A practical guide to how a search for a fleeing debtor is conducted, which tools are lawful, and how it connects to debt-enforcement proceedings under the LEF.
Read the case file24 October 1667, Bregaglia: a man is found at the fountain with a head wound. He has spent the night there; he is carried home still alive, but cannot speak or make himself understood, and dies. A fall, an illness or an assault? One line from a parish register read with an investigator's method, and with the limits that method imposes.
Read the case fileOne line in a Bregaglia parish register tells of a nameless soldier, buried in Chiavenna in the place used for animals because he bore no «signs of the Roman religion», then dug up on the orders of the commissioner who governed Chiavenna on behalf of the Three Leagues and buried with honour in Castasegna. An old document read with an investigator's method, between political and religious borders.
Read the case fileApril 1679: a woman is found dead in the water, one Sunday morning, in the Bregaglia valley. The pastor notes that the village is full of 'various judgements' and that her husband, who has fled, 'arouses great suspicion'. Four months later another woman with the same surname is found dead in a hayloft. Two lines from a parish register read with an investigator's method, a short walk from the village where I grew up.
Read the case fileIn March 1849 a pastor notes, in German, that a man's death was, according to the doctor, 'merely hastened' by a suicide attempt with a revolver the day before. One word, 'merely', changes everything. Why did a doctor and a pastor feel the need to say so? A document read with an investigator's method.
Read the case fileMesopotamia, the Bible, Greece, India, China, the Americas, Australia: in a great many traditions the gods send the waters to wipe out humanity. Is it proof of a single global catastrophe, the memory of many local ones, or something else? I analyse the sources as I would a series of testimonies: who depends on whom, what is independent, what geology and archaeology say.
Read the case fileCinema has accustomed us to the 'criminal madman' and the profiler who reads the killer's mind. The scientific literature tells another story: most people with a mental disorder are not violent, profiling has documented limits, and psychiatric labels misused cause harm. A rigorous guide to psychopathy, schizophrenia, persecutory delusions, narcissism and paraphilias, and what they really mean for anyone who conducts investigations.
Read the case fileA vulnerable woman leaves her home in Promontogno, in the Bregaglia valley, and does not come back. Six weeks later she is found dead on the bank of the Mera, further downstream, at the foot of the remains of Piuro, the town wiped out by the landslide of 1618. A line from a 1736 parish register read like a missing-person file: what it says, what it leaves out and what it still teaches today.
Read the case fileIt is said that Samuel Colt invented the revolver by carving a wooden model aboard a ship. The true story is longer and more interesting: revolving-cylinder firearms already existed in the sixteenth century, and the modern revolver is the result of three centuries of attempts, patents, lawsuits and industrial innovation. A reconstruction of a contested invention, sources in hand.
Read the case fileAmong the lines of a parish register from the Bregaglia valley is one entry unlike all the others: a stillborn child, buried at five in the evening on the orders of the Criminal Magistrate, before three judges. What we know, what we can infer and what we cannot say. An old document read with an investigator's method.
Read the case file'Bury it in mud, pull it out and it fires.' The AK-47 is surrounded by a legend of absolute reliability. How much of it is true? The history of Mikhail Kalashnikov's rifle, the design choices that made it rugged, its variants around the world, the mud tests that disprove its invincibility, and the role the comparison with the early M16 played in creating the myth.
Read the case fileEverything we know about Atlantis comes from two dialogues by Plato. I reread them in the original Greek, with my own translation, and analyse them as I would any testimony: who is telling the story, who they heard it from, what can be verified. Then the proposed locations, from Santorini to Helike, the sceptics' arguments and those of the open-minded, among whom I count myself.
Read the case fileIn just a few weeks Switzerland has seen a data leak at the federal pension fund, 890,000 Ricardo accounts exposed, an attack on a state-owned aerospace company, a hotel whose guests are being targeted by scammers, and a record number of reports to the Federal Office for Cybersecurity. What we know, what these cases have in common, and what to do in practice.
Read the case fileAccording to a story told for centuries, a woman disguised as a man became pope in the mid-ninth century, only to be exposed when she gave birth during a procession. Chroniclers, preachers and even the builders of Siena Cathedral believed it. An investigation into the sources: when the story appears, why it lasted so long, and what a porphyry chair, a Milanese heretic and the second card of the tarot have to do with it.
Read the case fileIn photographs from the Vietnam War you sometimes see M16 rifles with a condom over the muzzle. It isn't a barracks joke: it was an improvised fix for a serious problem, at a time when the new American rifle had a terrible reputation. What we really know, where the habit came from, and which myths need debunking.
Read the case fileA three-day blackout, a valley road cut off by a landslide, a break in the drinking water supply. You don't need apocalyptic scenarios to see what emergency supplies are for. A practical guide based on official Swiss recommendations, with the full checklist and the mistakes almost everyone makes.
Read the case fileFrom 13 October 2026 Italy hosts Steadfast Noon, NATO's annual nuclear deterrence exercise. How long it lasts, which bases are involved, which countries take part, why it is getting more attention than usual and what it means for people living in Ticino. Facts only, each with its source.
Read the case fileBreathing, relaxation, posture, movement. Systema is the Russian martial art that became famous in the West after 1991, surrounded by stories of special forces and thousand-year Cossack traditions. I practised it and found it fascinating. Here I try to separate what is documented from what is legend: history, founders, principles, training, criticism and advice on choosing a serious school.
Read the case fileRead in three evenings, in an old 1971 Oscar Mondadori edition. Emilio Lussu's One Year on the High Plateau tells the story of the Great War without heroes or music: everyday death, distant generals, cognac handed out before attacks, the soldiers' revolt and a decimation. Why it is still one of the most powerful books on the First World War.
Read the case fileFirst chapter of the history of the Great War told with an investigator's method. Sarajevo minute by minute, the network of conspirators and weapons, the security failures, the documents of the July Crisis, the false reports that opened the war, and the conspiracy theories tested against the sources.
Read the case fileMy office is in Chiasso: the Mendrisiotto is where I work every day. A border region, with cases that often have one half in Switzerland and the other in Italy: debtors who cross the border, companies registered a few metres from the customs post, families split between two countries. Here is what I do, what I don't and what it costs.
Read the case fileHow Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's monarchy fell and how the Islamic Republic was born. An impartial historical analysis using investigative method: the roots going back to 1953, the timeline of 1978-1979, death tolls inflated and minimised, the Cinema Rex fire, the Shah's secret illness, the role of the West, and conspiracy theories tested against the sources.
Read the case fileOSINT means intelligence from open sources. Behind the acronym lies very practical work: finding a debtor, discovering who is behind a company, reconstructing an estate, exposing a scam, measuring how exposed a business is online. Here is what an OSINT analyst does, when you need one and what they cannot do.
Read the case fileA husband with a blue beard, a key stained with blood, a forbidden room. Bluebeard is a fairy tale from 1697, but his name has been given to a Marshal of France tried in 1440 and to a serial killer guillotined in 1922. I separated the fairy tale from the facts, as I would a case file.
Read the case fileBellinzona is the capital of Ticino and the southern gateway to the Gotthard. Requests from the Bellinzonese have a different profile from those in Lugano: inheritances involving houses and land, debtors who move north of the Gotthard, checks on builders and business partners, family matters. Here is how I work here, what I do, what I don't and what it costs.
Read the case fileMatrimonial advertisements, more than ninety false names, a notebook listing 283 women and single tickets to Gambais. Henri Désiré Landru killed eleven people during the First World War and was convicted without a single body being found. Here is the case analysed by a criminologist and investigator.
Read the case fileOSINT, HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT, GEOINT, MASINT, SOCMINT, FININT: acronyms ending in -INT tell you where a piece of information comes from. Here is what each one means, which historical episodes they come from, and which of them a private investigator in Switzerland may lawfully use.
Read the case fileA secure password is long, random and used for one account only. The rest is detail, but details matter: here is a step-by-step guide based on current recommendations, the 12 most common mistakes seen through an OSINT analyst's eyes, and a full chapter on two-factor authentication.
Read the case filePost-traumatic stress disorder has only had a name since 1980, but the suffering it describes is far older. An analysis using investigative method: ancient sources and their limits, the nostalgia of Swiss mercenaries, shell shock and Italy's 'scemi di guerra' of 1915-1918, the Vietnam veterans' battle, and what science knows today.
Read the case fileBefore Dracula there were official Habsburg army reports: exhumed corpses, fresh blood, stakes through the heart. An investigative analysis of the vampire: the sources, the science of decomposition, the archaeology of anti-vampire burials, the medical hypotheses and the collectors' fakes.
Read the case fileThe Wallachian prince who impaled his enemies, Bram Stoker's vampire count and the dead who rose from their graves in Balkan villages are three different stories, fused into a single legend only in the twentieth century. I separated them as I would a case file: who tells the story, when, and with what interest.
Read the case fileDid Jesus of Nazareth exist as a historical person? I lined up all the sources, Christian and non-Christian, placed them in time, and weighed them as I would the witnesses in an investigation: who writes, when, from what source, with what interest. With no aim whatsoever of casting doubt on faith.
Read the case fileLugano is Ticino's business hub, and the requests that come from here have a clear profile: companies, fiduciaries, partners to vet, debtors who disappear, contested inheritances. Here is how I work in the Lugano area, what I can do, what I do not do and what it costs.
Read the case fileFive women killed in Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888, hundreds of letters, more than a hundred suspects and no culprit. I reopened the Jack the Ripper file the way an investigator would: evidence, witnesses, hypotheses from the most solid to the most fanciful, similar murders around the world and a criminal profile.
Read the case fileFew witnesses, a charred body, a filmed look-alike, a Soviet autopsy full of contradictions and a jawbone kept in Moscow. I treated Hitler's death the way I would treat any case file: evidence, witnesses, chain of custody and inconsistencies. No verdict decided in advance.
Read the case fileFor half a century police officers, photographers and newspapers believed that a dead person's retina kept the face of their killer. A German physiologist really did fix an image in the eye of a rabbit and of a guillotined man. Here is what he found, why it could never work at crime scenes, and what its real heir is in modern investigation.
Read the case fileTwo chroniclers who disagree on the first patient, authorities who refuse the word plague, a city looking for culprits. The 1630 Milan plague, reread with the method of those who verify sources: the same method Manzoni set out two centuries ago.
Read the case fileA guide from a photographer and collector: the camera types, the most beautiful models (not necessarily the most expensive), the story of Soviet and East German cameras born in the post-war years, and the faults that ruin a purchase: hardened grease, light leaks, fungus, fakes.
Read the case fileSteel helmet, five-layer plate, wire cutters: Farina armour was meant to open the Austrian wire. Who designed it, how much it really weighed and what Emilio Lussu tells us about it in One Year on the High Plateau.
Read the case fileFrom 26 September 1986 to today: how Tiziano Sclavi created the Nightmare Investigator, the issues that made history, which numbers are really worth something and how to protect yourself from fake copies of issue 1.
Read the case fileA 28-year-old researcher at Irkutsk's anti-plague institute died on 2 October. Moscow speaks of pneumonia of unknown origin, the press of pneumonic plague. Separating facts from rumours, with an investigator's method.
Read the case fileFrom Arthur Scherbius's commercial machine to the Kriegsmarine's four rotors: how Enigma worked, piece by piece, why it seemed unbreakable and how it was broken, first in Poland and then at Bletchley Park.
Read the case fileFor millennia horns were a symbol of power. How did they become the mark of the betrayed partner? The main theories, from the stag to the capon, from Minos to Andronikos Komnenos, separating documented facts from legends.
Read the case fileWhere it really began, how many it killed, what role rats played and why the beaked plague doctor has nothing to do with it. The Black Death reread through the evidence of ancient DNA, and linked to the Irkutsk case.
Read the case fileFrom Paolo and Francesca to Marie Antoinette's censored letters, five love affairs that made history. Reread through an investigator's eyes: what is documented, what is legend, and what the evidence really was.
Read the case fileWhy do people cheat? Research identifies eight recurring motivations, with some differences between men and women. And in Switzerland, since 2000, fault no longer counts in divorce: when an investigation still makes sense, and when it does not.
Read the case fileRicardo has reported the exposure of names, postal addresses and phone numbers from about 890,000 accounts. Passwords and email addresses are not affected, but the data is enough for very convincing scams. How to spot them and what to do.
Read the case fileHow private investigation agencies are regulated in Ticino, what they can and cannot legally do, and how to check in two minutes whether one is actually licensed.
Read the case fileWhen you actually need a private investigator in Ticino, what it costs, what the final report contains, and how the evidence holds up before a Swiss court.
Read the case fileLimits, obligations and rights of those who conduct — and those who are subject to — observation: a basic guide for individuals and businesses.
Read the case fileWhat criminological research says about this recurring behaviour, between theory and well-known cases.
Read the case fileSome famous unsolved mysteries gave rise to techniques we still use today.
Read the case fileA journey through the military history of espionage, and how it survives in modern investigation.
Read the case filePrinciples of orientation, resource management and clear thinking under stress, adapted to everyday life.
Read the case fileThe most common warning signs of cryptocurrency and phishing scams, explained simply for employees and individuals.
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