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COVID-19, or “the corona virus” has already had an unprecedented effect on the world’s economy in the 21^st century. Millions across the globe are currently practicing self-quarantine or “social-distancing”, while many workplaces are shutting down in order to prevent the spread of the virus. While many struggle during this time of social isolation, internal investigations in corporations and organizations are experiencing major disruption as well. Corporate investigators can continue to expect unique challenges with internal investigations, and will have to rely on telecommunications in order to continue their due-diligence.

Any seasoned investigator will tell you that one of the greatest challenges with internal investigations is developing rapport with the human sources in the case. This is usually achieved by face-to-face interaction, bringing down the witness’ guard, and evaluating everything from their facial expressions to their body language. With everyone working from home (or not at all), internal investigators have lost access to face-to-face contact with those human sources and witnesses. Investigators have transitioned to conducting crucial interviews over the phone, which may not have as many drawbacks as you think.

Internal investigations can already by tricky without the benefit of seeing the other person’s face or actions. We’re often told that a person’s actions—not their words—are a good indicator of honest or dishonest accounts of any type of incident. Are they blinking too much, or not enough? Are they touching their face? Are they inexplicably breaking out in sweat or becoming flushed? These are all clues private investigators and corporate investigators consider when determining the veracity of a witness’ story. But can you find the truth from only hearing a person’s voice?

Studies indicate that human beings actually can tell a lot more from a person’s voice than their body language when it comes to gauging their level of honesty. Michael Johnson, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney and CEO of Clear Law Institute, stated “While there are some non-verbal cues to lying, most people don’t know what those are, and sometimes they are the opposite of what you think.” Conducting corporate investigations over the phone doesn’t mean investigators still can’t garner helpful information. Without the distraction of visual stimuli, investigators are able to take detailed notes about a person’s story—the timeline, the verbiage, the tone. Investigators are able to detect inconsistencies in the witness’ story and ask follow-up questions for further context that can benefit the investigation. An interview over the phone also removes any personal biases that an investigator can potentially develop from seeing someone in person with regards to their physical appearance, such as sex, race, and class. The investigator is forced to rely on the information, and is less vulnerable to deception on the part of the witness.

In uncertain times, it feels as though COVID-19 has brought the entire world to a halt. That’s why investigators must lean into one of their greatest skills, which is flexibility. Quarantine doesn’t mean that investigators have to stop their investigations, but they must instead adapt their existing skillset to ensure that the wheels of progress will continue to turn—even in crisis.

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Private investigators work with some of the same tools and the same methodology as law enforcement when looking for debtor assets. As part of their licensure, private investigators have access to verified databases that allow them to develop comprehensive, cross-referenced background profiles on a Subject in any investigation. Private investigators have diverse experience in analyzing a person’s criminal, financial, address, and litigation history in order to build a contextualized picture of a debtor’s circumstances. Private investigators can unearth unseen assets like property, financial accounts, vehicles, and other valuable assets that have been previously concealed. Human sources are less common in asset searches, but private investigators also have the training to build rapport and garner testimony from relevant human sources in the case.  Private investigators are also highly skilled in obtaining and reviewing litigation records to document a debtor’s history of litigation in a court of law. Pervasive lawsuits, especially involving large judgements, can be a red flag in an asset search investigation.

Social media has become a more valuable resource than ever in many types of investigations. The amount of information people unwittingly give away on social media is staggering. Private investigators can get information about the sale of personal belongings, photos of assets like property and vehicles, and can document the type of lifestyle a debtor is currently enjoying—like lavish vacations or expensive home renovations. Private investigators carefully document their findings to compile into a thorough report for the client as another building block in their case against the debtor in arears.

If you’re a collecting party trying to reap your due, don’t hesitate to reach out to private investigator for a quote on their asset search services. Through open-source intelligence and transparent investigation methods, private investigators can get to the bottom of a debtors hidden assets.

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Even the most equipped and vigilant police department must prioritize casework—a triage in which violent crimes are placed at the forefront daily operations and receive the most resources from jurisdictional law enforcement. Crimes concerning only the theft of personal property like jewelry, art, electronics, and other valuable items are usually moved to the back burner. This leaves many individuals without recourse and without their valuable property, and leaves private investigators with an opportunity to provide clarity and solutions.

Successful and prolific private investigators typically have a background in law enforcement, working in law enforcement agencies, or in tandem with law enforcement. They develop a similar resume, and experience in forensic methodology, subject profiling, and making recommendations to clients regarding their case and how to move forward. They have a similar tool chest of instinct, rapport, and due-diligence that carries them from the intake call to the closing report. When law enforcement cannot pursue a non-violent crime for whatever reason, private investigators are ideal candidates to pick up the slack, and that includes the theft of art, jewelry, or other valuable property.

Typically, private investigators are completely independent, and do not rely on a chain of command. Their autonomy makes them an ideal professional to chase leads on stolen property. This means there is no valuable time lost to bureaucracy and private investigators spend billable hours serving their clients.

Witness location is one of a private investigator’s greatest skills when it comes to the theft of art, jewelry, or other valuable property. One of the most difficult parts of any investigation is identifying the unseen human sources in any case. Private investigators can canvass the surrounding areas—neighbors and businesses—asking relevant questions about suspicious activity or the regular faces in the neighborhood. Private investigators can also canvass the pawn shops in the area in search of art and jewelry that was pawned for a quick buck by the thief. Private investigators collect the witness statements, contact information, and include it as part of a comprehensive closing report.

Private investigators are also proficient in identifying the non-human sources associated with art & jewelry theft investigations. Due to the ubiquity of both internal and external CCTV footage, it’s more possible than ever for investigators to map a suspect’s movements following a crime. Private investigators identify these surveillance systems and pull the footage for review to identifying human sources and potential suspects.

Social media is also a valuable asset in any investigation, but particularly with regards to theft of valuable property. If the thief does not pawn the item, they might try to sell it online, possibly through Facebook Marketplace, or on an auction website. Private investigators also know how to gather geo-social data as further evidence of the theft, and can use the information found to recover the stolen item.

Private investigators are the ideal professionals to conduct an investigation into the theft of art, jewelry, or other valuable property . Their independence and their objectivity allow them to follow any lead and turn over every rock. Their access to verified databases and use of proven methodology means they can find the thief in your midst, and help you recover your treasure.

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Just after lunch last Wednesday, violence erupted in Milwaukee, WI at the famous Molson Coors factory, when an employee walked in with a loaded firearm and began shooting, leaving 5 victims and the shooter deceased. The violence is another in a string of shootings in the workplace that has corporate leadership wondering what their role is in limiting these acts of violence.

The victims in the Milwaukee Molson Coors shooting were identified as Jesus Valle Jr., 33; Gennady Levshetz, 61; Trevor Wetselaar, 33; Dana Walk, 57; and Dale Hudson, 60. The shooter, electrician Anthony N. Ferrill, 51, is deceased as well. Those victims, Ferrill’s coworkers, are remembered by the dozens of friends and family they left behind, as well as a community rocked by violence. Molson Coors chief executive Gavin Hattersley said in a news conference, “They were husbands, they were fathers, and they were friends. They were a part of the fabric of our company and our community, and we will miss them terribly.”

While many acts of violence in the workplace are perpetrated by former employees, Anthony Ferrill was a current employee of Molson Coors. Ferrill worked in the building’s utilities department. While authorities have not established a clear motive for the shooting, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ferrill had a history of dispute with his coworkers that many have speculated finally came to a head in the events leading up to last week’s shooting. The dispute may have had racial overtones, with Ferrill accusing other employees of discriminating against him in the workplace. He had suspicions that other employees were trespassing at his home, bugging his electronic devices, and disturbing his property. With the exception of one man, Ferrill had previous confrontations with all the victims, yet police have declined to comment on how the shooting occurred.

When shocking incidents of violence like this occur in the workplace, it’s not uncommon to hear from leadership in the organization that they are ‘shocked,’ or ‘astonished’ at the events that have taken place, or that the violence was perpetrated by a member of their organization. The reality is that active shooter events and other forms of violence in the workplace can usually be anticipated and prevented if leadership is not asleep at the wheel.

Most workplace crises, from violence to theft, can be traced back to faulty internal operations. That’s why so many corporations are seeking to have their daily operations evaluated by independent investigators and risk assessment firms. These investigators come into your business and begin examining hiring processes, onboarding materials, employee engagement, and the turnover rate in an attempt to identify the problems that cause frustration within the organization. In the unfortunate example of Molsen Coors, there was obviously room for more supervision with regards to intra-employee conflict. If the alleged intra-employee conflict had been given more attention, it might not have ended in violence.

Corporate Culture Audit investigators can provide leadership with the insight they need to improve their daily operations. Investigators can review hiring protocol, identifying risk factors and lack of oversight. They can review security systems, both in cyberspace, and at brick-and-mortar locations to identify weaknesses that would leave the company vulnerable to attack. These are measures that could have prevented the violence that broke out at Molson Coors, and they can protect your company, too.

If your corporation or organization needs a corporate culture audit, call Lauth Investigations International today for a free quote on our corporate culture audit program. Our program is built to fit businesses of any size and is customizable to fit you investigative needs. Call 317-951-1100 or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com

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Even if you didn’t meet your significant other in cyberspace, you could still be at risk for con artists and scammers. That’s why more individuals are turning to private investigators to perform background checks on their potential life mates.

One of the most critical decisions we make in life is who to legally bind ourselves to in matrimony—not only because of the vows we make to each other, but also because the legal union in most states means entitling the other person to half of your assets. There is an unexpected trend of private investigators—especially female private investigators—in countries where arranged marriage is woven into the fabric of culture. Many families seek to control familial relations and extensions for many reasons, like politics, financials, business consolidation, and status. As recently as 2017, arranged marriage accounted for 55% of marriages throughout the globe, leaving traditional marriage in the minority. This creates a niche market for private investigators to properly vet potential spouses in countries like India, China, Pakistan, Japan, and Israel to name a few.

Even though arranged marriage is not a major part of Western culture, that doesn’t mean that engaged individuals in the United States shouldn’t do their due-diligence when it comes to their life mate. When it comes to your assets, you should expect facts, not fiction. That’s why hiring a private investigator to perform a background check on your intended can save a great deal of heartache and financial distress. Even a basic background check from a private investigator can unearth risk factors. Private investigators will pull criminal history, litigation history, credit history, and history of residence to corroborate proposed facts about your romantic partner. It’s true that there are many “people finder” databases on the internet that claim their results are accurate and worth the cost of purchasing the report, and therefore an individual could conduct a background check themselves. However, private investigators must comply with specific security protocol and licensing in order to have access to verified databases on par with certain law enforcement agencies. This means that the quality of data entry comes with a much higher degree of accuracy, and will be updated regularly with regards to both public and private records. “People finder” databases cannot guarantee 100% accuracy, which may lead to additional misinformation, especially with regards to criminal and litigation history.

Private investigators also have years of experience that contextualize available information on a subject. For example, residence history is traditionally part of a basic background check. If the subject has a long history of moving between jurisdictions, or from state-to-state in short periods of time, a private investigator might examine this information—and based on context—determine that the subject has a history of transience, which could indicate a lack of reliability or a flight risk. If a subject’s credit history is consistently poor, that would be a financial red flag that might disqualify a subject as a spouse.

Private investigators bring valuable contexts to background investigations that empower individuals to make critical decisions in their private or corporate life. When two people get married, they often conduct other litmus tests in order to determine long-term cohabitation, such as blood tests for their health, or pre-marital counseling to determine their level of preparation. Background checks are just another measure for you to ensure that your life and your livelihood are protected.

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Corporations and nonprofits are in mutual company in 2020 as new rules and regulations of corporation oversight and employment go into effect. Leadership will have to step up their administrative supervision of their internal processes to ensure they don’t violate new legislature. Luckily, hiring a private investigator to ensure your company is compliant with new administrative legislature at the fraction of a cost to expand your corporation’s internal investigation team.

Sexual Harassment Prevention

Legislature and leadership alike are refocusing their personnel priorities to push sexual harassment to the forefront of their reform. In addition to ratcheting up sexual harassment prevention, but all forms of harassment within their workplace. A recent NLRB decision that would allow leadership to enforce total confidentiality during internal investigation, which will assist the identification of predators within any workforce. Private investigators are ideal candidates to seek out the predator in any corporation or organization, because they can infiltrate the workforce under the radar and collect evidence and testimony that might otherwise be lost.

Immigration, Worksite Enforcement & Background Screening

Employers can look forward to the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increasing oversight on work sites, evaluating hiring processes, and ensuring every employee is able to legally work in the United States. Employers who do not comply will be subject to both civil and criminal penalties that can be devastating to an organization. Private investigators have vast databases at their disposal to obtain work and residency records for potential hire, applying proven screening methods to ensure no personnel are a legal liability.

Independent Contractors

Legislature is also holding companies to a higher standard of responsibility when their independent or sub-contractors incur legal trouble or have grievances against the parent organization. A bill in California known as AB 5 would make it more difficult to classify a worker as an independent or sub-contractor, a measure that would effect employers both in California and throughout the nation. When contractors are successfully classified as such, you’ll need a private investigator on your side to comprehensively vet the situation. With their full investigative toolbox, private investigators can get to the truth about inciting events that led to legal action, collecting evidence, speaking to worksite foremen, and provide comprehensive solutions to employers.

Overtime

Private investigators can also lend their prowess to individuals who believe a corporation is misappropriating funds in order to comply with a Department of Labor measure that requires employers to pay a minimum percentage of total salary in order to satisfy overtime requirements. Private investigators who specialize in financial fraud and misappropriation are able to review a corporation’s internal processes and open-source financial records to document the appropriation of overtime pay.

Data Privacy

With the ubiquity of technology and digital communication systems, corporate data—especially with regard to transparency—is a trending issue in public discourse. Whether through legal channels or otherwise, corporations and organizations need to protect their data from falling into the wrong hands. A private investigator can provide any organization with a risk assessment of both their digital and brick-and-mortar security measures from top to bottom—identifying cracks in the system and providing expert recommendations to ensure internal information stays internal. Private investigators can also identify potential whistleblowers in a workforce by examining individual risk factors and patterns of behavior.

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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the Treasury Department in the United States, has finally stuck a blow against one of the most reckless financial institutions in the nation, Wells Fargo. This federal department has linked a former chief executive of Wells Fargo with compulsion on the part of leadership to encourage Wells Fargo employees to set up fraudulent accounts that would hold extracted fees from customers.

John Stumpf, the former executive in question, has been slapped with a monumental fine totaling approximately $17.5 million. The extent of the misconduct was so severe, that the OCC also banned Stumpf from the banking industry for the rest of his life. He was not alone—a former head of banking at Wells Fargo, Carrie Tolstedt is also facing a fine of $25 million.

The Office of the Comptroller of Currency has also issued a notice which argues that Wells Fargo has engaged in toxic business practices over the last ten years, compelling employees to exhibit “serious misconduct” in order to meet “intentionally unreasonable sales goals.” The notice went on to say that the corporation operated within an environment of malignant leadership, indicated by “…an atmosphere that perpetuated improper illegal conduct.”

Wells Fargo’s head of corporate investigations testified before the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, informing them that there was hypervigilance on part of leadership with regards to sales quotas, but lethargic oversight with regards to illegal sales practices. It was apparent to the corporate investigator that leadership was indifferent to how employees met sales quotas, as long as those quotas were consistently met. Lower-level employees were made accomplices—single cogs in a large clockwork corporate fraud.

As the saying goes, “the fish stinks from the head,” and the litigative implications of these proceedings have indicated Wells Fargo reeks of poor corporate culture. Regardless of whether or not it is healthy, corporate culture moves in a cycle, with cause-and-effect factors that can often be traced back to leadership. Not only should leadership be an example for the entire corporation, but their interpersonal conduct within the workplace directly effects their employees’ engagement and productivity. Executives who impose unreasonable or unattainable goals on their employees are setting them up for failure, absolving themselves from responsibility when goals are not met. This leads to a toxic, high-pressure work environment where employees don’t just feel unsupported, but also devalued in the eyes of their employer. Employee engagement goes down, and consequently, so does productivity. This frustrates leadership, which then reacts by tightening their grip, beginning the cycle anew. If your corporation experiences persistent problems with leadership misconduct, it’s definitely time for a corporate culture audit. Corporate culture audits are like checkups for your business. Independent investigators come into your business and evaluate all operations—communication, record-keeping, hiring processes, and employee engagement. They identify the cause of these malignant symptoms and provide the corporation with expert recommendations that will ultimately propel their organization forward. If your corporation needs a corporate culture audit, call Lauth Investigations International today at 317-951-1100 to get a free quote, or contact us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com

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Employers across the country have operated in a sea of gray area when it comes to confidentiality among employees regarding internal investigations. The question remained whether or not employers were able to require employees to keep internal investigations internal while they were in full swing. Prior to the new year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finally answered that question.

Previously, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had taken a position that employers could not require employees to keep ongoing internal investigations confidential because it generally violated labor law. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act guarantees employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.” Universal requirement of confidentiality could potentially interfere with that law. Confidentiality in internal investigations was instead dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with no precedent for blanket confidentiality. This topic has been in review by the NLRB since May of 2019, but it was only recently that the board announced that they had reversed their position.

By their very nature, internal investigations are already a big headache for many employers. Further compounding these frustrations is the ideation that no internal investigation can generate meaningful results unless the integrity of the internal investigation is maintained by all employees of the corporation or organization. This new standard of approval by the National Labor Relations Board is a categorical win for employers.  The win comes down to one word—duration. In articulating their decision, the majority wrote,

“There are obvious mutual interests to be served by encouraging and allowing employees to report wrongdoing without fear of reprisal from the subject of the investigation. Among other considerations, such reporting promotes the goals of the antidiscrimination statutes by helping employers eradicate workplace discrimination and deal with it promptly and effectively when it occurs.”

This articulation is indirectly evocative of the cycle of corporate culture, a process by which cause and effect on the parts of both leadership and employees in pursuit of improved operations leads to a healthy corporate culture for the entire workforce.

While there are concerns that the future of this reversal may affect an employee’s ability to organize, the projection of this reversal is very good news for internal investigations. In any investigation, the control of information is critical to finding solutions to the corporate crisis, allowing investigators to use tried-and-true methodology to get to the root of the problem. With the NLRB finally taking a position that allows employers to require confidentiality, the integrity of those internal investigations can now be maintained from the onset, leading to clearer solutions for the pervasive issues that malign corporations and organizations.

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