Private eye who told woman about husband’s infidelity guilty of unsatisfactory conduct

Nick Mayer was hired to tell a man's wife about his affair with a work colleague. Photo / Getty Images

A private investigator who called a woman and told her that her husband was having an affair has been found guilty of unsatisfactory conduct.

The woman’s daughter was home and overheard some of the conversation which caused them both to have “severe anxiety”, according to a recently-released Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority decision.

The private investigator, Nick Mayer, said he was hired by a client who wanted the woman to know her husband was being intimate with a colleague and it had been going on for some time.

The wife complained to the authority on the basis that passing on the information from an anonymous source without any proof other than what Mayer claimed he had been told, amounted to “gossip or telling tales”.

However, Mayer told NZME in a statement that his company was hamstrung by the ethics of protecting his client’s identity.

“My obligation will always be to protect any source, who in this situation provided highly reliable evidence,” Mayer said.

He said he’d co-operated fully with the authority’s investigation but pointed out the “anomaly” within the industry that in protecting his client his company went against the authority’s review process.

Mayer disputes that he breached the code of ethics for members of his profession but didn’t dispute the facts of the incident which state that he was engaged by a client with first-hand knowledge of the husband’s infidelity but who insisted on remaining anonymous.

He didn’t undertake his own independent investigation but was satisfied that the information provided by his client was reliable.

Mayer told the authority he wouldn’t have done anything differently and was acting as a middleman to give power to the wife.

Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority head Trish McConnell said in her decision the issue was not so much how Mayer carried out the phone call, but why he accepted a contract to do it at all.

“Effectively what Mr Mayer was engaged to do was tell tales, or in the complainant’s words, pass on schoolyard gossip, without naming his informant,” McConnell said.

“It is difficult to understand why someone would engage a private investigator to do this. It is even less understandable why Mr Mayer thought it was appropriate to accept such instructions.

“I consider Mr Mayer was at best foolish to do so.”

McConnell said it was not the function of private investigators to “tell tales” or be “busybodies” and it was inappropriate for him to pass on information when he had not independently investigated the claims.

She said no matter how sensitively Mayer tried to carry out his task it fell short of the standards expected of a private investigator and she found him guilty of unsatisfactory conduct.

Mayer had already apologised to the complainant and received no financial penalty from the authority.