Case Histories

Public Records are Our Calling Card

We believe in the power of public records. We find them discreet, available, and effective—but most importantly, they empower our clients to act with confidence.  For instance, our client could put a halt to its forthcoming investment after we reported the bankruptcies, the tax liens and the lawsuits entangling its target and its principals. Still, it was what was inside these actions that provide the most insight; like admissions their firm had not been making money for two years.  We know how to track down public records.  We know how to extract vital information from these records.

The Time We Put Someone in Jail

He sat in the C-Suite.  He wrote contracts worth millions.  He thought his conflicts and kickbacks would remain hidden.  He took his ill-gotten gains and socked them away in luxury properties on both coasts.  He thought Delaware secrecy would protect him. But there were just enough crumbs online that we picked up on those properties, and then when we saw the actual mortgages, with his signatures, it did not matter if the Delaware limited liability companies existed.  There was a paper trail.  It led to civil RICO and later to federal charges, and now the former C-Suiter resides in the penitentiary.

What’s This Company, Who are These People

You base your company in international financial centers like Hong Kong and New York, but you incorporate in an island in the middle of the Indian ocean. You create a website touting investment banking services, and you include over 20 professionals knowledgeable in the art of the deal.  You flood social media with tales of your prowess, and saturate the airwaves with appearances.  What could go wrong when your firm signs a multimillion-dollar deal to invest in a technology company. Some due diligence.  Research here and in China that cast doubt on your bona fides. Moreover, we discovered your primary business was pumping obscure micro-cap stocks.

The Drone Case

What do you do when someone flies a mini drone to your office window, films inside, and then posts on YouTube with incendiary, fabricated dialogue.  Track down the culprits.  They say the Internet is forever. And you can change your domains. Get new emails, but your old activity with those usernames are still out there.  We found it.  Traced it back to a likely individual. What sealed the findings, though, was drone footage posted we could identify as his alley based on visual clues. What’s that other expression, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

North Korea, at it Again

It’s not like this company skipped the pre-employment check on its remote IT worker, but just because he passed, didn’t mean there weren’t problems.  Hackles were raised over red flags popping up.  Like the computer sent to a location 500 miles different from his “home”, and how he never could be heard clearly on Teams calls.  Now we know how North Korea is secreting workers into US companies to earn hard cash. At the time it was a big mystery who this person was.  Because we have deeper resources and more time than the basic pre-employment check, we did at least determine the employee was not the same person he purported to be.  Then, we learned he was North Korean.

A Copious Amount of Research

We do a lot of work for this client, a fund that mostly places money with top tier private equity firms. This time, however, they were looking to invest in a plant developing a hot technology. The people behind the deal had been launching companies for several decades. What would or could that history tell. Many, many pages later, we provided our client an idea what happened over that history. We looked at over twenty entities, examined tons of public records from international company filings to bankruptcy documents. Found companies not disclosed and histories perhaps embellished. It was a copious amount of research delivered to help a client manage their risk.

An Even More Copious Amount of Research

Who has his name on over 800 companies? This guy. This guy who guaranteed millions, multiple millions, to our client. And was not coming through. So, to enforce their arbitration award, our client needed to know. Know about the mansions, and the other high profile assets, but mostly the 800 or so companies. We put together schedules with all these companies and other key information, all to help the client understand who they were dealing with, and work with to get their money.

Now It Makes Sense

A company had issues with a series of contracts entered by one of its officers.  Why.  They suspected some form of collusion or relationship between the officer and the vendor.  And our research showed just that.  A deep dive into real estate documents showed hidden loans made by a company tied to the vendor to the company employee.  Armed with this information, the company could better untangle the contracts and save money.

On the Lam

After a series of big deals went awry, an entrepreneur filed for bankruptcy.  As his estate was being wound down, he fled the US, leaving behind a great deal of suspicion that a full accounting of his assets was not happening.  Instead, it was believed he secreted money away and was living overseas with these assets.  We examined his international lifestyle, using a variety of resources, to help document undisclosed assets.

You Can’t All Be Telling the Truth

In one of the oddest and most interesting cases we came across, a bankruptcy judge faced a situation where two sets of lawyers claimed to represent the debtor.  It was just one of many disputed facts in the billion dollar mess created when a Russian oligarch died while he was in the middle of setting up his corporate secrecy plan.  With tales of fake wills and newly found relatives, it was vital to do a deep dive of all the players.  We put together a dossier with biographies, a timeline, and a narrative summary to help the Court figure out the mess.

All Politics is Local

A client who participates in a highly regulated industry with a history of organized crime needed a comprehensive understanding of the political environment.  To help protect our client’s position, we monitored pending legislation.  We also provided comprehensive backgrounds of the politicians leading proposed changes and looked at those who might benefit from new laws.  Armed with such information, our client could better manage risks and preserve market share.

We Want Our Money

Winning an arbitration is only the start.  How do you get the millions owed.  You search hundreds of filings to uncover businesses.  You figure out how the businesses are connected.   You make charts showing the flow of money between these entities, and you make the case to pierce the corporate veil. That’s how you get your money.

A Long Time Ago

Company A buys Company B. Company C buys Company B and so on and so forth.  Many years later we have Company X, who has pension obligations for all the little ABC’s it’s acquired over the years.  From looking through small town newspaper obituaries to using historical marriage records, we’ve helped track down long lost relatives and others to help Company X meet its legal obligations regarding monies held. 

Deal Makers

We work often with private equity firms, both for those making investments in such firms and for such firms making investments.  We work mostly with healthcare and clean energy investors.  We do not often find stuff, but sometimes it’s a doozy.  Take one fellow trying to gin up investment in his project.  He decided to keep one of his previous enterprises off his resume.  We still found it, and we found the lawsuits associated with that old thing.  Especially keen to our client were allegations of misuse of funds and improper accounting.  That was one deal that wasn’t made.

Deal Makers Cont.

It’s not just PE firms that make deals.  A client was looking to invest in a real estate venture.  We uncovered numerous issues with his prospective partner.  We thought we had enough, but our client was anxious to move on this deal.  The arrest of the would-be partner on federal fraud charges helped sway the decision. 

Even More Deals

Back to the PE world.  A private equity firm that invests in various clean energy projects was looking to invest in a group building bio-gas facilities in the Upper Midwest.  While the individuals had clean records, our in-depth review found that issues ranging from EPA violations to an inability to reimburse a locality for infrastructure improvements plagued their last project.  This information allowed our client to make an informed investment decision.

A Credit Report is a Work of Art

We rarely have access to consumer credit reports in our research, but when we do have them, we are maestros at putting them to use.  It’s often not the obvious issues reported, it’s the subtle things one can pick up.  Like in a recent case, the employer listed for our subject on the credit report did not match any employer listed on other information we had, including the LinkedIn profile. This caused us to start digging.  It led us to a lawsuit where some heavy allegations were laid out against the person we were researching.  We never would have found these issues if we had not started looking at this mysterious employer listed on the credit report.

Needles and Haystacks

We are expert at sifting through data to find the hidden relationships and the secret connections.  Often, we surprise clients with what we uncover.  For instance, a bank, while re-negotiating a bunch of multi-million dollar loans, wanted to identify property suspected of being used as collateral on more than one loan.  The client bank knew only one fact, the name of the money-center bank where the subject supposedly had loans.  It did not know if the collateral was real property (i.e., a mortgage) or personal property (i.e., a UCC filing).  More vexing, we knew the debtor hid behind a maze of front companies and nominees.  With only the name of the money-center bank to guide us, we identified the questionable loans by creative use of online databases.

Public Records are Always There

In one matter, we made expert use of information found in litigation filings. These records helped a law firm piece together a corporate structure to support a federal false claims act claim filed in secret (under seal).  In another, we put litigation records to significant use for a client who wanted to compile information on acquisition targets without tipping its hand.  Last, lawyers wanted to discredit a witness they had heard various rumors, but they needed proof to support their cross-examination.  Deep within a multi-volume bankruptcy filing, we found the document that said what needed to be said.

Trust but Verify

Too often, resumes are padded.  Companies are created out of thin air.  Alternatively, individuals fudge their histories to avoid disclosures.  Then there was the “scion” of a wealthy foreign family promising to extend a substantial loan to a biotechnology firm desperate for cash.  Initial investigation for this client showed a series of broken promises by the investor.  More investigation uncovered a history of schemes known as “advanced fee frauds.”  Yet, what finally broke the deal was that our investigation demonstrated that the subject had no real connections to the wealthy foreign family.

International Trouble makers

A coterie of international artists and tricksters targeted multinationals for mirth and agitprop.  One company, fearing the worst, decided to know whom they were up against.  Working with a team including computer security experts, we dug deep into the identities and backgrounds of these individuals, allowing the client to react better to their pranks.

What You Learn After Reading Many (Many) Claims Files

Contrary to some conventional wisdom, not every worker’s compensation claim is suspect.  We know.  We have worked with a large insurance agency to review their claims files.  Fraud does happen.  The team was there to help the insurance company improve their procedures to fight fraud by reviewing claims files and studying their fraud investigation techniques.

Large Company Research

We research individuals and companies with no history or track record, and we research companies with thousands or articles written about them.  We regularly complete business investigation reports on substantial companies for a large professional services firm.  The trick here is not finding any information but finding the right information within the large amount of potential findings.

Expert Testimony

Attorneys have called on vital information to gain an upper hand in lawsuits.  One background on an expert witness in a malpractice suit unexpectedly discovered a string of bad business deals and allegations of fraud leveled by former partners.  Nothing beats, however, having the government’s expert witness in a tax case take the Fifth Amendment because of what we found.  The lawyers who we provided this data tidbit noted that in a previous case where the witness was not impeached, the government received a favorable ruling and that the difference between the two verdicts was about $50 million.  Finally, we put a price tag on vital information.

Training and Consultation

We developed a widely attended course for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.  We helped a mid-sized accounting firm create a new client background investigation program.  We trained a group of insurance investigators in how to find hidden assets.  Trained a group of internal auditors on non-traditional risk management techniques.  Trained another group of internal auditors on fraud investigation techniques.  We consulted with a company on employee screening procedures.  A risk management group was taught how to take better advantage of public records.

Managing Transaction Risk

Provide vital information to assist parties doing deals, managing client acceptance, making key hires, and extending financing.  Identify concealed relationships with organized crime, prior frauds committed and evidence of money laundering.  In more routine matters, identified material litigation, tax liens and judgments, related business interests and secured transactions.

It’s a Mad Mad Mad World

Our investigations have not been limited to the United States.  We have vetted international partners and reported on the risks of doing business in different countries.  One notable case involved a Swiss executive of Italian descent, located in London, who provided our client nothing more than a French cellular telephone number.  We provided a full dossier on this international executive and his various shady connections, leaving the client better prepared to do a transaction with him.  Recent projects include work in Mexico and Germany.  We compiled a dossier on one of the biggest moguls in the European entertainment business for a client.