Corporate Archives

Fake Profiles & Online Impersonation

When watching my local news the other evening, I heard of a case that really surprised me. A Town Commissioner of a small town in North Carolina, disagreed with his fellow board members over a specific topic. So much so, that he decided to create a fake Facebook profile and use it to harrass and argue with residents. Later, he admitted using a Charlotte area businessman’s real name & real profile picture. The surprising part of this is that we expect this from scammers, but not someone who would be sitting on a board of a city or town. It seems that these days, anything is possible. Being proactive is a must.

Online Impersonation Tricks

Facebook Marketplace: Fake ads on the site have become a real problem. Some of the ads look like they are from legitimate businesses such as Home Depot, Lowes, etc.. They make the post look very real, using lots of pictures. The Better Business Bureau says the fake ads are common and they get thousands of complaints each year. “Impersonation is one of the key factors of what scammers love to do,” Sarah Wetzel of the BBB said. “They love to impersonate those well-known companies because that way they already have a foot in the door with the consumers.”

Source: Digital Information World

2. Rental Scams: Scammers ( who operate anywhere in the world ) can advertise a fake rental online. Next, they add a sense of urgency to attempt to get a deposit on the property. They will use excuses as to why they can not meet you in person. They also make sure to tell you that several people are looking at the property. Nationally, over 230 rental scams have been reported this year, up from the same time last year. Victims report losing an average of $550.

Better Business Bureau offers these tips:

Do an online search for the landlord’s email and phone number. If the same ad is listed in other cities, that’s a red flag.
If you can’t see the property in person, try to find someone you trust to go and confirm the unit is what’s being advertised online.
Don’t fall for deals that are too good to be true. If a unit is well below market rate or promising extra amenities than normal, it could be a red flag.
Be wary of required payments through cash transfer apps. Peer to peer apps are meant to be used with people you know.

Use the Better Business Bureau’s scam tracker as a tool to both report and prevent scam.

3. Catfishing: When someone creates a fake identity online for the purpose of starting a relationship. They then use this as a way to gain interest and confidence so they can scam the person out of money. Social Catfish is a software company that works to help people who believe they have been the victim of catfishing. It is one of the many software platforms we use at eChatter when conducting online research. They also have a great reverse image tool within the platform.

Impersonation of a Business

This is sometimes called Domain Spoofing. When done correctly, it can damage a business’ reputation while scamming consumers who fall for their pitch. All while impersonating the business. Two of the most common ways is cybersquatting and typosquatting.

Cybersquatting: Scammers use already established business websites and copy them to look just like the real website. They then sell counterfeit products.
Typosquatting: Scammers register a domain name similar to that of the legitimate business. They purposely use typo errors to change it but at first glance, people take it as the legitimate company’s website. This is sometimes used to redirect someone to a competitor’s website or try to collect ad revenue.

This just scratches the surface of the many ways scammers use the web and social media. It is a subject we will continue to write about in the future, so check back often for updates.

Competitive Intelligence Investigations

In the business world, one could say with confidence that everyone is spying on everyone else. It’s a given and possibly more popular within certain industries. Competitive Intelligence initiatives in business is almost critical for the business owner. Whether the company is small, medium, or large, this type of intelligence gathering is important. Now with open source research options, it is so much more detailed than ever before. Let’s start with the basics.

What Is Competitive Intelligence?

Competitive intelligence, sometimes referred to as corporate intelligence, refers to the ability to gather, analyze, and use information collected on competitors, customers, and other market factors that contribute to a business’s competitive advantage. Competitive intelligence is important because it helps businesses understand their competitive environment and the opportunities and challenges it presents. Businesses analyze the information to create effective and efficient business practices. (Investopedia.com)

Social Media Listening — ***This is an example of coffee brands across three social media platforms. The example if provided by the software company Sprout Social as an example of what this type of research uncovers***

Types of Investigations

Marketing : One of the key reasons to conduct competitive intelligence is to gain a marketing advantage. One of the best ways is to use social media listening, which identifies the company’s online reputation. What do employees say about the company? What about customers? There are multiple software platforms out there that do exactly this as an ongoing part of their marketing plan. They can identify the effectiveness of the company’s digital and social media marketing, as you can see in the image above from Sprout Social. Sprinklr is another good example of this type of software. Another excellent option is to use mystery shopping. Our parent company, Ann Michaels & Associates, has conducted this type of research many times over the years. With a data base of over 300,000 evaluators we are able to find just the right person to perform the research. The shopper poses as a business looking for pricing on a service or product from the company’s competitor. This allows for a very up close and personal look at the competition’s sales techniques, customer service levels and pricing.
Mergers and Acquisitions: Research is key when looking at a company to purchase or merge with. Investigating their reputation, online and off is important. We have conducted open source research on not only the company, but also on individual stakeholders. This allows for a good overall impression.

This can be a good source of income for the Private Investigator. Be sure to list it on your website and talk to clients about it.

Chain of Custody & Digital Evidence

Digital evidence has become more and more relevant for most civil and criminal investigations. Developing your OSINT skills is ongoing and understanding where it is all headed is just as important. It is an ever changing area, with new social media platforms sprouting up all the time.

When conducting online research on a person of interest for your investigation, it is important to develop a solid strategy. Once you begin gathering information, a clear chain of custody must be obtained with anything you find online. Additionally, authentication of social media posts or profiles are becoming more and more important to a case.

“We need all videos extracted and the subject’s social media profile captured and preserved.”
Recent client request

We are getting more and more requests like this every week. When a suspect or person of interest gets legal council, they may be advised to delete all their social media. That is why time is so important and it is becoming more important to start with online investigations before you do anything else. Many attorneys and PI’s have learned the hard way that what is here today, may be gone tomorrow. Understanding the differences in digital evidence can set your Private Investigation firm apart from the others.

The purpose of this blog post it to explain some of the differences in the capture of online evidence.

Screenshot Digital Evidence

Most of the time your OSINT discovery process is centered around a specific strategy and focus. The gathering of online information, its chain of custody, and your final report can and should contain screenshots and corresponding URLS. However, what if the Instagram post or video is just the digital evidence you were looking for? What if you know your attorney client is going to need this in the deposition, civil or even criminal case? It is times like this where a screenshot is not enough. Taking that extra step can be very valuable.

Social Media posts may not only be deleted or turned off, but they can also be edited. The post you see today may not be the same post you saw during your online investigation. Unless you have preserved the original post, you may not be ale to prove what was originally said.

For social media and web page evidence to be valid and accepted according to the Federal Rules of Evidence:

Original source code of the social media message, blog or webpage must be collected

Metadata must be collected

Digital signatures and timestamps must be placed on the data to provide evidence of data integrity & authenticity

Data should be prepared in EDRM-XML for easy processing & analysis in eDiscovery systems

Preserving the Digital Evidence

*Establishing a valid chain of custody means being able to show where the evidence has been, who has handled, and its condition at all times, in order to establish that there has been no alteration or tampering of the evidence prior to the time it is presented to the court. With respect to web pages and social media accounts, then, this means that the party propounding the evidence must establish:

When the record was originally produced;
That the record is an accurate recording of the webpage in question;
That the record was not subject to alteration from the time it was collected until the time it is presented in court.

Using the correct tool instantly generates a forensic report using a forensic SHA256 hash, and HTML source code. It means that your online preservations contain key identifying Metadata such as the timestamp, the URL, the IP address, the date, and the time of capture, using a certified Stratum-1 atomic clock in compliance with the eSign Act.

As a result, you can capture the evidence you need at the moment you need it, with the assurance that when you do, you are collecting evidence which contains the necessary hallmarks of authenticity that courts are increasingly seeking.

(*Web Preserver), This is the software we use at eChatter when we need to preserve digital evidence for our clients.

Web Scrapping

Can a website be scrapped or archived? Yes and It may surprise you to know just how often it is used. Web archiving tends to concentrate more on the look and feel of a website or profile. The Wayback Machine (a.k.a. archive.org), is designed for web archiving. They explain their company this way, “The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.” It is like an online library of websites. ( As an aside, it is also a great way to check if a person of interest worked for a certain business years ago, as they may have been featured on the website).

Web scrapping is more focused on textual data. The most crucial step for initiating a web scraping project is to select a tool to fit your research needs. There a tons of them out there to choose from. It is important to remember that the collection of data, while publicly available, is still a collection produced by others. Depending on the case, be aware of the potential privacy and security implications and proceed with caution.

Web scrapping can be used for price monitoring, lead generation, marketing and research. The complexity of many websites makes it difficult to scrape data unless you know code. Software applications make this task easy for anyone and is not dependent on skills.

Example of a Preserved Post

The post below is a great example of what is captured during the preservation of a post. The key components are the URL, Timestamp (when the post was discovered), Hash, and Signature.

An entire profile of a person of interest can be over 100 pages and is captured in PDF report format.

By: Kathy Doering.

Kathy is President of eChatter, and is McAfee certified in OSINT and is a certified Social Media Intelligence Analyst (SMIA). Kathy also serves as president of The Global Social Media Research Association.

Employees’ Rights & Social Media

Employees and social media have been a sore spot for employers over the years. Back in the early years of social media, many employers were concerned about the amount of time employees spent in social media during an average work day. Their concerns centered around productivity, rather than what the employees were posting about.

Fast forward to 2020, and we have an entirely new set of problems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, essential worker’s were posting all over social media about their work conditions and at that time lack of PPE. Everyone knows that if you want to get your concerns noticed, turn to social media. It has become one of the most effective ways in which to communicate today on a large scale. If you are lucky, you will be picked up by the news media and your story will become national news.

Social Media and The Whistle Blower

Erin Marie Olszewski is a Nurse-turned-investigative journalist, who has spent the last few months on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, on the inside in two radically different settings. Two hospitals. One private, the other public. One in Florida, the other in New York.

As you can imagine, if you know her story, she has been scrutinized in the media. Some applaud her courage while others try to rip apart her story. So we wondered, who is Erin Olszewski and what does her social media story look like?

We conducted a deep web scan on Erin. Surprisingly, some of her prior “life” was still up for anyone to discover. The deep web scan revealed, as they many times they do, a story of who Erin is and what she has been involved with leading up to her fame.

You can view her entire deep web scan here. (Erin Olszewski) Taking a look at an employee’s online, publicly available, social media content, provides a story board of the person’s life to date. It can reveal a lot about a person, good and bad. In Erin’s case, one is left with the impression that she can be a bit of a rebel rouser. It also shows however, that she is also someone who stands up for what she believes in and isn’t afraid of the consequences.

Can an Employee Get Fired?

This is the new million dollar question. The short answer is, it depends. We did a little research and found the following as a place to start.

Some states and localities may have different laws or additional laws.
Federal Laws: First Amendment: Free Speech. Doesn’t state that employees or individuals can say whatever they want wherever they want without consequence.
According to the National Labor Relations Act: An employee’s comments on social media are generally not protected if they are mere gripes not made in relation to group activity among employees.

NLRA Board Decisions

In the fall of 2012, the Board began to issue decisions in cases involving discipline for social media postings. Board decisions are significant because they establish precedent in novel cases such as these.

*In the first such decision, issued on September 28, 2012, the Board found that the firing of a BMW salesman for photos and comments posted to his Facebook page did not violate federal labor law. The question came down to whether the salesman was fired exclusively for posting photos of an embarrassing accident at an adjacent Land Rover dealership, which did not involve fellow employees, or for posting mocking comments and photos with co-workers about serving hot dogs at a luxury BMW car event. Both sets of photos were posted to Facebook on the same day; a week later, the salesman was fired. The Board agreed with the Administrative Law Judge that the salesman was fired solely for the photos he posted of a Land Rover incident, which was not concerted activity and so was not protected.

*National Labor Relations Act’s website.

In the end, companies of all sizes should have a written social media policy in place. As an added precaution, lawyers have advised social media to be added to any anti- harassment policy as well.

If you are lucky, you will go viral, get picked up by a news outlet, and your story will become national news. Just like what happened with Erin Marie Olszewski.

Employee Ethics & Fraud During COVID-19

Back in April we wrote about fraud predictions during the COVID 19 pandemic. Back then most of what was out there was PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) fraud. We saw a lot of fakes and it even began to show up in COVID testing. Much of this was controlled by the FDA who provided consumers with updated information on their website on a regular basis.

Once the government released stimulus checks, the scams began. Scammers were contacting people through email, telling them that their check, as part of the stimulus package responding to COVID-19, is already waiting for them and that all they need to do is to provide personal information. This included bank account numbers and Social Security Numbers, which are the key pieces of information needed to perpetrate identity theft.

Bruce Dorris, J.D, CFE, CPA, President and CEO of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, explains that in the current conditions, we can expect to see a number of long-lasting implications. One important one being an explosion of fraud in the coming years — and organizations need to brace themselves.

Corporate Employee Misconduct

Some of our corporate associates have expressed concern with what lies ahead as they navigate the uncertain waters of the Pandemic. One company in particular needed to shut down an entire plant because an employee tested positive for COVID. The employee presented the company with a falsified COVID 19 medical claim. He went as far to provide an excuse letter from a medical facility appearing to corroborate the test results. In concern for its employees and customers, the company closed its facility for cleaning and paid its employees during the shutdown. This caused a loss in excess of $100,000 to the corporation and the unnecessary quarantine of several of the defendant’s coworkers. He is now released on $15,000.00 bail awaiting trial.

FBI Recommendations

The FBI has recommended that companies be particularly alert during the pandemic about possible fraudulent work excuse letters, as they are finding more people attempting to exploit the situation for personal or financial gain. Submission of a medical claim proven to be false could lead to criminal penalties, including fines or imprisonment by U.S. federal and other authorities.

What This Will Mean for the Private Investigator

Investigation around employee misconduct is an area that could prove to be quite lucrative for investigators. ABC News in Phoenix, AZ did a story on how local investigators are getting calls from corporations to check up on employees who should be working from home. This is not an isolated incident.

I believe we will see more and more fraud cases such as this over the next year if not longer.