PORTFOLIO: SI’S TRACK RECORD
SI has a track record of distinction, discretion, and results. The following digests are a sampling of SPECINV cases and SI Cyber advisory engagements—demonstrating our range and depth, while preserving client confidentiality.
#MeToo Federal
A comprehensive, wide-ranging, culture-disrupting SPECINV investigation probed sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, sexual assault, failure to report, executive leadership failure, and the establishment of a hostile work environment in a major federal organization. SI’s investigators reported directly and independently to the cabinet agency’s general counsel. The investigation and its expansive report—with accountability and recommendations—never leaked.
Global Corruption
A top-tier international law firm brought SI into its legal representation for a multinational corporate client, in an emergency that lasted for months: the company’s country manager for a notoriously corrupt nation had been suddenly jailed for bribery. The SPECINV case officer, fluent in the language and culture, was on site in a dark prison within 72 hours. The case turned on locating a former government official eluding a global manhunt. SI found him. Proprietary SI Cyber methods delivered.
The CEO and the Fraudster
Directors of a major national not-for-profit harbored gut-level suspicions about a would-be donor, even where everything about the international jet-setting billionaire seemed to check out online and by their legal counsel. The Board retained SI to probe the donor in the US and EU. He turned out to be an affinity fraudster with multiple federal felony convictions and incarcerations, who preyed on his “bromance” relationship with the CEO. The investigation unraveled a complicated multi-tiered national bank and money laundering scheme, caught at its inception. The CEO did not keep his job.
Whistleblower Vaccination
A government employee (significantly, a non-practicing attorney) was about to be fired for incompetence and theft of services for regularly just disappearing while on the job. A member of multiple protected classes under federal EEOC law, she filed a complaint against her two-tiers-up supervisor to claim the protected whistleblower status that would stop the termination for cause. SPECINV was retained to conduct a thorough independent unbiased investigation. The supervisor was cleared outright. The employee was terminated . . . and did not challenge SI’s report.
Fraud Upon the Court
In a brutally-battled major civil case, a very frustrated counsel for the defendant retained SI for back-up and special operations in the US and Asia. The defendant held special access security clearances threatened by plaintiff counsel. SI’s deep probe, including our highly technical SI Cyber investigation, showed how the plaintiff—a lawyer and federal employee—had manufactured evidence, provoked litigants, falsified documents, withheld key exculpatory information from his own counsel, and outright lied to the major law firm that had just hired him. SI documented his fraud upon the court. Just settlement quickly followed.
LEO Misconduct
In an extraordinarily sensitive case, SPECINV – Special Investigations became the investigative firm retained to probe—independently and with clean hands—serious misconduct allegations against a senior law enforcement officer in command. Our LE-experienced investigative team uncovered abuses of authority, Title IX violations, actions in retaliation for complaints, firearms policy breaches, and documented a hostile work environment.
Judgment Proof: Not
The subject of our investigation had a heady fall from business grace—from chairman of a NYSE-listed company to being banned for life from the securities industry. He protected his assets magnificently through dense layers of LLCs and corporate special purpose entities in dozens of jurisdictions. With cyber work and special operations extending over three years, SI pierced the many corporate veils (including in Europe and Asia) and managed a huge cash asset recovery, the only recovery ever accomplished against a fraudster who had long considered himself—and his family—to be perfectly judgment proof.
Untrustworthy
SI’s client, a major wealth manager, was Trustee of a family trust for an elderly high net worth client in significant cognitive decline. Suspicious that the man’s son had raided the trust of cash and took fixed assets, the Trustee had SPECINV – Special Investigations perform a deep dive investigation and audit. Interviews, surveillance, historical bank record reviews, confronting the son, and intelligence operations were all required. Diverted cash, lifestyle free spending, and hard assets were located and documented, resulting in a report that took a big chunk out of the untrustworthy son’s share of his expected inheritance.
The Set-Aside
The fraudster was brilliant, crafty, politically connected, and utterly without conscience. His fraud was a complicated seven-figure surety insurance scam where he took both sides of a US government set-aside contract construction deal for cash—before the mess he created blew back on elected officeholders. The SI team unraveled the complex legal web in the case through link analysis, proprietary SI Cyber methodology, and our firm’s personal knowledge and longstanding connections—including in overseas banking to uncover highly suspicious business interests.
Texas Two-Step
The bankruptcy fraud was the famous Texas Two-Step, except that it didn’t happen in Texas oilfields where the scam was invented. The entrepreneur CEO raided his manufacturing company of cash then kept borrowing more with a cascading series of six-figure loans from his equity investor, SI’s client. Then he bankrupted the company, closed the plant, and immediately bankrupted himself (Step One). After founding a brand new start-up company in another state (Step Two), that company became incredibly successful. What a business recovery success story! Except—SI found and thoroughly documented his carefully hidden money trail, showing how the two-stepper moved that cash from the old firm to enrich . . . only himself.
Midlife Romance
She was widowed suddenly, leaving her with immodest wealth and no financial experience. Within a year she relocated, built her dream house on a farm in another state, and was distanced from her grown children. The charming man who moved in—that English accent and intellectual wit, you know—was a complete cipher. She gladly gave him money for his business ventures. A longstanding friend out of concern for her retained SI. In a sweeping investigation where SI worked with the FBI, investigators form two state AG offices, and securities regulators in the US and Caribbean, the full extent of the charmer’s scheme was exposed. He is incarcerated. She’s waiting for him.
Corruption Runs Silent, Runs Deep
The senior elected officeholder in the jurisdiction contacted SI, quietly, privately. Something just wasn’t right in a major office run by a powerful but very unsophisticated public official. There had been books written about the place and its web of enduring corruption over decades. SPECINV – Special Investigations stepped very carefully in our completely sub rosa investigation. Greed. Lies. A culture of fear. Election interference. Abuse of authority. No-show jobs. Gender discrimination. Porn on public trust computer systems. Sexual assault. The wicked deep waters there mean that there are no easy or quick fixes.
Healthcare Systems Lockdown
The executive leadership of SI’s client, a major national health care system, realized with some alarm that the institution’s far-flung systems and technology infrastructure were at risk, and possibly non-compliant with the data systems privacy requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The inquiry and customized, comprehensive ongoing solution by SI Cyber provided more than a lockdown—it gave the system the kind of deep cyber resiliency and care that is only attained from a company that has decades-experienced tech executives and board members in charge.
Trusteeship the Way It Should Be
They called the trio the Dissident Trustees. The case—involving sexual assault, Division I athletes, an inevitable coverup, teams of howling litigators, a blown investigation by an overmatched judge and a team of lawyer-investigators that went miles wide and a micron deep—was generating major heat and light in the university community and the media. SI, whose role was never known publicly, was brought in by the Dissident Trustees to probe the botched first probe and to demand answers in an increasingly toxic environment where accountability was a foreign concept. The SPECINV – Special Investigations report, including the results of proprietary SI Cyber methods, framed and formed the basis for necessary reform.
Dr. X, Tech Entrepreneur
The entrepreneur had been in the United States for decades, an eminence grise in his field. With a 1970s-era PhD from a major American university, he was always to be addressed as “Doctor.” He’d come to the US as a young man, the classic immigrant success story. The hedge fund about to invest in him contacted SI after due diligence by their law firm asking, could we possibly check him out in his native country before his emigration 45 years ago? We did. He never earned that PhD, wasn’t who he claimed to be, and his overseas business was a fraud. Our investigation required methods and sources of the Intelligence Community—going deep into his home nation, city of origin, and old neighborhood, with our SPECINV operatives in-country speaking the language in local dialect. The hedge fund saved its investment. Dr. X continues to fool others.