The Russian division of a company (a manufacturer of medical products, the absolute leader in its market segment) has introduced a new inventory scheme in the warehouse. As a result, theft of finished products was revealed in the amount of about 10,000,000 rubles (130,000 USD). The company suspected one of the company's employees of stealing. In addition, it was clear that there was collusion between employees at several levels within the company. Initially the idea of ​​introducing a new inventory format was met with negative response on the part of the security management, despite the fact that the old scheme had obvious vulnerabilities. Thus, the company could not connect internal resources for the investigation due to the risk of information leakage and the potential unreliability of those employees who will be assigned the task. However, direct monthly damage to the company from theft from the warehouse was estimated at 500-600 thousand rubles, so the situation required an immediate solution.

For one of the clients (automotive products), in addition to fulfilling offline goals (i.e. visiting sales outlets, markets, warehouses and initiating raids for the seizure of counterfeit products), Vlasta-Consulting also worked online (finding ads and sites with technical specifications violations, their subsequent closure). As part of the online program, an ad was found selling questionable products at extremely low prices. Instead of automatically sending a link for take-down, it was decided to conduct an informational investigation, since there were grounds for a potential investigation (the phone number indicated in the ad was also found on a number of other online resources).

Our team was tasked to identify business of a Client’s potential contractor in a country, investigative capacities whereof are very limited. We made a number of operative enquiries through our network of well-placed human sources to find out quickly that the Client was approached by a fraudster who had caused substantial damage to his our clients previously. Seeking new business opportunities in one of countries of Central Asia, the client encountered a businessman who offered distributorship. As the country where he wanted to expand was considered risky to do business, he proceeded with background screening to assess risks of cooperation.

Vlasta Consulting took an assignment to assess the situation with the Client’s trusted high-profile contractor in one of the CIS countries. The situation was still unresolved, so our team had to deal with a notable degree of uncertainty. We collected data from public domain and operative sources, and then undertook a wide range of analytical techniques to assess the target’s business and his position within the state administration. As a result, we developed and tested several hypotheses that made it possible to elaborate further mutually beneficial cooperation between the Client and his contractor.