Fame

You may not reach celebrity status, but you could land some pretty famous clients. Celebrities are blackmailed all the time. Everyone from Oprah to Tom Cruise to Elvis Presley have been blackmailed at least once in their lives.

Fortunately for private detectives, legal experts encourage celebrities to hire a PD to get to the bottom of extortion or blackmail issues. According to experts, the best mode of action is to give the blackmail case to the authorities if money has been demanded or bodily harm threatened. If no such demands have been made, it's better to hand over the case to a private detective.

This could be because of cases like Anthony Pellicano, who was a private detective to the stars until he wound up getting indicted on racketeering charges. Before everything went bad for Pellicano, he was famous among the elite. Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and President Bill "Did I Do That?" Clinton were just a few of his many A-list clients.

But it turns out he was shadier than most of his targets. He got into hot water when authorities found out that he allegedly recorded telephone calls made by Sylvester Stallone. He was eventually sentenced to fifteen years in jail for minor things like illegal wiretapping and running a criminal enterprise.

The moral of the story is to keep on the side of the law—especially if your client is Rocky Balboa.