TSCM Archives - Page 2 of 9 - All in Investigations

Not Only Do I Hear What You Are Saying, So Is Someone Else

We had a gentleman who was on the verge of selling his multi-million dollar company. He had a qualified buyer who he had been working with for several months and he was excited about the prospect of walking away from the hustle and bustle of owning a company to the sandy shores of some tropical island. In order to accomplish this, he would have to open his company finances to the buyer’s agent to verify his company was in fact viable. The buyer now showed some hesitation and didn’t appear to be as excited as in previous meetings. He had this feeling that something wasn’t right and he came to to hash over his suspicions to determine if that nagging warning was worth investigating. He [...]

Don’t be a Victim to New Scam Techniques

As much as we knew it was a possibility, we were still a little surprised here at to hear that scammers were pretending to be private investigators in a payday loan debt scheme. The incident cited at credit.com says that a caller saying he was a private investigator pressured the victim into going to the local courthouse to settle her debt. There are so many things wrong about this: Private investigators are NOT debt collectors. Our business is to uncover facts, evidence and the truth, not to contact people and collect on debts. No one from will ever call to push you to settle a debt. It won’t happen. Unless there is a court case and hearing, no one can just “go to the courthouse” [...]

Investigation Protects Employees and Prevents a Major Bad Decision in a Small Business

One thing we know here at , is that when getting to the truth is a matter of importance, you have to call in professionals – and the sooner the better. Dina’s attorney wasted no time in referring the solopreneur to a professional investigator. In the initial meeting she explained the situation: She had been a solopreneur in her accounting firm for almost five years. Her firm was growing and she started to entertain the idea of adding a partner. When Brett walked through the door looking for a job, it was like he was tailor-made to fit right in with the firm and clientele she had targeted. He was smart, technically proficient, and charming. She hired him on the spot during his first interview. [...]

Marriage Infidelity Claim Leads to Unexpected GPS Tracking

Some of the cases we get at can be pretty interesting – especially when it comes to suspected marital infidelity cases. Take for example, the case of the jealous, controlling husband who believed his wife was having an affair. Bob* and Meredith* had only been married for a year. While they were dating, Bob had been very sweet and attentive toward Meredith. But after their marriage, Bob was becoming more overbearing. He not only controlled all of their finances with an iron fist, but whenever Meredith came home late from work, he would question where she had been and who she had been with. When Meredith told her parents that Bob had accused her of having an extramarital affair with liaisons at a local hotel, [...]

Bug Sweeps Can Protect Your Confidential Information

Did you see the recent stories about the National Football League (NFL) conducting a bug sweep in the New York Jets’ locker room before their Week 7 game against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium? It was the talk of all the sports media outlets for several days, given DeflateGate and other instances in which the Patriots have been accused of potential cheating. Funny thing though the Jets said they didn’t make the request for the listening device sweep. But Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk says the electronic bug detection sweep did occur. Eventually, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy responded by saying that the NFL has conducted regular, random sweeps of locker rooms for listening devices for years. However, the league does not provide [...]

What Causes 33% of All Business Bankruptcies?

It isn’t uncommon for the phone to start ringing at at the beginning of calendar quarters - you know, January, April, July and October. We don’t always know who will be on the other end of the line – small business owners, financial officers, or sometimes an attorney. But we know why they are calling – it will be about missing money, theft by employees or employee embezzlement. That’s because quarterly reports are reviewed and something is found that isn’t quite right. Sometimes there is just a suspicion and in those cases, we provide financial forensic experts to thoroughly examine the financial records and processes. No one wants to think there is an employee stealing from the company. In other situations, there is obvious theft [...]

Covert Surveillance with Four-legged Furry Spies

Would you consider a cat or dog roaming around your business or home as a possible security threat? What about if the animal was your own pet? At , we doubt you’d even consider it. But you may start to wonder about it after reading this blog post. According to an article in The Hacker News, a security researcher with a large security consultancy firm thought it would be fun to conduct an experiment in “weaponizing” his grandmother’s pet cat to map vulnerable WiFi networks in his neighborhood. He built a custom collar for Coco made from a Wi-Fi card, GPS module, Spark Core chip, battery and leopard-print fabric. He then set Coco loose. During the cat’s three-hour jaunt through the neighborhood, the security researcher [...]

Investigation Teaches a Business Lesson to an Unsuspecting Teen

Parenting is a tough job, especially when you want to protect your child and she is a very headstrong teen who thinks she understands everything about the way the world works. At least that was the comment from a worried parent who called . Katy* got her first job at the local ice cream shop and she was so excited. She had visions of money and freedom and a chance to get her own car. Her mom, Sandra* was equally as happy. She felt this was a good step for her 16-year-old daughter to learn the value of working for your money and the responsibility of a job. However, shortly after she started, Sandra was getting “weird” feelings about the job. When she talked with [...]

Is it Employee Embezzlement?

A very depressed-looking business owner came in for an appointment at . We are accustomed to clients or prospective clients arriving emotionally charged, either very angry or hurt, but they don’t usually act like this gentleman. Once talking, he explained that he was “darn near just ready to chuck it all in.” He said he was just confounded by what he knew was going on in his company. He just needed proof of it and confirmation of how deep the damage went. Whew. He explained that because his company dealt with many clients coming in for training from out of town, he maintained an apartment for their use doing their stay. It was fully furnished and maintained. What he had discovered was that it had [...]

Not All Office Spying is About Corporate Espionage

Many times, our clients are flabbergasted after we conduct a very confidential TSCM sweep of their offices. When TSCM services are combined with digital forensics, the findings catch them by surprise. It’s not uncommon for IT departments to be asked to monitor employee’s habits in surfing the Internet. Today with so much of the business world transacting business through the Internet, monitoring has been reduced to applying restrictions and developing Internet use policies. What Sort of Investigation? One C-level executive had a problem and contacted directly. He was a little uncertain about what he wanted. There was a female admin who was giving him some weird vibes. So much so that he went to personnel to find out where she had worked previously because he [...]