Becoming a Successful Online Sleuth in Your Investigations
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If you Google your name, you will find many tidbits on yourself that are, somehow, public information – even information that you tried very hard to keep private. It may be a nuisance to many, but to investigators, publicly available information or open-source intelligence (OSINT) is quite handy. This was the subject of “Use Public Information to Your Advantage in Fraud Investigations,” an educational session from ACFE Regent and Senior Vice President of J.S. Held LLC, Natalie Lewis, CFE, CPA/CFF, at the 34th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference.
OSINT is a great tool for your fraud investigations because it’s publicly available and you don’t need consent from court or the subject to use it. It is commonly gathered through online searches, government records, court databases, social media and more. When investigators use acquired information, they could be looking for several things, and OSINT will help them find it – things like photos and videos, bankruptcies, relationships and more. There is plenty of this data out there – in fact, Lewis says the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes per day – and many times, it is free information.
Lewis says information from OSINT can help you discover new points of interest for possible collusion, and it can serve as an aid in conducting interviews to confirm information. However, she says there are disadvantages to having all this information right at your fingertips. For one, it’s hard to cut through all the noise – there is just too much information to get through, and it’s very easy to go down needless rabbit holes in your searches. To avoid this, Lewis recommends investigators deploy proper management and organization to their search and set time limits. Also, not everything on the internet is true, so Lewis emphasized that information obtained must be verified.
There are also some legal concerns to keep in mind. Privacy is one of them. Also, defamation. To avoid the latter, Lewis says you should not document or report anything that cannot be independently verified. To stave off possible discrimination, Lewis says you should take caution with information if the subject happens to be in a protected class.
Not all publicly available information is free. In fact, programs like LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters CLEAR, TransUnion and more come with a nominal fee. When using these programs, Lewis recommends you use any information you know about the subject to help narrow down information from individual searches. On the other hand, if you conduct a business search, you can keep your net wide open. However, Lewis cautions that you should treat any of these searches like you would while using ChatGPT – take everything with a grain of salt.
If you’re looking for free sources of information, again, use known information to make targeted searches. You can use search engines, and don’t just settle on Google. Lewis says you should be using several search engines since algorithms are different on each. You can also use news articles, business records (like SEC filings), people searching (Reverse Phone Lookup, PeekYou and social media sites) and more.
But Lewis cautions you to be careful when using some sites, like LinkedIn. The popular career networking site will sometimes inform people of who visits their profile. If you used your profile to click on your subject’s profile, and you have career information related to investigations posted, then you may be tipping off a subject that they are being investigated.
So, knowing all this, how can we best navigate OSINT as investigators? Lewis recommends these best practices:
Know the laws in your state and defer to legal counsel.
Check your privacy settings for social media searches.
Verify and corroborate evidence.
Capture evidence when you find it.
Monitor your time appropriately.
