The phone rings and your answer is met by the unmistakable voice of someone from Human Resources. They want to schedule a meeting, and your mind scrabbles to imagine what could be going on. Responsible for hiring and firing—not to mention navigation a spectrum of other serious matters and investigations—the HR department is one with whom many employees would rather minimize their contact. You ask yourself: Why would HR call me? Let’s delve into the possibilities so that you can approach what comes next with a sense of readiness.
When Human Resources Step In
Of course, when someone from HR dials your number, there’s a chance that it is in regard to something entirely routine such as scheduling performance evaluations or implementing training and team-building programs. Equally, it could announce less-welcome news, like changes to benefits or compensation, news of a transfer, or the dreaded initiation of layoffs.
When that call comes without any warning from leadership, however, there is a good chance that the gears of an HR investigation are beginning to turn. Whenever something untoward occurs in a workplace—whether theft, a complaint, a dispute, or any form of criminality—it is the company’s duty to conduct structured and tactical corporate investigations, so what might these involve?
Types of HR Investigation
The diversity of incidents that might trigger an HR investigation vary in scope and seriousness. Many relate to corporate culture and might include things like workplace harassment or discrimination. A violation of workplace policy or code of conduct may have taken place, either in the form of direct employee behavior or actions recorded on social media and via other digital channels.
A spectrum of theft types might have taken place, spanning from time theft to asset misappropriation. On the most extreme end of the spectrum, white collar crimes such as fraud and embezzlement might be under the spotlight. Here are some of the types of investigation that HR might take the lead on:
Workplace harassment and bullying
Sexual harassment and sexual assault
Employee discrimination
Time theft and malingering
Theft of material assets
Workplace violence
Breaches of code of conduct
Toxic corporate culture
Non-compete violations
Financial fraud, embezzlement, and forgery
Whistleblower reports
Why Would HR Call Me?
Returning to your most pressing question: Why would HR call me? If an investigation is under way, it may be that your actions are under suspicion, but it might also be that your assistance will be integral to the fair and accurate conclusion of an HR investigation into colleagues working by your side. You might already be aware of something unsavory going on within your workplace setting, or you may unknowingly be privy to facts that will help crucial justice be served.
If HR calls you in this regard, in all likelihood you will be asked to make a statement and submit to a formal interview. Your employers may have enlisted the assistance of external corporate investigations services—this is particularly likely if the grievance is serious in nature—and so you may find yourself interacting with a skilled corporate investigator, who will guide you towards contributing as effectively as possible to proceeding. Crucially, if you have done nothing wrong, then effective HR investigations will serve to safeguard the integrity of your professional standing and team while ensuring that the true offenders are held to account. If you’d like to know more, discover how Lauth Investigations International supports organizations across America in the pursuit of successful HR investigations. If mounting your own investigation, turn to experts you can trust. We are always just a click or phone call away.
In matters both private and corporate, private investigators can be invaluable multi-tools for individuals who are hoping to clinch crucial intelligence, or execute specific tasks. However, there are times when field operations can become extremely dangerous or even fatal, like the tragic fate of a Texas private investigator when he attempted to serve a warrant on a suspect of child sexual assault. The private investigator was shot by the subject of the warrant, prompting a response from the Garland Police, resulting in multiple fatalities.
On June 2, in the early evening, a group of private investigators were attempting to serve a warrant for Little Elm resident, Juan Carlos Lopez, 33, for “multiple counts of child sexual assault,” according to a release from Garland Police. The attempt to serve the warrant was made just after 7:30 PM at a motel in the 6200 block of Broadway Blvd.
As the Texas private investigator attempted to serve the warrant, Garland officers on the scene heard gunfire, subsequently getting word that the private investigator had been shot by the suspect. The Garland Officers made entry to the hotel room and pulled the private investigator from the scene. Three of the officers discharged their weapons, striking the suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene. According to the Garland Police’s statement on social media, “The three officers will be placed on paid administrative leave in accordance with departmental policy.”
The Texas private investigator was taken to the local hospital where he was also pronounced deceased. They have not yet been identified pending the notification of their family and loved ones. The investigation remains ongoing. According to the statement released by the Garland Police, “Garland Detectives and members of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office Public Integrity Unit responded to the scene to investigate according to standard procedures.
Custody battles are one of the most taxing and distressing events that can occur within a family. From the emotions broiling between caregivers to choosing the best possible living situation for a child, both tensions and the stakes can be very high for all those involved. As all parties involved prepare for family court, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the documents and information required. In order to maintain some sense of objectivity, many families hire a private investigator for custody investigations, which has many benefits, both inside and outside the courtroom.
Why hire a private investigator for custody investigations? Private investigators have a wealth of skills and tools that can arm caregivers with the information they need to enter a courtroom and prove their case to a family court judge.
Comprehensive background investigations: While potential caregivers may have personal knowledge of another party’s fitness for custody, proving the absolute objectivity of that information in family court can prove difficult, as most family court judges know inherently that all potential caregivers will have an axe to grind when it comes to their case. However, with an independent, comprehensive background check, a private investigator can identify crucial factors in a potential caregiver’s personal life, such as address history, criminal history, and litigation history. Each of these factors needs a private investigator’s trained eye to discern how relevant they might become within a custody investigation, and present those factors with objectivity.
Documenting relative lifestyle factors: In background investigations, relevant factors may come up that will need to be documented for the court by an independent party. For instance, if a potential caregiver believes that another associates with dangerous individuals or if they keep strange hours due to substance abuse, a private investigator could document those factors through field surveillance. With videos and photographs of the alleged bad behavior, the evidence will be harder to impeach in court.
Examining documents: Private investigators have the ability to get their hands on relevant paperwork regarding a potential caregiver. Many families attempt to procure relevant paperwork of their own accord, but often with less than ideal results. Not only is it crucial to obtain the paperwork, but private investigators can review paperwork with an independent eye and ability to cross-check relevant information that will be of interest to the court.
Evaluation of primary residence: When making decisions about where a child should live, documenting the living conditions will be paramount. Using the same field surveillance technology used to document lifestyle factors can also be used to document the living conditions of the residence. While it’s true that private investigators cannot enter a person’s home without being invited, there are undercover ruses that can be used to photograph the inside of the home. The property around the residence will also need to be documented, especially factors like structures being in disrepair, refuse on the lawn, or heavy machinery stored on the property that could be a safety factor.
Independent testimony: By far, the greatest asset of a private investigator’s involvement is their independence and objectivity. Family court judges know that all parties involved in a child custody situations, all parties involved cannot possibly be 100% objective. Hiring a private investigator for child custody investigations can be a huge step in the direction swaying the judge. Private investigators have no stake in the outcome of the case, and therefore, their testimony can be viewed as objective by the court.
If you need a private investigator for child custody investigations, call Lauth Investigations International at 317-951-1100 for a free quote and learn how we can help you. For more information, you can also visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com.
Last February, Ryan Last received a message from a person he believed to be a girl. What might normally be a harbinger of new beginnings was in reality the beginning of a tragic and criminal sequence of events that would lead to the 17-year-old’s untimely death.
In his final days, Ryan Last was looking towards the next horizon of his young life—a time so typically filled with dreams and promise of exciting things to come. Ryan and his mother, Pauline Stuart, had just returned from visiting several colleges that Ryan was considering attending following his impending graduation from high school. Pauline described her son to CNN as a “usually happy” young man, who was a straight-A student and a former Boy Scout.
It all began with a seemingly-innocuous text exchange “Somebody reached out to him pretending to be a girl, and they started a conversation,” Pauline told CNN. Unfortunately, Pauline had no idea Little did Ryan know that the conversation would soon take a dark and sinister turn, and he would soon become the victim of a sextortion scam by a criminal posing as a young girl for financial gain. She was posthumously informed by investigators who had to use text messages and financial transactions to piece together what had happened to Ryan in the last hours of his life.
Like many sextortion scams out there, the scammer sent Ryan an intimate photo—a hyper-common opening-salvo. The scammer then asked Ryan to return the gesture by sending an intimate photo of himself, which he obliged. That’s when things turned sinister. As soon as the scammer received the intimate photo, they began demanding $5,000 from the 17-year-old boy, or else they would publish the intimate photo and send it to Ryan’s family and friends. He told the scammer that he could not afford to pay the entire extortion figure, and managed to convince the scammer to lower the figure to $150, which he was forced to pull from his college savings. Pauline told CNN, however, that the scammers immediately continued to extort money from her son, “They kept demanding more and more and putting lots of continued pressure on him.” Tragically, by 2:00 AM, Ryan had taken his own life, leaving behind a note detailing his immense embarrassment on behalf of himself and his family. “He really, truly thought in that time that there wasn’t a way to get by if those pictures were actually posted online. His note showed he was absolutely terrified. No child should have to be that scared.”
As technology continues to evolve and become somehow more ubiquitous, law enforcement is seeing a drastic uptick in what they are calling “sextortion scams” in which criminals acquire intimate photos or information about their target, then threaten to publish the photos or information unless their demands are met. However, with more and more teens becoming the targets of these sextortion scams, the FBI is mounting a campaign to ensure parents know their teens could be vulnerable all across the United States. According to the FBI, there were over 18,000 sextortion complaints in 2021 alone, with financial losses of over $13 million—not just with intimate photos of adults, but also with the use of child exploitation materials in order to make the target pay up. The FBI has advised that the investigation into Ryan Last’s extorter is still ongoing. “To be a criminal that specifically targets children—it’s one of the more deeper violations of trust I think in society,” says FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dan Costin, who leads a team of investigators who specifically work to solve crimes against children.
The FBI has determined that a significant percentage of sextortion scams that occur in the United States every year are perpetrated from a remote location, such as Africa or Southeast Asia, which requires the FBI to collaborate with many international agencies throughout the globe in order to track down these criminals, especially those who are targeting minors with their schemes. However, investigating sextortion scams presents its own series of challenges, namely the fact that many victims of sextortion scams do not report incidents to law enforcement—a factor that the criminals responsible are counting on, especially when it comes to minors. “The embarrassment piece of this is probably one of the bigger hurdles that the victims have overcome,” says Costin, “It can be a lot, especially in the moment.”
It’s difficult to understand why any individual would take their own lives under the threat of having their personal intimate photos released online, but with teenagers, the circumstances are mitigated. Everyone remembers how difficult it is to be a teenager. With their still-developing brains and lack of life experience, their ability to accurately judge the consequences of any given situation is heavily compromised. Dr. Scott Hadland, the chief of adolescent medicine at Mass General in Boston, says that adolescents, especially adolescent young men, are incapable of seeing the big picture, “So when something catastrophic happens, like a personal picture is released to people online, it’s hard for them to look past that moment and understand that in the big scheme of things, they’ll be able to get through this.
Stories like that of Ryan Last have parents all over the country fretting about how they can protect their children from sextortion scams, but there are steps that parents can take. Dr. Hadland told CNN, “The most important thing that a parent should do with their teen is try to understand what they’re doing online. You want to know when they’re going online, who they’re interacting with, what platforms they’re using. Are they being approached by people that they don’t know, are they experiencing pressure to share information or photos?” If your family has been experiencing problems with a sextortion scam, call Lauth Investigations International at 317-951-1100 for a free quote or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com
Picture this—you’ve entered the world of online dating. Maybe you’re using websites or matchmaking apps in order to find love forever or just for a little while. You connect with a new person who wants to move off-app to have a more personal conversation. They send you an intimate photo of themselves to escalate the conversation and ask that you return the gesture in kind. Not wanting to be rude, you oblige, and reply with an intimate photo of yourself. That’s when the trap snaps shut. All at once, the tone of the conversation turns completely over, and the person on the other end of the connection is suddenly demanding money in exchange for not publicizing your intimate photo. You’ve just become the victim of a sextortion scam. It’s a growing phenomenon that many private citizens may not be aware of. From our private investigators, here is the full run-down of sextortion scams and how a private investigator may be able to help.
People who fell in love with their long-term partner prior to the age of the internet will likely have difficulty understanding how ordinary individuals can fall victim to sextortion scams and other scams of a similar ilk. The truth is that anyone can fall victim to a scam like this, and that’s why it’s so important to know the signs of a scam like this and what users can do to protect themselves.
Sextortion scams typically are designed like the hypothetical one mentioned above in which victims are targeted via some sort of online dating site or social media platform, groomed by the perpetrator, then manipulated into trading intimate photos with the perpetrator—only to be extorted for money in exchange for those photos not being sent to their friends, family, or being published on the internet. According to the FBI, there were over 18,000 sextortion complaints in 2021 alone, with financial losses of over $13 million—not just with intimate photos of adults, but also with the use of child exploitation materials in order to make the target pay up.
It’s not just adults in relationships who are vulnerable to sextortion scams, but teenagers as well—particularly adolescent boys. Even though the latest generation has grown up with digital literacy as a part of their education, they can still fall victim to the same sort of scams as adults in their sixties and beyond. Because their brains are still developing at this age, many teenagers are unable to see beyond the horizon of such a horrific event and give themselves the comfort that this too shall pass. With this limited perspective, it’s not uncommon for the circumstances of the case to become tragic. A 17-year-old boy named Ryan Last came into the public eye this past February after he became the target of a sextortion scam in which he believed he was corresponding with a girl his age. Just hours after the first message was exchanged between Ryan and the scammer, Ryan was extorted for $150 that he was forced to draw from his college fund. After the first payment was made, the scammer demanded additional funds. Believing that he had nowhere to turn, Ryan made the tragic decision to take his own life to spare himself and his family the embarrassment of the situation.
All forms of sextortion scams are popular amongst cyber criminals because the internal and external pressure on the victims almost always leads to a payout for the perpetrator(s). In order to minimize the threat of exposure, victims are almost always willing to part with whatever amount they believe will initially satisfy the scammer, whether it be the full amount demanded, or a negotiated amount within the victim’s ability to pay. However, another hallmark of these sextortion scams is that once the first payment has cleared, the scammers will almost always come back asking for more. With the victim’s intimate photo in their possession, they are free to make whatever demands they believe they can extract. They threaten to publish the photos if the victim attempts to block or sever all connection to the scammer, placing the victim in a never-ending hamster wheel of extortion until the scammer stops contact or the photos are made public.
What is disturbing about the 18,000 cases of sextortion reported to the FBI in 2021 is that it may not be an accurate representation of how pervasive the problem is in the United States. The FBI has reported that the majority of sextortion scams originate in Africa or Southeast Asia, but the data is, due to its nature, incomplete. While every investigation presents its own series of unique problems, sextortion scams are particularly tricky because they often go unreported. Its very common for victims of sextortion scams to be far too embarrassed to report the crime to law enforcement, especially since many local law enforcement agencies will be unequipped to handle the circumstances or even search for the perpetrator.
Sextortion scams are typically “all-business,” as to say that they are simply cyber-criminals targeting strangers across the globe for financial gain. However, sextortion scams can also be perpetrated for more personal reasons, sometimes between intimate partners, or sometimes even between casual acquaintances. There may be a financial demand, but more commonly, the demands are of a more interpersonal nature. Intimate pictures may be used as leverage between friends who are feuding over a third-party, in divorce proceedings, or between former intimate partners who feel entitled to some sort of catharsis for their heartache.
When victims of sextortion scams do make the decision to report the scam to their local law enforcement, it’s not uncommon for authorities to abstain from involvement, either because they don’t believe they have the jurisdiction, or because they don’t believe they have legal cause to investigate. This leaves the victims feeling isolated and beyond help, but that is not always the case. Depending on the circumstances surrounding the sextortion scam, a private investigator may be the ideal professional to unravel the scheme one text at a time.
Not all private investigation firms will be equipped to deal with the scale of international sextortion scams. In cases where the perpetrator is on another continent, very serious cyber intelligence technology will be necessary for locating the scammer and creating leverage to stop the extortion. However, when the sextortion occurs between two people in the same jurisdiction, there are private investigators who will have the tools to get to the bottom of the matter for victims.
Private investigators are like law enforcement in the sense that they have similar skillsets, experience, and bodies of knowledge that can lead to solutions. However, there are a few factors that set private investigators apart from law enforcement and make them better suited to investigate sextortion scams.
Private investigators are typically autonomous in their work, meaning that they can follow leads anywhere without running into a wall of bureaucratic red tape in their investigation.
Private investigators generally have a much smaller caseload than that of local and federal law enforcement. While a local police investigator may be carrying a caseload of 20-30 cases, private investigators usually handle between 4-10 cases at a time. This means each case gets the attention it deserves.
Private investigators do not have powers of arrest, therefore witnesses or suspects in any given crime may be more likely to engage with them if they know they cannot be legally detained for any reason.
Should the results of the investigation lead to any legal action, the evidence and testimony of private investigators can stand up to a higher degree of scrutiny in a court of law or civil court, as they are independent third parties with no stake in the outcome of the proceedings.
Even if they do not have the particular tools to investigate sextortion scams, private investigators can also partner with cyber experts who may have the software necessary to track communications between scammers and their victims to develop strategies for pursuing action against the scammer(s).
If you or someone you love has become the target of a sextortion scam, it is in your best interest to report it to your nearest law enforcement agency, who can then advise you on what the next steps are in ending the harassment. While the act of reporting can be inherently embarrassing, it may go a long way to stopping the scammer from targeting another innocent person or family.
If you are in need of the due-diligence and fact-finding that come with the services of a licensed private investigator to unravel a sextortion scam in your own life, please reach out to Lauth Investigations International to find out how we can help you end the cycle of harassment and extortion. We carry a glowing A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, regularly receive 5-star testimonials from our clients, and were recently named one of the top three private investigators in the greater Indianapolis area. Call 317-951-1100 for a free quote, or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com for more information.
