Summary:

Our client suspected that a company executive was diverting business opportunities from his company to a secretly owned company that was developing a competing product.

The Story:

We were engaged to help the client determine whether, in fact, a company executive had diverted business opportunities from our client to a secretly owned company developing a competing but similar product and to establish whether corporate resources had been misused to support that company's product design or development as well as assess any potential infringement of our client's patents.

To accomplish this, we first conducted financial and corporate searches on the executive and his new entity. Then, working with the client, we created a pretext firm with a website, email infrastructure, and dedicated telephone numbers.

 

Once the pretext was in place, we contacted the executive, posing as prospective buyers and expressing concerns about pricing. Over a series of telephone calls and numerous email exchanges, he repeatedly attempted to steer us toward the product line of his undisclosed company.

The information we developed enabled our client to gain significant leverage and ultimately facilitated the executive's removal from the company.