Last year I wrote about the Tort for Negligent Investigations and how this would reach out and touch a Private Investigation firm in Canada soon.
Private Investigator Sued
The Ontario Court of Appeal has expanded the tort of negligent investigation to allow employees to sue private investigators hired by employers to probe suspected wrongdoing in the workplace. The unanimous ruling by Associate Chief Justice Dennis O’Connor and Justices Marc Rosenberg and Kathryn Feldman extends the newly created tort of negligent investigation to private investigators. This tort was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 2007 as applicable to police.
In Correia v. Canac Kitchens, 2008 ONCA 506 & [2008] O.J. No. 2497, the court has imposed a new duty of care regarding investigators. The plaintiff was an innocent employee mistakenly fired and arrested for theft following a private investigation launched by his employer. His name was confused with that of another employee with a similar name. The sequence of events that led to erroneous identification of Mr. Correia is summarized in the chronology in paragraph [8].
Every Private Investigator in Canada should pay close attention to this case and the circumstances that gave rise to it.
Competitive Intelligence, Investigations, & Due Diligence
Starting a competitive intelligence research project, an investigation, or due diligence research usually entails a detailed look at the corporate filings, share structure, and accounts of the target or subject company.
Great Britain
On the island of Great Britain, there are two separate registries, one for England and Wales, and another for Scotland. Both of these are operated by Companies House. The accounts and filings for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland take the same format.
Ireland
On the island of Ireland, the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment of the Northern Ireland Government, (DETINI) houses the corporate filings and accounts. Corporate filings in the Republic of Ireland may be obtained online from the Companies Registration Office.
Channel Islands
On the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey the corporate filings are handled at the Jersey Financial Services Commission and the Guernsey Registry. Jersey and Guernsey are tax havens, and companies incorporated there do not normally file accounts.
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man is a tax haven, and companies incorporated there do not normally file accounts. The Companies Registry holds corporate filings, and is part of the Financial Supervision Commission. Continue reading ‘Corporate Filing Searches on the British Islands’
A good example is the NNDB Network Mapper. The NNDB Network Mapper contains relationship data for over 32,000 individuals and organizations and allows you to view their connections with a high degree of granularity.
Using visual tools like NNDB will make competitive intelligence and investigations easier to manage as this type of software becomes more refined and common.
This is not a new issue. A 2004 PC World article described the technology. In February, 2008, I wrote about the EU concerns that these secret printer ID codes may break EU Privacy laws. The EFF has a list of the printers that print these secret codes used by the US government to match a document to the laser printer that produced it.
Another article about this appeared in USA Today a few days ago.
Printer dots raise privacy concerns
The dots, invisible to the naked eye, can be seen using a blue LED light and are used by authorities such as the Secret Service to investigate counterfeit bills made with laser printers…
Privacy advocates worry that the little-known technology could ensnare political dissidents, whistle-blowers or anyone who prints materials that authorities want to track.
The dots are produced only on laser devices and not ink-jet printers, which are most commonly used at home…
As an investigator, this might present an opportunity if the dot pattern is consistent enough to be matched to a particular printer or printer type without being able to decode the dots. If this were the case, then you might not need the ability to decode the dots in some instances. For example, at a company with many different types of laser printers. The process of elimination might indicate which printer(s) could have created a document.
An interesting study that found that 87% of data breaches are the result of incompetence and carelessness.
Another study shows that a large disconnect between the executives tasked with protecting customer data and marketing departments, which use the data for advertising purposes or share it with third parties.
a third of marketing execs said they don’t place any limits on the data they share with third parties, such as e-mail marketing agencies or online advertisers. By contrast, 75% of privacy officers believe that their companies limit the sharing of customer data.
These findings are a good reminder that asking questions will yield useful data that they shouldn’t divulge. It’s all in how you ask the question.
In Canada, it is rare to find somebody with two Social Insurance Numbers (SIN). Where this happens it may be a case of clerical error or a reference to a former SIN appropriated by an identity thief. The former reason is extremely rare. In thirty years I have only encountered this once. The Canadian SIN is used as an identifier less than the SSN is in the USA.
However, in the USA the case is somewhat different. According to Susan Daniels, of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. in Chardon Ohio, when searching through database aggregators such as IRB, it is common to find a subject referenced with two or three Social Security Numbers (SSN). Here are some of the reasons a person may show-up with multiple SSN’s:
- a wife’s or child’s SSN could end up with father’s name
- a parent’s SSN could show up with a child
- the subject bought something with someone else and the SSNs could end up with each other’s name
- the database producer is relating several SSN’s to one address
- an error by whoever entered the data
Susan Daniels of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. (9754 Thwing Road Chardon, OH 44024, Tel.:440.286.4072) has been a Private Investigator for 15 years.
Steve Osborne’s article, Ultimate Note-Taking: Capture Text, Audio and Visual Notes, provides some good pointers on taking good notes using audio, images, and handwritten notes.
Kroll’s sleuths are more Clouseau than Columbo
Inspector Clouseau is alive and well, and he works for Kroll Associates, the corporate spies who are supposed to specialise in finding, and keeping, company secrets.
…in fact, it is so boring that after downloading it I took to reading the ‘metadata’ concealed with the electronic document that tells you who wrote the report, why and when.The results were considerably more interesting than you might imagine. The report’s ‘properties’ field listed three Texas-based oil and gas exploration companies and the names of seven men - none of which has anything to do with the North Carolina Highway Patrol. What is more, the subject line mentioned the term ‘due diligence investigation’, which is corporatespeak for the type of inquiry often carried out by firms like Kroll when a company is considering a takeover.
Over at the Daily Caveat, Michael Thomas criticizes the use of worn-out stereotypes of Private Investigators in a Wall Street Journal article that focuses on the use of Private Investigators by Venture Capitalists to conduct due diligence research.
By ERIC SCHLOSSER Published: May 7, 2008
In March, a woman named Cara Schaffer contacted the Student/Farmworker Alliance, saying she was a student at Broward Community College. Her eagerness aroused suspicions, but she was allowed to join two of the group’s planning sessions. Internet searches by the alliance revealed that she was not a college student.
Ms. Schaffer is the 25-year-old owner of a private security firm. Her company, Diplomatic Tactical Services, seems like the kind of security firm you’d find in one of Carl Hiaasen’s crime thrillers. Last year Ms. Schaffer was denied a private investigator’s license; she had failed to supply the Florida licensing division with proof of “lawfully gained, verifiable experience or training.” Even more unsettling, one of her former subcontractors, Guillermo Zarabozo, is now facing murder charges in United States District Court in Miami for his role in allegedly executing four crew members of a charter fishing boat, then dumping their bodies at sea.
Burger King’s use of an unlicensed private investigator to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance may have been illegal under Florida law. John Chidsey, the chief executive of Burger King, knew about the use of Diplomatic Tactical Services.
If you ignore the leftist political slant of the article, it still looks like a situation of the incompetent leading the stupid, or the other way around, who can tell. This could have been easily dealt with by some proper research into the activist organisation and the involved people, followed by some discretely conducted interviews. Instead, Burger King now faces a PR disaster.
Regulators: ‘Fund Manager’ Was a Fraud
By Matthew Goldstein, Thursday May 1, 01:28 PM
[Robert J. ] Sucarato and other potential scam artists are using so-called virtual offices [BusinessWeek, 3/27/08] to make their operations appear larger and more established than they really are. A virtual office is a more elaborate version of an old-fashioned post office box, in which tenants — for as little as $100 a month — get access to a telephone answering service, a reception area, and conference rooms for meetings, along with a mailing address. Sucarato used a virtual office on Wall Street in New York and in Chicago to allegedly induce investors into giving him money.
This is a classic example of poor due diligence by investors. We specifically search addresses, telephone numbers, and fax numbers to help identify this type of problem. If what I find is the least bit suspicious, then I call the neighbouring businesses and the building management to get more details about the type of office the subject company maintains.
I once found a fax number used by 47 different businesses and 18 businesses using the same suite number. You have to ask if such a situation is appropriate for the type of business you think you are dealing with.
Four Israeli Private Investigators have been sentenced by an Israeli court on industrial espionage charges for their use of the Michael Haephrati’s Trojan software to steal commercial secrets on behalf of their clients.
Four members of the Israeli Modi’in Ezrahi private investigation firm including Asaf Zlotovsky, a manager at the firm was jailed for 19 months, with two other employees given 18 and 9 month sentences.
In Canada, only one incorporating jurisdiction allows a search by officer or director name. Uncovering a person’s corporate affiliations in Canada is difficult.
The Investigator must embark upon an involved search strategy using a variety of database aggregators, the Internet, and a few public record sources. After conducting all these searches, the Investigator will never be certain that he has found everything.
Doing this type of research is dependent upon the Investigator’s understanding of the sources’ content and how to connect the data to the objectives of the investigation.
The Investigator must know how to search directory databases, commercial credit reports, news and journal databases, insider filings, statistical data, court records, lien filings, and much more to reveal corporate affiliations in Canada.
You just had to ask how I found it. Now look, you may be the client but it’s a secret — their secret that is.
Do a Google search for “not for distribution” confidential and look at all the stuff you find. Now try “not for distribution” confidential site:microsoft.com and look at what you find. Now if you were to try this on the subject company’s web site….
Web-based documents are neither confidential nor private, but they might be a secrets in plain sight.
As an Investigator you may have wished you had pictures of that horrible traffic accident you’re investigating. Have you ever thought to look in Google. That’s right, Google.
Ever since Google made satellite imagery available, everybody thinks it is only for finding a good restaurant. But when you think of it, the satellite takes pictures of what is happening when it flies over. For example, a truck crash (Google Earth coordinates 46.765669,-100.79274) outside of Bismarck, North Dakota.
An example of how far this can be taken is All Aircraft in Flight where more than 3300 images of planes in flight are identified. Or there is the Mirage fighter jet in a parking lot (Google Earth coordinates 48.825183,2.1985795) near Paris for those interested in the parking problems in France.
Check-out the Google Earth Communities site for more interesting stuff about Google Earth and its imagery.
