Kimmons Investigative Services, Inc., the Houston investigative and security firm Rob Kimmons formed in 1982, has grown from a small private investigation practice into a licensed, multi-office agency serving corporate, legal, and financial clients across the country. Kimmons, a former Houston firefighter and a retired Houston Police Chief, built the firm around a promise that clients find uncomfortable at first. The firm finishes the case, and the client hears the answer.
The firm provides corporate investigations, national and international due diligence, pre-employment screening, asset discovery, surveillance, litigation support, computer and cell phone forensics, executive protection, and countermeasures and debugging sweeps for hidden listening devices. It operates from offices in Houston, Fort Worth, Austin, and Montgomery County and works with national and international affiliates. According to the firm, more than a third of its research, investigation, and countermeasure assignments take place outside Texas.
Kimmons started his public service career in the Houston Fire Department before joining the Houston Police Department as a patrol officer. He grew frustrated as the standing of the job and the satisfaction it offered declined. He then moved into private work, first with a Houston investigation firm and then, after becoming a licensed private investigator in 1981, with a company of his own. He has been specific about what drew him to the private side. “There is a lot more variety. You can take a case from beginning to end,” Kimmons told the Houston Post. “A street cop starts a case and doesn’t know how it’s finished. We get to work closely with our clients and go forward with it.”
That approach mattered in a trade with a poor public image. Kimmons named the problem himself in an interview with the Houston Post. “Private investigators have the image of what I call the ‘sleaze factor,'” he said. “We don’t go peeping through windows.” The firm’s early work centered on child custody cases for family lawyers, with some corporate assignments alongside. Kimmons then pursued clients who did not traditionally hire private investigators. By the late 1980s, according to the Post, four in ten of the firm’s clients were banks, a share that had grown over the previous three years, and the firm had 13 investigators and clients in 41 states. “Banks are waking up to the fact that it would pay off to check out questionable borrowers before they lend to them,” Kimmons said at the time.
Those early corporate clients set the direction the firm still follows. Clients now hire it for due diligence reports, asset searches and internal theft investigations. Because the firm also handles litigation support for attorneys, a matter can run from surveillance through to expert testimony with the same team. Its 2025 rate schedule lists senior corporate investigation work at $125 an hour plus expenses and a due diligence report at $1,200 to $1,500.
The team brings decades of law enforcement leadership. Rodney Kimmons, Rob’s brother, is one of the firm’s senior investigators and is also a former Police Chief. Gary Stone, a security and investigative consultant to the firm, retired as Assistant Chief of Criminal Law Enforcement at the Texas Department of Public Safety after more than 31 years. Mitch Price, the firm’s Global Security Specialist, served with the United States Secret Service (USPS) and later headed security for a major oil company. Andy Kimmons is a licensed senior investigator with the firm. Many of the firm’s employees and consultants are friends Kimmons knows from law enforcement. “Working with my friends is a real plus, and makes my job much more enjoyable and rewarding,” he said.
The firm holds Texas Department of Public Safety license C04124 and carries insurance above the state requirement. Kimmons holds the Certified Protection Professional, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Homeland Security Expert (CHS III) credentials. He graduated from the basic and advanced schools of the Jarvis International Counterintelligence and Counter Surveillance Academy. The Governor of Texas appointed him to the State Polygraph Board, which he later chaired. In 2013, Family Lawyer Magazine described Kimmons Investigative Services as “Texas’ largest and most experienced investigative firm.”
Kimmons has also collected some of his casework in PI Revelations, a book of true case stories drawn from his career in law enforcement and private investigation. Its chapters cover marriage and divorce cases, police and court matters, business and political investigations, and the search for answers after airline crashes. A further section covers high-profile cases involving well-known public figures. The book also covers the routine side of the job, including child recovery operations, corporate fraud and internal theft.
The principle Kimmons started with more than four decades ago still shapes how the firm takes on a case, and he has put it plainly. “We prepare them for the worst ahead of time,” he said. “We tell them if you don’t want to know, don’t hire us.”
