Thirty years ago corporate investigators’ offices were cluttered with the tools of the trade —‌ tools that now sound archaic: typewriters, desk telephones, a white pages phone directory for personal numbers and the Yellow Pages for business phone numbers, a fax machine, a mimeograph machine. While many investigators anticipated an exciting life as a “P.I.,” their settings often looked like an accountant’s office.

Investigators were dispatched to courthouses to look through dusty case folders and laboriously copy the key sections at 25 cents a page. Others went to newspaper offices where they could go through the historical files in the “morgue” by scrolling through microfilm or microfiche. Going through a target’s trash, or “dumpster diving,” was a useful technique to discover key information that could help with an investigation.

Today’s corporate investigators are armed with modern alternatives to dumpster diving: high-tech services to uncover hidden information in transactions feed game-changing intelligence into litigation and uncover hidden assets.

Uncovering Hidden Information on the Internet

Today’s world has multiplied the “what keeps me up at night” concerns for lawyers and C-suite executives. The economic crisis created a need for business-savvy litigation, which in turn led to global asset searches. The strong economic recovery has produced friendly and contested M&A, heavily influenced by activist investing. The one constant is the advantage of reliable, actionable information.

In the earlier years of the corporate intelligence industry, clients and investigators were convinced that the answers they were looking for were sitting in discarded trash. And sometimes they were right. For example, in a highly contentious litigation, investigators found a shredded document that the opposing party had testified did not exist.

The practice of dumpster diving was legal so long as the trash was outside the property. But one investigator crossed the line in a high-profile case. An angry judge overturned a billion-dollar judgment, based on the invasion of privacy. After that, organizations and their law firms no longer wanted to take the risk of being publicly associated with dumpster diving.

Bet-the-company intelligence and game-changing evidence is still being hidden. Today, investigators look for it in cyberspace rather than in documents tossed away. The recesses of the current or historical web may contain crucial information that organizations need to finalize a transaction or to checkmate a competitor. Web intelligence may provide the evidence that an organization’s intellectual property has been stolen.

Savvy fraudsters, high-stakes investors, unfaithful employees or vendors, political activists and “bad actors” looking to damage an organization conduct their business on the web — often below the surface in social networks, blogs or chat rooms that are not indexed.

Through the use of artificial intelligence software, web intelligence services have been developed to penetrate and monitor the entire internet, including:

• Social networks
• The current and historical internet
• The deep web
• The dark web
• Nonindexed blogs and message boards
• Encrypted messaging apps

With the help of web intelligence services, corporate investigators have been able to alert organizations to problems that have not yet bubbled up to the surface. In several cases, investigators picked up chatter between current and former employees about #MeToo issues. In a trade secret investigation, web intelligence produced evidence of periodic changes in the target’s marketing and website as the company’s product was being knocked off.

In another example, one company was able to institute security protections after its investigator saw internet activity indicating that public interest activists were planning a demonstration against the company.

The general counsel of a company defending against a hostile takeover attack employed web intelligence to uncover communications among activist investors pressing for board seats. The same software enabled counsel to measure the real sentiment of the company’s shareholders.

Nowadays, corporate investigators analyze and pursue the web intelligence leads. And veteran investigators don’t long for the days of diving into dumpsters.

Effective Due Diligence

In our activist investor era and #Me Too world, company boards and not-for-profit trustees want the greatest level of assurance that due diligence on new directors and senior executives is thorough.

In pursuing transactions in our globalized economy, executives and directors need to know as much as possible about a potential business partner, including hidden issues that do not emerge in legal/financial due diligence. They may be integrity or reputational issues. M&A investigations have turned up information questioning the counterparty’s capability to perform. Organizations are equally concerned about potentially disruptive social issues.

In all types of investigative due diligence, investigators can use web intelligence services to expand upon public record research to give an additional level of assurance.

Game-Changing Discoveries in Litigation

In providing litigation intelligence services, investigators unscramble facts, find potential witnesses and investigate adverse experts. All information is useful but the real prize is production of a “game changer.” Web intelligence has helped shift the advantage in several recent lawsuits. In class action litigation, a background check of the named plaintiff showed that they had appeared in several other cases, but their name was signed with distinctly different signatures. In another case, theft of trade secrets was confirmed by a review of the adversary’s historical promotional material and the progressive changes in its website.

An adverse witness was disqualified when web intelligence uncovered that the expert was employed by a firm that had historical ties to the adversary.

Tracking Hidden Assets

Since the financial crisis of 10 years ago, corporate investigators have been asked to conduct a sharply higher volume of asset searches. The pandemic has increased the volume. Organizations are typically focused on bank account information. Both investigators and organizations are frustrated by the legal issues which prevent investigators from supplying that information. In an investigation, bank intelligence services can uncover the names of banks the subjects have been in contact with, fueling effective follow-up by the lawyers. 

For example, bank intelligence can be a helpful tool when investigators need to determine in which countries of the world to focus their asset searches or in the search for hidden assets in a divorce. Bank intelligence can also help organizations decide which potential defendants are worth suing, based on their apparent level of assets.

The old days of dumpster diving provide engaging stories for investigators. But by using today’s technology services, including web and bank intelligence, corporate investigators are able to provide more effective outcomes in investigations. These new high-tech tools are critical to any present-day investigation.