When Mike McBride was an FBI agent in Florida in the 1970s, he and his partner were getting ready to raid the home of suspected drug dealers that had killed, chopped up and dissolved in acid an undercover sheriff’s deputy. As they approached the back of the home, they encountered something they hadn’t expected – a chain-link fence.

Forced to climb over, McBride soon found his partner stuck on the fence by his pants leg. Although funny in retrospect, McBride says now, at the time, it seemed a matter of life and death. The next day, as the pair walked the perimeter of the home, they noticed an open door in the fence only a few feet from where they had climbed over.

“Attention to detail,” McBride told a group gathered at the LaGrange Rotary Club on Wednesday. “If we’d paid attention to detail, we wouldn’t have been in that situation.”

Similarly, the suspects they arrested were guilty of missing details. When McBride took the chainsaws that officials suspected had been used to dismember an undercover officer, they appeared spotless and smelled of bleach. Once back at an FBI lab, however, simply removing the chain guard revealed all the grisly evidence necessary to show what the chainsaws had been used for.

McBride, now a private investigator, has many credits to his name. He broke some of Florida’s biggest fraud cases and one of the biggest counterfeiting operations in the United States. He was part of a handful of FBI agents in his Florida office that worked all kinds of cases, from fraud and money laundering to drugs, robbery and murder.

McBride currently works in LaGrange as a private investigator. One of the most common problems he sees is identity theft, which he said often can be stopped by simple common sense and attention to detail.

He even has some first-hand experience. Someone from Nigeria almost successfully transferred his bank accounts to a location in Texas more than a decade ago. He’s still not sure how the scammer got critical information, like his social security number, but anyone is at risk, and more so when they are not careful to destroy documents with sensitive information.

“When you get back your bank statements and credit card reports, read them, then shred them” he said. “Don’t put them in the trash or out on the side of the road. You’re just asking for somebody … to go by and go through it to see who lives there or for a con artist to rip you off.”

Many people also fall victims to scams, like messages saying they have won a lottery or inheritance. These usually involve the victim given a bad check that they cash and then wire the money to the scammer before the check is found to be false, leaving the victim on the line for the money.

Other things people can do, like stopping the mail or newspaper deliveries while they are on vacation, can help keep them from becoming victims.

“Remember, think about this stuff,” McBride said. “Don’t leave stuff in your cars, lock your windows and doors. Simple stuff you can do, but we all don’t do.”