About Michael Braa, Private Investigator

Michael Braa grew up in the small agricultural towns of California's San Joaquin Valley, the son of parents who worked in banking. He attended schools where there were barely enough students to fill a classroom, and the news came once a day — through the local paper or the six o'clock broadcast. That formation left a mark.

He left high school early, and two months after his seventeenth birthday enlisted in the United States Navy, serving three deployments during the final years of the Cold War.

After four years of service, he enrolled at UC Berkeley, graduating in 1993. He earned his law degree in 1997 and practiced law for over a decade. In 2008 he was disbarred.

In 2011 he founded Atlantis Detective Agency in Fresno. In 2018 it became Atlantis Private Investigations — a licensed, Native American and veteran-owned firm that has grown into one of the Central Valley's established investigative practices. The agency works with private clients, attorneys, businesses, federal agencies, and law enforcement, including the FBI and Native American tribal governments. Braa is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and is one of the few licensed private investigators in the country with formal tribal membership — a distinction that has shaped the firm's approach to tribal investigations nationwide.

In May 2022, Braa purchased the Los Banos Enterprise — a paper founded in 1891 and formerly owned by McClatchy — with a straightforward intent: to return local journalism to the community it serves. Under his ownership, the Enterprise transitioned to an all-digital operation and has grown to more than 70,000 readers on its website and over two million followers across social media, a reach that puts it well out of proportion to the size of the city it covers. Braa continues to write for the paper directly. In 2026, that work was recognized with a first-place award in commentary at the George F. Gruner Journalism Awards, administered by Fresno State — among the top journalism honors in the San Joaquin Valley. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Valley Caregiver Resource Center, a Fresno-based nonprofit supporting seniors and their families across the Central Valley for more than 35 years.

The Michael Braa Show launched in 2024 and airs on the 24/47+ App, bringing his investigative background to a public audience through cold cases and criminal matters. Braa has published two books in 2026: Why Jesus and Why Then: How God Prepared the World for a Perfect Man, and The Conductor: The Attorney's Guide to Modern Private Investigation. A cold case collection is in development.

Braa lives in the Fresno area and has four adult children.