I sat down at the start of 2023 convinced it would be the best year ever.I was wrapping up a huge month.  One with several days over 15 billable hours.  I was cranking out memorandum upon memorandum on companies and individuals at a frantic pace. While dealing with family issues, it made the output more notable.  I was on a roll. The forthcoming year was also a milestone birthday year. I had friends retired or retiring.  I had other plans.  I was convinced I could, would, build off of the late 2022 successes.  I was not ready to give in or give up, but rather triple down.  As I say, every day brushing my teeth, more cases, more clients, more known. As 2023 draws to a close, it was not the best year ever.

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The dominant form of teaching and presenting Open-Source Intelligence, “OSINT” is via tables/charts of lists.  If you need domain information, you go here, people stuff, go there.  30 years of practicing OSINT, I can tell you it seldom works that way.  I find my people information in lawsuit documents.  I find company ownership by reading the news. That UCC thing that shows up and you wonder what it means, I find it shows unknown relationships between companies. You have to know what you are looking for; have a good sense of what documents matter and have the ability to rampage through lots of records.  That’s how I think you should research.

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Everything you need to do OSINT is listed below. Just memorize these four steps, and you, too, can be an OSINT practitioner.

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You hear people talk about the smell test or sixth sense or “after so many searches, I just know.” The truth is, you don’t. You just get better at figuring out accuracy, authority, legitimacy.

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The spark for this post came via ace investigator and colleague of mine, Steven Mason. His post. He wrote about data hierarchy—go read it, there’s some really good points. What makes the post even more valuable was that it drew in some disagreement. A commentator wrote, “I respectfully disagree with your take on OSINT. Data and intelligence are not synonymous, nor are credibility, authenticity, and value.” My initial thought was this is gobbledygook. What is data. What is intelligence. It is an interesting and confounding rabbit-hole.

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After a long time on hiatus, I have something to write about. No, I’ve had a lot of things to write about, but some interesting things I found in a recent assignment really prompted me to get out the ol’ blogging tool again.

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This is a pause. A delay. as I attend to pressing matters. Writing here is a luxury, a luxury I cannot afford at present. Yet, I shall return. My hackles will be raised by some form of “OSINT” list. I will rant. I will rave. Just not for a while. I believe I have much to offer the public record researcher, the online searcher, the Internet maven. Soon. Thanks for reading in the past, and please stop often by to see when I’ve started back up.

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The Oscars this year don’t arrive until March, at which point we can say award season is finally over. It also means we have time to nominate ourselves for some special work last year. My research over the year was as basic as looking up names at the Cook County Circuit Court, Criminal Division to a deep dive that had us looking at items from the 1970s.  Look at the nominations and tell me who you think wins an award.

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I spent the last six weeks of 2022 primarily on a big case. Lots of people and companies to research. What d’ ya got was being asked of me over and over and over. And one of the biggest, really the biggest, gots we got; well, it did not come by accident, but we did kind of stumble into it.

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There will be a lot of posts from a lot of people in the coming weeks, months, years on FTX because schadenfreude and the Emperor’s New Clothes never lose their satisfaction. There will also be lessons to learn. One that’s already clear from FTX – think hard about who you want to research when setting your due diligence scope. Who you research will have a major impact on what you find. When the question comes, what d’ya got, the answer will be, it depends on who you searched.

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You’re only as good as your findings. I tell people this all the time. Return a set of searches with findings, from mundane criminal convictions to spectacular instances of mob activity, the client is thrilled. You did a good job. It bugs the heck out of me that researchers are rated this way. I retort, you go to your doctor for a check-up. She’s says all’s well, great numbers. Do you object? Question the work? It’s not my fault you wanted to do business with someone absurdly clean. Or were they?

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PACER is a one stop tool for court searches. You can find cases. Then, you can dig into the case records for more information. It can also be exasperating.

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To Google something these days amounts to no more than putting words in the search box. Maybe you put words in quotes. There was a time when it took more to search. It was not learning Cobalt, but you did need to know the little ins and outs of search. Still, knowing how to construct a proper search is not what makes a good researcher. You have to do your homework.

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Researchers have access to a humungous amount of materials via online databases. So many sources can produce so many articles. How do you get to the right articles. Do you do a negative news search? A negative news screen, however, may not always be the best way to find negative news. I have a few other ideas.

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I have a post to post on the dangers of relying on negative news, but researching on that post got me thinking about thinking, and next thing you know, I’m writing about an old web site and how we, as investigators and researchers need to be aware of our flawed thinking. In other words, I’m right and my wife’s not.

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I understand why many fear Comprehensive Reports.· Clients will rely on them instead of using good research. Unscrupulous players will package up the reports and call it due diligence. Moreover, I understand that the reports have limitations and failings. Yet, there is no reason to not run these reports as often as your search budget allows.

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It’s been a long time since blogs had their heyday. Blogs were ongoing conversations. There was a sense of dialogue, creating an ongoing string of information, that I miss. I’m forced to be my own blogosphere. React to what I wrote last week. More on the Global Dataase.

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I recently came across a good post on the limitations of Global Databases. Moral: they re not as comprehensive as you may think or as accurate as you hope. Big is not always best, but big data matters a lot in research. I’m a fan of Global Databases. Saves an enormous amount of your time. Provides connections and insight you may not see on your own; points you where to look, and gives you information you may otherwise not have.

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Year end, we look back at some of the things we did well.

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“Providing vital information to manage risks and react to unforeseen events”—I came up with this motto when I opened my research shop a long time ago. And a long time ago, nearly all the people and companies the vital information was about were in the United States. Looking up a company in Russia or China or Australia did not happen often. When it did, it was a production, an event, and especially, a large bill. These days, there is a greater need to look at companies and individuals from around the world, but also a greater ability to collect public information from our US based desks.

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