It Wasn’t the Best Year Ever But It Was the Year My Vital Information Helped Send a Man to Prison
It Wasn’t the Best Year Ever But It Was the Year My Vital Information Helped Send a Man to Prison
I’ve had some very good years. There was the year I got married and celebrated for several weeks across five Asian countries. There was the year my daughter was born. And the year my other daughter was born. The year I went to Washington D.C. to continue my university education. The year I spent in Wales getting a different education. The year I passed the Louisiana bar exam. When I got hired by the biggest, best accounting and consulting firm with the biggest and best fraud unit. When I left the big firm and started my little firm. I’ve had many other good years I do not have space to list. With all that, I sat down at the start of 2023 convinced it would be the best year ever.
I was wrapping up a huge month. One with several days over 15 billable hours. I was cranking out memorandum upon memorandum on companies and individuals at a frantic pace. While dealing with family issues, it made the output more notable. I was on a roll. The forthcoming year was also a milestone birthday year. I had friends retired or retiring. I had other plans. I was convinced I could, would, build off of the late 2022 successes. I was not ready to give in or give up, but rather triple down. As I say, every day brushing my teeth, more cases, more clients, more known. As 2023 draws to a close, it was not the best year ever.
Some of you know what tugged at me this year. Divided my attention. Caused me to become an expert in the New York City mass transit system. It was not going to be a best year ever facing that. Regardless it’s been a very good year. I recently celebrated Thanksgiving with both kids and had an amazing meal here in New York. In fact, I’ve become quite the New Yorker, ridiculing other cities now. In 2023, a bunch of us graying, balding, retiring, not retiring, boys toasted our milestone year in Las Vegas. I am very happily married. It was also a year I helped send a man to prison. It was not the best year ever, but I had a good time and did good things.
This was the year my vital information led to a guilty plea on wire fraud and an agreement to pay many millions in restitution. Obviously, what sent this man to prison was his willingness to abuse his high corporate rank and embezzle a lot, I’m telling you a lot, of money. Still, the initial lawsuit against him, the opening salvo, happened because myself and my team produced some key findings. For one thing, we figured out a family relationship and name change that tied many issues together. For another thing, we identified three luxury homes held by nominee Delaware companies, which we tied back to him via public records. It started with a civil RICO case and ended with a guilty plea. (Let’s see if he pays the multi-million restitution…).
It was the year, it was shown, that identity matters. When I do my run-down of what is covered in due diligence, background work, I say the first thing we do is, verify identity. Knowing who you are searching maters, even if it seems basic and hardly necessary. Except when it is not. This was the year we dealt with a person who got a job with a false identity. He had a fake resume. A fake LinkedIn profile to match. A fake social security card and fake driver’s license all to “prove up” the identify that was not his. Me, with some online resources and 30 years of experience, pretty easily showed how it was fake, but it had fooled the folks in HR. The FBI was called.
It was the year a reverse image search led to the discovery of real estate in the Caribbean. News searches found ownership. It was the year one of those Lexis libraries I always search actually did have something. It was a year my searches went to London, Quebec, Dubai, Indonesia, and a whole lot of places in between.
This was the year I had the privilege of being interviewed by Kelly Paxton for her Fraudish podcast. This was the year I got to be published again in Pursuit. This was also the year I added about 100 LinkedIn connections as I found a welcome and eager audience there for OSINT and research discussions.
This was the year Twitter morphed into X; Threads emerged as an alternative, but the kids abandoned all of that for TikTok. On the other hand, thousands of open-source researchers were tracking the war in Ukraine, and these crews later found themselves tackling where bombs did or did not fall.
I got another shot to achieve the best year ever. My mantra remains simple, more cases, more clients, more known. Specifically, I hope to speak more in 2024. I would like to ink a book deal. I’m not ready to give up doing, but I think I have also earned the right to teach more and search less. I already have a hotel booked for New Orleans in 2024, so I know at least a few days will be fun. I expect to book a few more places, including a trip or two to my happy place, Las Vegas. I will be in New York often, and I am lucky I can do that. I appreciate you all for following along on good years and the next good years to come. Your comments and likes and appreciations for these posts have meant a lot to me. Very strong shout out and commendation to John Kula who takes my crazy prose and polishes up each effort.
Best wishes for your best years ever.
Robert Gardner