Avarice Report: Trust, yet verify: How to do a background check like a professional
Avarice Report: Trust, yet verify: How to do a background check like a professional
May a little bit of homework have got stopped a $100 million scam? And what lessons does it keep for you when you are bearing in mind making an investment?
As pusillanimous as Deepal Wannakuwatte's fraud was, the item basically boiled down to a single lie.
The particular Sri Lankan foreigner - who located California and designed a business importing in addition to selling surgical safety gloves - conned buyers, attorneys, banks and perhaps a whole town through claiming to have lucrative contracts with the Ough. S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
"He indicated to buyers that because of his / her unique position to be a minority-type enterprise, he had access to govt contracts upwards in order to $150 million a year, " FBI Particular Agent Paul Artley told CNBC's "American Greed. "
Wannakuwatte did have a commitment with the VA; much was true. Nonetheless it was worth a small fraction of exactly what he claimed: only $25, 000 a year. When the truth lastly came out, 150 traders and lenders had been left holding the particular multimillion-dollar bag.
Inside little Northern Los angeles town of Olivehurst, where Wannakuwatte possessed purchased a shuttered plant to turn into a $30 million manufacturing facility, desires for 175 horribly needed jobs he / she promised were dashed. Wannakuwatte, 65, will be serving a 20-year federal prison phrase for fraud along with conspiracy.
As terrible as the losses may be, they are made even more so by the fact that there is a slim possibility Wannakuwatte could have been stopped simply by some of the very folks he eventually swindled. The story, told for the latest episode of"American Greed, " is often a cautionary tale to take into consideration any time you are asked to put down money now in hopes of a payback down the road.
In some cases, it means hiring a professional like Schassler who knows how you can do the legwork.
"I personally go into people's lives. I personally go by where they live. I personally look into them, I bump on doors, We talk to ex-business lovers, " he explained.
But before that, there are a few steps you can take on your own, with more online resources available than previously to do your own required groundwork.
Deepal Wannakuwatte bolstered his claims by simply showing prospective investors his purported agreement with the Department involving Veterans Affairs free criminal arrest records. And when he started running directly into trouble paying shareholders back, he created what turned out to be a new fake letter from the VA saying it had become changed its words for paying contractors.
Both documents would definitely be useful to investors and lenders in vetting Wannakuwatte's claims, but it appears no person took the added phase of verifying the actual contract - something anyone can do on the internet.
The federal government maintains an online database of all their contracts - people up for bid the actual awarded in the past season free criminal background checks. The search engine can be troublesome at times (this is a federal government after all), but you can learn items like the amount of the deal and the payment terminology - both of which might have been useful for anyone trying to check out Wannakuwatte or anyone else proclaiming to have big authorities contracts.
If the corporation you are researching states have military legal agreements, the Department of Defense puts out an every day list of every commitment worth $7 , 000, 000 or more. You can search the actual archive as far back as 94.
A spokesperson for that Department of Experts Affairs told "American Greed" that while the agency does not make its own list of awarded contracts, it does problem press releases on substantial awards. Indeed, research online of the VA site shows press releases upon contracts as small as $568, 000, awarded to the Oklahoma firm within 2000 to design a new military cemetery.
