mafia families that were doing insurance fraud.

AM: What cons were they doing?

KG: We discovered all these people that were setting up car accidents and claiming neck injuries. It was a multi-million dollar business. I was trained on the job by a lot of experienced men.

AM: What did you do then?

KG: I built up my business all through the nineties and I was one of the first private detectives in Australia to be hired by the Commonwealth Government. Only twenty companies in all of Australia were selected and I was one of the first.

AM: That is amazing. When did you start working internationally?

KG: Towards the late nineties I started getting involved with over seas work. I love the challenge of international work. I went to China and was asked to teach the Chinese people how to use hidden cameras and things like that. I did the same thing in the Philippines. I taught a bunch of people how to do covert work like take photographs and videos without being noticed and how to work discreetly.

AM: Is your job as glamorous as people think?

KG: That is an interesting conversation point. The glamorous side of what I do is traveling around the world like Dubai and staying in five star hotels and running operations hiring BMW’s and drivers. It all sounds glamorous when you think about it. Some of the places I go are so exotic and expensive so from that point of view people see my job as glamorous. There are points in my life when I am traveling and staying in places that people pay a lot of money for and I am having it all paid for and I am getting paid because I have to interview someone about a case. It’s incredible!

photos by Alan Mercer