So how do investors use private investigators to make profits? Well, here’s an example of a story. Now, we were not involved with this case at all, but we have been involved with similar cases, and I’m using this as an example out of privacy for our clients.

Company Misrepresentation
Many times, companies will make representations about their business that aren’t true. And if that company is a public company, that can affect their stock price, and investors want to know really what’s going on. In addition, if it’s a private company, sometimes clients or vendors will make decisions about doing business with a company based on what they represent.

Case Study: VinFast
In this case, there’s a company called VinFast that builds electric vehicles, cheap electric vehicles, and they represented they were selling a certain number of cars. They were selling all these thousands or millions of cars, and based on that, either their stock or their profits or their investors were putting in a lot of money.

Discovery of Fraud
And it turns out they weren’t selling that many cars. They were reporting sales, but the sales they were reporting were to companies, showing companies that they set up. This was discovered by an investigation that found that there were all these cars sitting behind fences in fields.

Investigation Techniques
And that a large percentage of their sales were going to basically the owner of the company, putting them in his name. They gathered satellite data in ENT, and we’ve talked about ENT many times. You’ll start to see that more now in investigations.

Coverups and fraud
And there were a lot of coverups. There was a great deal of fraud in the reporting of this company, allegedly. Allegedly.

The importance of verification
So if you are an investor, a hedge fund, or looking to do business with a company, it might be worth looking into actually investigating the core numbers that you’re relying on. Are there that many vehicles being sold? Are there that many employees? Do they have contracts? Do they have permits?

Methods of Verification
There’s a lot of things you can investigate, even surveillance and even monitoring truck traffic delivery materials. It should match what the representations are.

Conclusion
So anytime you’re making a decision about a large company, whether it’s a large investment or purchasing stock, do something with an investigation to verify the claims you’re relying on. Make sure you do it legally. Make sure you’re not giving any inside information. But it is worth protecting your investment or protecting your contracts to make sure that representations are true, and a private investigation can verify this.