Strange term, we know. Most people aren’t familiar with the term but if they read spy novels or watched James Bond more than once, they get the concept. It can also be known as honey traps. Femme fatales (or even attractive men) and lover’s plots do exist beyond books and movie. And we as private investigators often get asked to do this for clients. There are even some private investigation firms that specialize in this and do it routinely.
What basically happens is you hire the firm and they send out a hot looking decoy to entice your partner. They would instigate a conversation, flirt and attempt to get a phone number, set up a date or even entice them into something more intimate. Then the client would know if their partner is susceptible to cheating or not.
We get asked quite routinely if we do these investigations, and no judgment on other private investigators, but our answer is always no, we do not. Frankly, we don’t feel it’s ethical. There are also far too many factors at play for us to consider the accuracy of information gained in this kind of false set up.
Consider this. The partner may not be attracted to the decoy, they might not feel that certain vibe with them or it might just be a bad day and they don’t feel like cheating. They could already be embroiled in an affair and can’t take on another partner – yes that actually happens. Or you can take a person who under normal circumstances is faithful and has always been faithful but their self-esteem is down, there’s fighting at home, work is a mess or any other combination of factors and then you light a spark and they give in to temptation. For us, these situations are a recipe for disaster.
We tell potential clients to consider why they’d want to go this route. Are they feeling insecure about something? Has there been cheating in the past? Could there be cheating now? It’s much better, in our opinion, to observe the partner in their natural environment making decisions they would normally make to judge their level of faithfulness rather than force them into a false situation to test them. The former always yields more reliable and accurate information than the later.
So for us….honeypot is definitely a not!