A client came to us with a theory that a website defaming their company was secretly funded by one of their top three competitors. Through public records we were able to link a competitor and the website using real estate records (the website was funded by a charity based at the competing CEO’s residence) and through state-level lobbying records.

Our bill for investigating the competitors and linking one to the website and the charity was $8,700.

This was a difficult case because the offending website could have been supported by a number of different competitors hostile to our client. We needed to look at the ownership of the charity and where it was based, using publicly available tax records in part. We then matched up all addresses (business and personal) of all the executives of all of the competitors until we were able to associate the charity with the competitor.

In addition, we established that the charity was little more than a paid hit squad for whomever was paying. In the past it had gone after a variety of targets, all of which happened to be competitors of the charity’s major donor at the time.

Our findings were included in the client’s court filing against the charity and its backer.