Investigative Services

Don’t let fraud cripple your business

In today’s business world, fraud is a major issue. The harsh economic climate is luring more individuals towards embezzlement, and the more global an institution becomes, the greater the chance of poor communication and controls leading to a lack of staff vigilance against fraud.

Fraud is like cancer: whether it’s stealing petty cash, under-reporting or embezzling, it can slowly strangle your ability to pay bills, order essential supplies, market yourself or even keep prized employees.

Instances of fraud can appear throughout a company’s operations – from fraudulent transactions and data theft to questionable business relationships and employment fraud. Internal business fraud can be committed in a number of different ways, including:

• Diversion of business
• Theft of confidential information (such as customer lists)
• Theft of goods
• Theft of money and assets
• Intellectual property appropriation
• Specific types of fraud such as Ponzi schemes, false accounting, identity theft or boiler room fraud

Fraud gnaws away at operating capital and profits. Therefore, vigilance needs to be constant and prevention is key. Simple things like two signatures per cheque, internal controls but external audits across your business, warehouse security cameras and regular inventory checks can make a big step to reducing the risk of corporate fraud in your business.

How can you benefit from Blackhawk’s investigative services?

Competitive Intelligence

At Blackhawk Intelligence, we have a specialist team who excels at gathering and analysing intelligence that enables our clients to better understand their business environment, enhance their ability to identify business risks and opportunities, and leverage their competitive edge. Our competitive intelligence service is based on a cutting-edge methodology that includes high-end information gathering and research capabilities, bolstered by solid technical and legal acuity.

Competitive intelligence is delivered in the form of a graphic plot of key players in the target market, accompanied by detailed information on each competitor’s procedures, practices, R&D plans, products and services, and unrevealed usable leverage points of conflicts, corruption, fraud or bribery.

Background Checks and International Investigations

As well as identifying and addressing business fraud, Blackhawk’s investigative services are a useful and effective way of scrutinising the competition and protecting your business. Depending on your needs and the needs of your business, we can tailor our services to provide you with the best possible information and with the overall aim of seeing you and your business succeed.

We can help to determine if a potential employee is worth hiring or if a new company, either here in the UK or abroad, is worth investing in. This is particularly important if you are considering engaging in a business merger or acquisition. We offer targeted and sound advice to help you determine whether or not a business deal is right for you, and then give you crucial support to make the most out of your new business venture. We can also investigate candidates and other businesses to determine whether or not they are involved in corporate fraud. This is particularly helpful as it reduces your own business’ risk of fraud.

Asset Tracing and People Tracing

Our asset tracing expertise is useful when dealing with fraud. In some cases, following a legal battle in which money has been involved, the defendant of the case may be fraudulently claiming that they have nothing of value to pay what is owed. Asset tracing can identify and trace the assets of the defendant and can recover any assets that are rightfully yours.

Our investigative services are also beneficial to those who are attempting to trace a missing person. We can help you to locate missing individuals, especially if they are beneficiaries to a will. As part of our people tracing service, we also specialise in wills and probate searches.

Financial Fraud Investigations

Finally, Blackhawk can identify corporate fraud within your business. We can then work with you to create strategies that aim to prevent further fraud from occurring in the future. These bespoke strategies are designed to fit your specific business and to alleviate the potential risk of fraud. Our surveillance techniques can also be used in conjunction with our financial fraud investigative services to provide evidence that will support you through the litigation process. When it comes to corporate fraud, having access to surveillance evidence will drastically improve your chances in the courtroom.

One of Blackhawk’s main skills is preserving digital evidence and recovering lost or hidden data in a format that is acceptable in a court of law. Attempting to collect the evidence internally means that you risk damaging it. We can turn any gut feelings you have into hard evidence or help to dispel your suspicions. Whether your suspects are internal or a competitor involved in espionage makes no difference to us – our dedicated in-house legal team can check out:

• Money
• Property
• Stocks and shares
• Intellectual property rights
• Employment law anomalies
• Offshore assets and directorships
• All stock in trades of the fraudster

We leave nothing untouched when tracing a debtor’s assets, offshore or not. We tailor our service to fit your needs and budget, and will create a fixed fee proposal and a detailed report of our findings. We will interview witnesses and set up surveillance operations, yet remain discreet throughout.

Investigative services you can trust

Our expert and thorough investigative services can be tailored to fit your business needs. We aim to put you at ease by providing tangible results that are efficient and informative. When you work with us, we will talk you through your concerns and the specific options available to your business, and we can reassure you that we will move discreetly and at speed in order to achieve the desired result.

Contact us today on +44 (0)20 8108 9317 to find out how our investigative services can be of use to you.