These are the jobs cheaters are most likely to occupy

Madeline Smith has carried out over 5,000 tests in the past three years – catching hundreds of men willing to be unfaithful in the process.

She uses a range of techniques including contacting them on social media. Once a man replies, she screenshots all the evidence and returns it to the suspicious woman who pays as little as $65 for her services.

And as requests continue to flood in, the 30-year-old has revealed that police officers occupy prime position on her cheating list.

This chimes with a survey by affairs website Illicit Encounters which also had police officers as guilty of being the biggest cheats.

She said: “It’s service people like firefighters, police officers, military personnel and paramedics that are mostly likely to cheat in my experience.

“I’ve probably caught over 100 police officers since I started doing this. That’s the most likely profession to cheat in my experience.

“They’re always looking for an opportunity and they’re only as loyal as their options or perceived options.”

After police officers, Madeline said personal trainers and gym-going guys were second most likely to cheat.

“If I see a certain kind of profile, I know that they’re a cheater,” she said.

“Personal trainers and gym people fall into this category. The ones who post progress pictures or ones where they’re flexing their muscles.

“A gym picture here and there is not a big deal but when it’s their identity it’s a huge indicator.

“I find that when people post loads of photos of themselves travelling and they’re the only ones in the photos it’s a red flag.

“They’re probably with someone, most likely their significant other, but they don’t want anyone to know.

“Why? Because they’re probably cheating.”

Personal trainers were followed by business and sales professionals who travel a lot for conferences and therefore have “opportunities to cheat”, she explained.

“A lot of these people work in sales or travel for business,” she explained.

“Cheating gives them a sense of feeling invincible and I think they compartmentalise too much.

“Their family life is their family life and if they’re travelling they dissociate too much and it justifies their behaviour in their eyes.

“Those guys aren’t usually super active on social media. Their attention is focused on their jobs and social media doesn’t really do anything for that.

“Plus it’s easy to meet people to give them attention if they’re going out to dinners or bars for work a lot.”

Next up was lawyers who Madeline said adopted a “work hard, play hard” mentality.

This meant that they often took longer to reply so you have to place a “patient game” to catch them.

Doctors came in last place and were not high on Madeline’s list, something she puts down to the long hours they have to work.

She has only contacted a few, including several dermatologists and a few plastic surgeons, but found that they “are usually more at risk of cheating with the staff they’re working with”.

She spoke as Illicit Encounters – the UK’s biggest affairs website – released its top cheating professions of 2024.

In it, an astonishing 63% of police officers admitted to playing away in the last 12 months.

This represented a whopping 21% more than general builders (42%) who lay in second place, according to a poll by the website.

Salespeople (37%), personal trainers (31%) and roofers (28%) lay in third, fourth and fifth places respectively, the affairs website found when it surveyed 1,400 members last month.

The most loyal profession was carpenters with less than one in 10 (9%) admitting to cheating. They narrowly beat scientists (11%) and parking attendants (15%), according to the poll.

Responding to the finding, Jessica Leoni, the website’s resident sexpert, said: “They’ve got to be rough and ready for their jobs and it looks like they’re not different with their love lives.

“We always knew that police officers liked to play the field but even we were surprised by how many admitted to having an affair.

“We haven’t been able to say why. It might be down to them working shifts that gives them more opportunities to cheat.

“Whatever it is – two thirds of them are up for it, whether they’ve got a partner or not.”

Concluding the findings, Madeline, who lives in Los Angeles, California, explained why she thinks so many men cheat despite being in seemingly happy relationships.

“A lot of the infidelity and seeking outside of the relationship is about not having the right partner or not being happy with themselves,” she said.

“It can also be because people aren’t patient enough to find the right person or patient enough with themselves to realise that they need to do a lot of work.

“They need to have a lot more emotional awareness because people who are content with themselves, even if their partner is cheating or doing something, the first thing they are going to do is take the time to heal and feel better about themselves.

“They are not going to go and find someone else straight away.

“I think in general people are severely emotionally stunted and men much more so. They look for an opportunity because they have historically never had to be accountable for their actions.

“Women usually fixate on one person to compensate for all their emotional discrepancies and try and fix them despite knowing deep down they’re unlikely to change.”