Sting operations

Sting operations

Closely related to surveillance are "sting operations," which are typically used to determine whether or not an employee, partner or business associate with signed exclusivity is in fact violating his agreement.

Such cases generally evolve from the following conditions:

The partner or employee currently works for said company, but there are suspicions that he is representing competing interests or even selling services for himself or his relatives on the side (i.e. using company resources).

An outsourced sales distribution company or representative is violating similar agreements.

Employees are in fact selling company merchandise "on the black." Such examples can be found in product diversion scams, when there is supposedly excess breakage or returns that must be destroyed (as in the food sector or in the secure paper sector or many printing operations).

There is the suspicion that product is being diluted (pharma or chemicals or the petrochemical sector).

There is the suspicion that company secrets are being shared in order to influence tenders or new products (the latter is commonly seen in the IT sector).

Although some such cases can be broken through internal forensics audits, the risk of political backlash is often quite high. An alternate route may be to set up a legal sting operation and catch such perpetrators in the act.Each case differs, however, which means a great deal of planning and clarity is needed between the client and CDDI.