Corporate Security Investigations: Introduction

Regarding Keith Krasnove, my assess­ment is mixed.

Keith has lied repeatedly to me in wri­ting. However, he produced what I was looking for. I've told him that I'm grate­ful for that.

But I don't think that Corporate Security Investigations originally planned to do any work on my behalf. The evi­dence suggests that Keith Krasnove was going to take my money, wait until after the deadline for a complaint to my bank had passed, and laugh all the way to his own bank.

Corporate Security Investigations: Preliminary assess­ment

Corporations with attorneys on staff might find it not only safe, but profitable, to work with Keith Krasnove of Corporate Security Investigations.

However, indi­vid­uals might wish to proceed cautiously with a P.I. who is like­ly to lie to them and to threaten them for asking ques­tions.

My sense is that Keith Krasnove sees individual, non-corporate, clients as krill. Corporations would be a dif­fer­ent matter.

Corporate Security Investigations: Story

Keith Krasnove had promised to take a par­tic­u­lar step on Dec 03, 2018. This was over a month after I'd paid him. He didn't do so. When I asked him about his non-performance the next day, he threat­en­ed me with­out cause.

The threat was most like­ly, in and of it­self, a prosecutable crime due to its inclusion of a lie that Keith has never, to the best of my knowledge, dir­ect­ly retracted.

As a note to attorneys, Keith *has* retracted the lie in writ­ten statements which are worded as indirectly as pos­si­ble.

So, barring abuse of pro­cess, which is of course common, Keith would be at risk in legal proceedings.

Keith Krasnove never responded to polite inquiries that I made on Dec 04, 2018 regarding his non-performance.

Instead, Keith said that that I'd made a chargeback and that Corporate Security Investigations was going to sue me for fraud as well as for other damages.

Keith's pos­i­tion now is that this was sim­ply a mis­take on his part and the threat was justified by the mis­take that he'd made.

However, he declined to acknowledge the mis­take or retract his threat for a week. As of Decem­ber 10, 2018, he still hadn't taken either step in email. Only in text messages.

He seems deter­min­ed to avoid acknowledging in wri­ting that he made the threat. But I'd say that text messages count, for legal pur­poses, as writ­ten communications.

The rele­vant text messages will be posted here in due course.

On Dec 04, 2018, Corporate Security Investations sug­gest­ed, in wri­ting, that I'd stolen $1,000 from the company. This wasn't even close to the amount that would have been stolen if I *had* made a chargeback.

$1,000 was 67% higher than the actual amount, $600, and Keith Krasnove cited the 67% dif­fer­ence that he made up as the basis for the part of his threat re­la­ted to fraud.

I hadn't even threat­en­ed to make a chargeback. I'd spoken as polite­ly as pos­si­ble to a company that had lied to me in wri­ting.

Surely Corporate Security Investigations is a firm that hardworking indi­vid­uals who need help can trust. Trust to threaten them for asking ques­tions.

On Dec 10, 2018, Keith Krasnove made an unexplained remark — once again, in wri­ting — that may have been innocuous or a more serious threat.

This had to do with Krasnove's prosecution of the gangster Wallace Rice in his (Krasnove's) previous career as, I think, an Assistant District Attorney. Details will be added here.

But, even so, I've offer­ed Krasnove add­i­tion­al work. I feel that, under the right circumstances, he's able to deliver the goods.

This is one of the stranger situations to arise out of the Kiraly Gag Order Cases. I'll assemble the story here as time permits.

I've got to say that, once Keith got moving, he delivered the goods.

Keith inflates the significance of the reports side of his bus­i­ness. Every licensed P.I. has access to data broker reports. Some brokers are bet­ter and some are worse. Either way, the P.I. usually can't take credit for what's in them.

Non-pro forma reports, out of the box thinking, and field work are dif­fer­ent matters. This is where you find out what a P.I. can do.

As I've explain­ed elsewhere, the priority of most low-end P.I.s, except for retired police officers, is to find a way to defraud you.

Police officers, the ones that I've talked to, seem very by the book.

But other P.I.s invent non-existent informants, press you to pay for surveil­lance when the proposal is prima facie fraud, and come up with questionable reasons about why investigations should be con­tin­ued.

In Keith's case, I don't think that he was going to do any work within the two months that I had to file a dispute with my bank. Additionally, he broke promises, flat-out lied to me, and threat­en­ed me at least once. Possibly twice.

But I was able to per­suade him to actu­al­ly do the work that I'd paid for. I was rewarded for patience with results.

The stress was sig­ni­fi­cant. I had to talk to my bank on mul­ti­ple days for hours at a time. I lost nights of sleep.

But I ended up with a great photo­graph, an interesting story about developments, and an extra data broker report that I didn't authorize but found use­ful. More about that further down.

The photo­graph is on Haggis Hell, but it will be copied here in due course.

Keith is wearing a coat; I don't know if it's an actual trenchcoat, but it seems very P.I.-ish.

He's standing in a house that my parents had abandoned. He's spread his arms in a bemused gesture and has an exasperated expression on his face.

It says “P.I.”.

Keith implied that he did extra work as a form of apology for his orig­in­al threat. He seemed to be offering me the extra report in this context as well.

But he didn't seem to want to spell any­thing out. That's how I read it, anyway. I'll post the messages in­volved here later.

To be honest, I just wanted him to talk to me clearly and to explain what had hap­pen­ed. He wasn't willing to do that, I think, due to fears re­la­ted to legal liabilities.

Date: December 10, 2018
To: Keith Krasnove
Corporate Security Investigations

Keith, I'm pretty sleepy. I'll try to be brief.

You texted a reference to Wallace Rice, a gangster, on Decem­ber 10, 2018. You declined to explain the context for the reference.

You were in­volved in the prosecution of Rice. The reference might have been an implied boast re­la­ted to your prowess in your previous career. Or there might been have more to it; perhaps the admission that you framed Rice and the implication that you could do so to others.

I don't know, due to your refusal to explain.

I'm going to need to make public the fact that you made the reference and pos­si­bly speak with others who were in­volved in the Rice case. Including reporters and others who wrote about it. The latter might, I think, be able to com­ment.

Beyond that, to reword a point that I made in text myself, take care lest you come across as the Wallace Rice fig­ure in the current story.

A pos­si­ble offer to hire you for advisory work stands, but if such work is agreed to, there isn't going to be any predatory contract.

Regards, Robert (the Old Coder)

Decem­ber 08 let­ter

This one will move to a subpage.

Date: December 08, 2018
To: Keith Krasnove
Corporate Security Investigations

Keith, here's my take on things:

1. This let­ter and/or communications in both directions, past, present, and/or future are like­ly to be posted online, quoted, or otherwise dis­trib­u­ted or made use of.

This let­ter, in par­tic­u­lar, is probably going to go onto my weblog, Haggis Hell, today. This would be one way of call­ing attention to the pos­si­ble Elder Abuse issue that you've reported.

2. You could have been more clear regarding what your gut instincts were tell­ing you about the situation.

You haven't even seen fit — unless I've missed the re­sponse — to answer my ques­tion regarding what you meant when you said that “Jim Lawson” was “suspicious”. Did you mean that he was behaving suspiciously or that he was sus­pi­cious of you?

3. “Jim Lawson” might have lied to you regarding his name. The rest of his story might be true or false regard­less.

The appropriate course of action might be as follows:

(3a) I could speak with local Realtors to determine whether or not the house in ques­tion is list­ed as For Sale. If it is list­ed, I could relay what you've said to the listing agent. The listing agent would certainly be able to com­ment further.

(3b) If the house isn't list­ed as For Sale, I could dis­cuss the matter with the police, with the local equivalent of a county-level Elder Abuse department, and/or with HOA man­age­ment.

(3c) Come to think of it, I should send the story to Harvey Levenson. He's a bus­i­ness associate, of some type, of Jim Kiraly's of 25 years' standing, he's local, and he's even, appar­ent­ly, the legal owner of the couple's previous res­i­dence.

(3d) Tom and Ken Kiraly, the middle two of Jim's and Grace's four surviving sons, will probably be inter­est­ed as well.

To be clear, my brothers don't “like” the couple, but they'd know about the move. If Jim is now in senile dementia — which you've hinted that you know more about, but haven't elaborated on — one of them might even be the per­son who is coordinating the sale.

Scott Kiraly, the youngest brother, isn't a factor. He might be deceased due to morbid obesity. If he's living, he wouldn't be in­volved in Jim's bus­i­ness affairs.

Jim would only consider, I think, trusting the middle two brothers, though he did ask me, years ago, to take on some of the respon­si­bil­i­ties that Tom has now assumed.

4. You've sug­gest­ed that I send you pay­ment for add­i­tion­al work. I have reservations about do­ing so until previous bus­i­ness is concluded.

In par­tic­u­lar, I need for you to do one of two things:

4a. One option is for you to voluntarily, and explicitly, waive a recent $80 charge that I didn't authorize. Note: I'm not saying that I wouldn't have authorized the charge; that isn't the point.

You seem to have waived the charge twice already, so I'm not sure why you'd object to this. The issue, for me, is that I'd like to see the waiver stated more explicitly.

4b. Another option is for you to accept pay­ment of $80. However, prior to such pay­ment, you'd need to acknowledge the fol­low­ing points:

(4b1) I haven't made a “chargeback” for “$1000”, or for any other amount, on any transaction.

(4b2) I didn't explicitly authorize the $80 charge and pay­ment will not constitute acknowledgment of prior authorization, or of prior or present agree­ment to any terms or conditions previously agreed to in any other context.

(4b3) You're satisfied that I've met all commitments and/or obligations of any type that I may, or may not, have to you, with the words “commitments” and “obligations” to be interpreted in the broadest pos­si­ble sense.

If you press Reply, quote this let­ter, and add the words “In connection with Part 4, so agreed” I'll authorize you to set up a formal pay­ment link or other mechanism to address the $80. The commitment to the authorization is subject to review of the contents of your let­ter and/or sub­se­quent letters from you as a whole.

5. As a point of in­forma­tion, I've dis­cus­sed part (4b1) — for roughly one hour — with an Operations Manager at the rele­vant bank on my side.

Technical note: An Operations Manager is Tier 4. There's Front Line (Tier 1), Supervisor (Tier 2), Manager (Tier 3), and Operations Manager (Tier 4).

The Tier 2, in this case, sent the matter to Compliance days ago with escalated priority. The Tier 4 says that Compliance has already approved the release of documentation to me.

I expect to be in pos­ses­sion of said documentation shortly.

My bank would only be able to see some of the past transactions that you've engaged in as your clients use mul­ti­ple financial insti­tu­tions.

So, speculation to the effect that Corporate Security Investigations' bus­i­ness model consists, in part, of fraud and that you may there­fore have an unusual num­ber of chargebacks remains, for the moment, little more than speculation.

But the Tier 4 has been kind enough to explain that a pay­ment gateway which you may have used extensively, Square, is coupled to a par­tic­u­lar financial institution, JC Morgan Chase Bank.

My bank could initiate communications with JC Morgan or I might be able to do so myself. JC Morgan, in turn, might be able, due to terms and conditions that Square had to have agreed to, to require Square to take a look at your transaction history.

6. You, Keith Krasnove of Corporate Security Investigations, CA PI 20897, have made a point of touting, to me, your performance in the current case.

However, in the pro­cess, you've been careful to avoid com­ment­ing on the fact that you seem to have lied regarding your performance in writ­ten statements made on Decem­ber 4 and 5. Remember that verifiable dates are in­volved.

This is in add­i­tion to a false state­ment that you made, in wri­ting, on December 4 regarding a “chargeback” and an associated threat that you made to “sue” me, your client in good faith, “for fraud besides the damages in the Agreement”.

Isn't this the sort of thing that might give pause to parties who are assessing Corporate Security Investigations as a candidate for their research needs?

People come to Corporate Security Investigations, State of Cal­i­for­nia P.I. 20897, seek­ing to find a way to make things right. In some cases, their lives have been damaged by criminals, abusers, and the like.

The evi­dence suggests that you may make it a practice to steal from these peo­ple and to use predatory contracts and your past experience with legal cases to walk away smiling, their cash in your pocket.

There are other pos­si­ble explanations for your actions on Decem­ber 4. However, none of the pos­si­ble explanations reflect espe­cial­ly well on you or are like­ly to boost your reputation. Am I correct or incorrect about that?

On December 4, you used the words “making a big mistake”. I think that perhaps you should pause and reflect on your own words.

7. I'd like to dis­cuss the advisory work that you offer­ed to do a while back. But, if such work is done, there isn't going to be any contract re­mote­ly resembling the one that you usually press hapless and trusting clients to sign.

Regards, Robert (the Old Coder)