Choosing the Right ... Clients | A Cross-Post with LinkedIn

We had a fun one yesterday. A client contacted us to see if we could do a very quick background investigation on a potential client of theirs. As always, the names and some minor facts are changed to protect the innocent.

To keep things easy to understand, we'll call 888's client "Smart Company." We'll call Smart Company's potential client "Unknown Entity."

Unknown Entity cold-called Smart Company and requested a meeting wherein they would explore Unknown Entity hiring Smart Company for a HUGE project. Smart Company has been in business for 40 years and knows that projects like this rarely come around and typically are familiar with the players who would be involved - and Unknown Entity wasn't on that list. In other words, the concern was that it might be too good to be true.

888 jumped into action knowing only the given name of the person calling and the name of Unknown Entity. We went down a few rabbit holes and discovered all kinds of information. We started with open source intelligence ("OSINT") and didn't really need to go any further.

First, we discovered that Unknown Entity has several impressive boards of directors, including a governing board, a leadership board, and an advisory board. Check out a sample of the members of just one of the 10-person boards:

• Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway)
• Larry Page (Google)
• Jim Walton (Walmart)
• Phil Knight (Nike)

Wow! With that board alone we'd be talking about one of the largest corporations in the world. And I am omitting the six other very well known and ultra-successful people who are listed as board members on that board. And there were several other boards staffed by CEOs and founders of the largest corporations in the world. I am dying to write about who else is listed on those boards, but I do not wish to identify Unknown Entity. You could fairly assume that these people are among the best known business people in the world.

You will be surprised to learn that they don't seem to be registered to do business anywhere. Smart Company is in Texas, and Unknown Entity is not registered there at all. In addition, their locations appeared not to exist. Oh, they listed real addresses. But none seemed to be associated with Unknown Entity.

Next, we looked into the person who called. He is identified as the President of one of the companies making up Unknown Entity who happens to serve on a few of the boards himself. Let's just say that he uses multiple aliases and appears to have been convicted, multiple times, of fraud. I was amazed that he was able to build such an unbelievably (literally) wealthy legitimate organization. I was also astonished that he called Smart Company himself instead of having someone lower in the food chain make the pitch.

Needless to say, we sent the information that we had to Smart Company, who had a meeting scheduled with him in an hour.

Takeaway

Smart Company did something quick and relatively inexpensive - they looked into a potential business partner. In less than an hour, we were able to find and provide critical information for Smart Company. One hour's work likely prevented Smart Company from getting involved with Unknown Entity. Was it worth it to incur the cost? In my analysis, that's an easy answer.

This is a cross-post with LinkedIn.