REPUTATION RESTORATION FIRMS ALSO POST BOGUS POSITIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR CLIENTS

Compliance officers conducting due diligence investigations on potential bank clients generally pas over innocuous Internet information, such as social media, or client-created content, but they do stop and review information from third parties. This so-called positive content may be as bogus as the client's cover story about what he really does for a living, namely financial crime or narcotics trafficking.

Anytime your Internet research lands upon what appears to be something positive that your target has done, check carefully, for the site may just have been cleverly presented to give you the impression that a third party has posted it. In truth and in fact, the positive information about your target may have been posted by a reputation restoration firm, cleaning up their client's dirty image. You may have to read between the lines, though.

For example, for those readers who have been following my stories about the escapades of the convicted fugitive Dutch white-collar criminal, Okke Ornstein, you will see, if you Google him, that he claims to be an award-winning journalist in Europe. A closer examination, however shows that a business associate of his merely recommended him for the honor, and there's no evidence that it was ever awarded, because it was not. These tactics, by reputation restoration firms trying to clean up their customers' lives online, also include blatant false information, which appears to be legitimate, because it was posted by a third party, or organization, but actually was a clever invention, with no factual basis.

Always verify anything  you read on the Internet, through a trusted source; this may mean contacting legitimate information outlets via telephone or email, but it may be the only way that you can learn that the good items online are fabrications.

if you have an interest in the strategy and tactics of reputation restoration companies, and how you can navigate around, over, under, or  through their interference, please consider attending my complementary webinar, next Tuesday, July 1st, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time entitled:
AVOIDING THE REPUTATION RESTORATION MINEFIELD IN KYC INVESTIGATIONS* .

More details are available in the article I have  posted to this blog on June 18, 2014, which can be seen by accessing the link below**.
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*To register, send an email to: rgoldfinger@nominodata.com
**http://rijock.blogspot.com/2014/06/webinar-avoiding-reputation-restoration.html