Corporate TSCM Investigation

Background Information

We received an email request from a company executive in his late 70’s in need of our assistance. He started by describing the business he built from the ground up. The office building was newly constructed with views outside from large floor-to-ceiling windows. He was concerned that multiple rooms had been bugged by another executive within the organization. This executive seemed to know all about the confidential business that was conducted within his private office, his executive assistant’s office, and the VP/Treasurer’s office.

A TSCM Investigation can Save Your Business

The suspect spying on our client was his own son.

His son was scheming to take over the business. By eavesdropping on conversations, undermining his father’s decisions, and pricing to win clients once loyal to his father, the son tried to erode his father’s credibility and inferred that his father was senile and incompetent.

The Underlying Cause

The situation first started when the son hired an incompetent and under-qualified person to a high level VP position with an equally high salary. This caused havoc with the upper management who had been loyal for years and helped build the business. A top salesman was so upset by the incompetency of the newly hired VP that he resigned. Within a year, the business declined. My client fired the VP, which upset the son because he was having an affair with this woman. So began the son’s undermining of the father’s business.

A Law Enforcement Associate was called, but since a crime could not be proven, he was unable to do anything about the snooping son. The Law Enforcement Officers advised my client to call them if things got violent.

The police were not able to help our client, nor did they have any interest in investigating the matter further. Unless there is a crime happening right in front of them, they usually don’t take further action. They are simply not equipped to deal with this type of situation.

Our Corporate TSCM Services

Two of our professional corporate TSCM investigators were brought into the building after business hours to conduct a thorough bug sweep. Nothing was found and the TSCM investigators left before employees returned the next morning.

Disappointed, we talked with our client again. This time the executive revealed that his son was always in his office when important meetings were being conducted within the other offices, with his office door closed and locked.

This new information got us thinking further. Our client wanted answers, so we set a honey trap for this to happen again.

COMSEC Vulnerabilities Revealed

Our client spread the word that an important meeting would take place and he did not invite his son. The trap was for us to observe the son in plain sight through the large windows from the outside parking lot. Sure enough, the son was in his office with his door closed. We observed the son take out his laptop, open it, attach a device, and point the device up toward the overhead vents above his desk.

We suspect that the son used an amplification device attached to his laptop to record the conversations through the HVAC trunk piping system.

The next day our TSCM investigators accessed the building again. Upon physically walking the entire 14 foot open area proposed for future expansion to the building’s second floor they looked down at the drop ceiling tile at the electrical conduit trunk wiring and air/heat ventilation. They could see the poorly designed main trunk line and feeder piping to all the offices. The system was designed for economic benefit, not for security.

Ambient noise could be heard from another office within plain earshot near the vent in the son’s office.

TSCM test measurements from the TSCM ‘Acoustic Leakage Probe’ and the TSCM ‘CMA-100 Professional High Gain Audio Amplifier’ proved that ambient noise could be heard even from the farthest office.

This was almost a perfect crime with no evidence left behind. Our invstigative expertise proved the eavesdropping that police were unable to find.