Home-Case Study
An owner of a group of convenience stores was bringing in an investor group to acquire the controlling interest in his company. The owner requested that Kaosco conduct a preliminary background check of several members of the investor group. Our investigation did not uncover any substantive findings regarding the lead investor in the group, however further investigation revealed that there was a passive investor in this transaction who was a convicted felon, recently released from prison for money laundering. Believing that the sole intent of the investment group was to use their convenience store chain for illicit purposes, our client decided to look for other investors.
A technology company had acquired a similar firm in a different locale. Within two months, the acquired company lost half of its customers. Kaosco was retained to locate and interview those former customers in an effort to ascertain the circumstances surrounding their leaving the company. Interviews with former customers revealed that they had been unhappy with the company's service and support for some time. We also learned that the company's sales staff made promises and provided incentives to customers to stay on until the acquisition was completed. Our inquiry further ascertained that employees had been given a script by the company's owner, which set forth how the employees were to "lie" to customers. Management also provided these employees with incentives to stay with the company until after the acquisition.
The information obtained by Kaosco provided the client with sufficient grounds to file a lawsuit.
Kaosco was subsequently contacted by the company and we recommended that some preliminary employee interviews be conducted. We immediately determined from these interviews that two important changes had taken place within the company during the prior four months. First, the CFO initiated a policy where he assumed responsibility for opening and reviewing all mail. He then turned it over to the office manager whose job it had previously been. Secondly, the CFO had resigned just after the independent auditors arrived, claiming he was taking a position with another firm.
Further investigation determined that the CFO had formed a company six months earlier with a name nearly identical to that of our client. We also determined that he had been ordering and paying for 100 computers at a time, returning 50 to the supplier, who in turn, would mail a refund check to the company. The CFO, now in control of the mail, was removing the checks and depositing those proceeds into the account of his newly created company.