This transcript has been auto-generated using Adobe Premier Pro.
00;00;01;23 - 00;00;35;26
Gregg Sofer
Ever wonder what is going on behind the scenes as the government investigates criminal cases? Are you interested in the strategies the government employs when bringing prosecutions? I'm your host, Gregg Sofer, and along with my colleagues and Husch Blackwell's White Collar, Internal Investigations and Compliance team, we will bring to bear over 200 years of experience inside the government to provide you and your business thought provoking and topical legal analysis as we discuss some of the country's most interesting criminal cases and issues related to compliance and internal investigations.
00;00;37;05 - 00;01;00;14
Gregg Sofer
Welcome to the latest episode of The Justice Insider's. I'm your host, Gregg Sofer. I'm lucky enough today to be joined by two of my colleagues at Husch Blackwell, Chris Budke and Rick Shimon, both of whom had long careers in the federal government as federal agents. Chris, with the FBI and Rick at the Department of Commerce, you can look at their bios in detail in the show notes.
00;01;00;27 - 00;01;03;09
Gregg Sofer
Chris and Rick, thanks so much for joining us today.
00;01;03;14 - 00;01;05;15
Chris Budke and Rick Shimon
We're happy to be here. Thank you. My pleasure.
00;01;06;02 - 00;01;36;16
Gregg Sofer
So today's topic is something where we're drilling down a little bit from where we've been in prior episodes. We've talked a lot about investigations and a lot about what a company is supposed to do or even an individual if an investigation and internal investigation is necessary. And we haven't really gotten into some of the details of what that looks like and some of the concerns and issues that are that are presented at the beginning of a question of whether or not and how you might be conducting an investigation.
00;01;36;25 - 00;02;15;23
Gregg Sofer
So I wanted to do that today with you guys. I can't think of two better people to discuss these issues with. And so let's just kick it off with the A scenario a little bit. And this is a very common for us. We see this very regularly here at Husch Blackwell, as do many other law firms. A subpoena comes in for a civil investigative demand, which is a subpoena issued in the civil context from the federal government comes in to a company and it asks for records involving the company's employees and practices.
00;02;15;23 - 00;02;42;12
Gregg Sofer
And very often this causes great concern. People don't know what happened or why it is. The government is requesting the subpoena and they often call their lawyers to ask, what should we do about this? And I receive these calls on a regular basis or emails that we've received a grand jury subpoena for one type of record or another, and what should we do?
00;02;42;21 - 00;03;07;27
Gregg Sofer
And the first question often is, what is this all about? And many times we'll try to make that determination. Chris, both you and Rick have contacts in the federal government where you can call up and actually ask whether you know them or not. We end up calling up and asking what it's about and try to get a little bit of an answer from the government.
00;03;07;27 - 00;03;39;25
Gregg Sofer
Sometimes the government is forthcoming. Many times the government says very little. But at the very beginning, the company's going to want to know what should we do and how should we look for this data or information and should we conduct an investigation? And I think the first question I'm interested in, what both of you have to say about this is and it's the big question for this episode is do you bring in outsiders to conduct that investigation or do you do it in-house?
00;03;40;00 - 00;04;04;09
Gregg Sofer
Many times are general counsel or deputy general counsel will say, we can we can do this and we can pull some of this information. What are your just very general thoughts, having conducted dozens, if not hundreds or thousands or supervised hundreds or thousands of investigations about that initial reaction from a company as to whether or not to bring in outsiders into the investigation?
00;04;04;21 - 00;04;34;10
Chris Budke
Well, I would say, based on my 30 years of experience in the FBI, where I had issued literally thousands of subpoenas to companies and to individuals, first, I would say I and the team here at Husch Blackwell can often look at the subpoena and glean from that what's been asked in the subpoena get a good sense of where the government's going with this investigation.
00;04;34;23 - 00;05;22;16
Chris Budke
So and with that information, you can make an assessment as to the seriousness of the situation and whether it makes sense to have the internal investigation and the gathering of the information that might be responsive to the subpoena collected by independent investigators. I will say, from a government's perspective, having a a legal team that is made up of former federal investigators and former federal prosecutors, oftentimes a government will sort of provide that team with a certain amount of respect and leeway to conduct that investigation.
00;05;22;28 - 00;05;53;16
Chris Budke
And we'll take a step back and have some confidence that the investigation is being done in a manner that satisfies their investigative interests. So I think if you have a sense from looking at the subpoena that this could be problematic for your business, I think that that bringing in an independent investigative team is going to, in the long run, serve your interests.
00;05;54;16 - 00;05;55;08
Gregg Sofer
Rick, what do you think?
00;05;55;21 - 00;06;39;25
Rick Shimon
Yeah, actually, I'm kind of piggybacking on Chris's thought there that the independence of the investigation and certainly the activity or that the response from the company itself is critical from the beginning, if it appears that the company is trying to hide or otherwise pass out information as opposed to a more fulsome response immediately, that is picked up by the government investigators and it kind of creates a never ending concern of how this case will progress.
00;06;40;07 - 00;06;52;09
Rick Shimon
Independence is so important because it it allows the government to have some satisfaction or some sort of confidence in what's being produced.
00;06;53;04 - 00;07;15;16
Gregg Sofer
Yeah. You know, you guys brought up to, I think, really important points. The first one is that we know from our time in the government that if it was a team of people from the outside that we trusted, that we knew their reputations, that we knew about them, and they were the people communicating, asking the questions and telling us what was happening.
00;07;15;28 - 00;07;38;14
Gregg Sofer
That at least I can say, certainly in my 30 years as a prosecutor, it made a difference to me as opposed to somebody who did not have that kind of reputation. I tended to give them more information and I tended to much more rely upon what they had to tell me in terms of what they were finding. So that credibility factor, I think is is huge.
00;07;39;00 - 00;08;20;11
Gregg Sofer
The second part about this relates to whether or not the government views that very first reaction as one of obfuscation, obstruction or cooperate and assistance because that sets the tone throughout. So I find at least that I very much rely on if we're talking about a company, the companies general counsel or Office of General Counsel, to at least preserve everything very quickly, because that's really not something that from an outsider's perspective, we're able to do.
00;08;20;12 - 00;08;45;08
Gregg Sofer
They have to put essentially a preservation and litigation hold on everything and grab it all fast enough. But one of the things that happens and we've talked about this in prior episodes, people panic when they learn that there's a grand jury, for instance, investigation, even if they've done absolutely nothing wrong, they just panic. And some people make terrible mistakes in that very first juncture of hiding things or eliminating things from their computers.
00;08;45;08 - 00;09;08;23
Gregg Sofer
Erasing things. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I think, Rick, your point that this sets the tone for the entire interaction is very important. So, Chris, you said that it's sometimes it's it's easy to glean, and from our government experience, we're able to glean what's going on. At what level, though, do you do you not have a concern?
00;09;08;23 - 00;09;31;05
Gregg Sofer
In other words, let's say the subpoena says, I want phone records for one of your customers. Does that kind of subpoena eliminate the need to bring in outsiders? And this could all be done internally, probably for less money and probably more quickly than would an investigation in which you hired a firm like us and brought in investigators like you guys.
00;09;31;21 - 00;09;58;29
Chris Budke
Well, first, I would say the job is certainly depends. It is if they're only asking, for instance, for your sake of your example, phone records for a particular customer is that customer for somebody that would represent a significant risk if you were to lose that customer, that customer would learn that that you're providing information to the government at the request of the government.
00;09;59;00 - 00;10;44;01
Chris Budke
So I think in that situation, it really depends on the nature of the of what is being request requested and how significant is that to your business operations. But I will say what I found in my experience, both inside the government as an investigator and since working the other side, I find that the government oftentimes issues what I refer to as a everything in the kitchen sink subpoena, where the subpoena language tends to be overly broad, which oftentimes alarms companies because it's difficult to know for sure where the government is going with this.
00;10;44;12 - 00;11;27;23
Chris Budke
And even if as an experienced investigator or not able to determine exactly where the government is going for this witness because of the fact that I have had 30 years in the FBI as an investigator, it is easy for me to call up the investigating major or the agent who issued the subpoena and introduce myself and my background and assure them that we are working on responding to this, but have questions about the the broad scope of the subpoena and can start working on identifying specifically what it is that they're looking for.
00;11;28;07 - 00;12;05;26
Chris Budke and Rick Shimon
And and start negotiating a reduction of the scope of the subpoena which which in the long run not only offers protection to the client, but also would potentially, in the long run, lower the cost of responding as well. Again, going back to our roots as criminal investigators, oftentimes when an investigation is launched, I think the government has perhaps a theory about how this case might have progressed, but it really is driven by the evidence.
00;12;05;27 - 00;12;30;23
Rick Shimon
And to Chris's point, I think entering a discussion with the investigators early on the week to chance to kind of shape how everything progresses, the the kitchen sink subpoena that Chris talked about was routine in my years in the government because we didn't know exactly what we were going to find and how important that was going to be.
00;12;31;18 - 00;12;50;14
Rick Shimon
The ability to have a conversation with the the investigators in a law firm or for prosecutors and the law firm certainly shapes how that is going to progress. I think it's critical that that kind of activity is engaged in early on.
00;12;51;09 - 00;13;21;00
Gregg Sofer
So this is an argument at the very inception of the receipt of a subpoena, for instance, for having the some kind of seasoned somebody with credibility, someone with the correct background to make the outreach, the initial outreach to the government. But let's just assume for a second that the government's fairly tightlipped which they can be and often are in the context of a criminal investigation, or we have a number of cases where there's national security involved as well.
00;13;21;00 - 00;13;51;29
Gregg Sofer
And so they're very hesitant to give you any kind of real details, and you're stuck there scratching your head. The next step and the next issue that is often confronted by companies and their and frankly, their lawyers is how deep do we need to dig? Are we going to pull this stuff and just give it over to the government or are we going to pull this stuff and use it for an internal investigation to find out what's going on?
00;13;52;22 - 00;14;16;18
Gregg Sofer
I think that is an initial question that that is often asked. Unless this initial stage of figuring out what it's about solves everybody's concerns, which it rarely does. You really do have to ask the question, how deep should we dig? Are we going to be interviewing witnesses or are we just going to, for instance, pull let's say they want email communications or he's going to pull the communications, throw them over to the government and hope for the best.
00;14;17;07 - 00;14;45;01
Gregg Sofer
That's a relatively quick way of responding, and it potentially saves money and time. But at that point, you don't know what your vulnerability is and you haven't conducted any kind of internal investigation to consider your vulnerabilities. So the next question is how deep do you dig and what are the factors that make you decide we want to do a deeper dive versus let's just get the government what it wants.
00;14;45;15 - 00;14;48;28
Gregg Sofer
Rick, we'll start with you. What are your thoughts about that dilemma?
00;14;49;13 - 00;15;24;29
Rick Shimon
I certainly think the point of an investigation starts on the government side. There's indications of bad actors or bad actors that that are part of the company and part of the what's going to form the investigation as this begins to move down the road? I think independence of an investigation inside the company is critical. And because you don't know exactly what the government is looking for, having some sort of focus on potential actors.
00;15;24;29 - 00;15;52;26
Rick Shimon
And and we always had a joke that all of our search warrants, whenever we did one, it would start in the sales department, because sales is where most of the potential problems arise, whether it's corrupt practices or kickbacks. Any number of things. And without doing some sort of internal work, I don't think the company does itself any good.
00;15;53;24 - 00;16;01;22
Gregg Sofer
How about Chris? What do you think about the decision of how deep the digging should be and who should be doing it at the beginning?
00;16;02;06 - 00;16;36;14
Chris Budke
Yeah, I have a I would have a concern that the the broader the production being requested, the more risk it represents to the client, especially say that's true. If the client were in any sort of regulated industry, it's not uncommon, like I said, to have a very broadly worded subpoena, which would cause the company to produce a very large volume of responsive materials.
00;16;36;26 - 00;17;11;13
Chris Budke
And it's also very common in a federal investigation where the initial concern that's being investigated evolves over time. And in part because new information was obtained that they were not previously aware of in the production of materials. And they as the investigators gather that. So to to blindly turn over large amounts of investigations, especially when your company is in a regulated industry, I think is is a risk.
00;17;12;05 - 00;17;46;29
Chris Budke
And certainly something you should consider when deciding whether to have an independent investigator and have that individual answer. Independent investigator team communicate with the government in an attempt to narrow the scope and focus the material being turned over to address specifically the concerns that the government has at that time. Rather than opening the door to allow the government to look for other potential problems that you may not be aware of.
00;17;47;21 - 00;17;48;13
Gregg Sofer
That's a that's.
00;17;48;13 - 00;18;20;10
Gregg Sofer
A great point, because I can tell you again from my many years of being on the government side, it was not unusual for us to start an investigation looking at a and end up concluding through the investigation that in fact, there was a second problem unbeknownst to us, and that case got prosecuted, whereas the first initial reason for looking at a company or an individual turned out to be not something that could be prosecuted there.
00;18;20;15 - 00;18;43;19
Gregg Sofer
There were instead other charges and you're right, in a in a heavily regulated industry, as so many people are in today, with the government really ramping up its regulatory enforcement practices, it's not unusual at all, I think, to find additional or completely different violations. So that's another good reason to carefully look at and investigate what you're turning over.
00;18;43;26 - 00;19;10;08
Gregg Sofer
What about this question of talking to witnesses? So again, the government asks for records, which is the most sort of most common scenario here. When do you think it's important for the internal investigators to conduct witness interviews versus just turning over the documents? What do you guys think about that, Rick?
00;19;10;20 - 00;19;50;29
Rick Shimon
I think there's always going to be employers and critical locations. I mentioned sales. I think interviewing the sales man or the the whoever is the manager or the director of the sales group is important. There's going to be certain departments within an organization that I think you absolutely need to understand. First of all, if if someone is forthcoming or they just answer, is that the sort of thing where they're hesitant to to discuss the operations because they know something is amiss?
00;19;51;22 - 00;19;54;12
Rick Shimon
I think knowing that early on is critical.
00;19;55;08 - 00;20;00;08
Gregg Sofer
Chris, any thoughts about when to dig down and actually conduct interviews?
00;20;00;26 - 00;20;32;22
Chris Budke
Yeah, I think conducting interviews can be helpful. At the very start of an internal investigation to interview the the more higher level individuals that can give a sense of business operations and business practices. That information is being obtained under attorney client privilege can remain privileged, but it would be what helps with the investigative team's interactions with the government.
00;20;33;08 - 00;21;19;29
Chris Budke
And then as you as you identify areas or perhaps emails or or other business documents that look problematic, it's very helpful to talk to individuals within the company under that attorney client privilege to get context for those communications, which, again, as you're communicating with the government investigators, if you are able to at the front end, provide that context for those communications, you can avoid the investigators, the federal investigators from sort of getting off track and making a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak.
00;21;20;23 - 00;21;48;21
Gregg Sofer
And this goes back to this terribly difficult process sometimes of figuring out what exactly is the government interested in and what did they want and how much trouble do we actually have internally and to sometimes that's very hard decision to make or an issue to resolve without actually speaking to human beings. Their records may indicate all of this, but speaking to people and understanding their interaction.
00;21;48;21 - 00;22;11;18
Gregg Sofer
We've talked in our in prior episodes about how difficult it is just to grab all the communications and all the various different ways people can communicate, both as sanctioned by the company or possibly not sanctioned by the company. So all of these other communication apps and encrypted apps are something that increasingly has become important in internal investigations. But just trying to speak to somebody.
00;22;12;02 - 00;22;30;04
Gregg Sofer
You get a lot more context, a lot more information. And as you point out, Chris, if done properly, it can be protected by the attorney client privilege in a way that allows the investigators to protect some of the information that they gather as well. To the extent that it should not or can or cannot be shared with the government.
00;22;30;13 - 00;22;51;08
Gregg Sofer
But let's say you're and we get this we have this conversation fairly regularly. Also, let's say you're the general counsel at a company. And the response to this is, okay, well, thank you, guys. Really appreciate all this valuable information, but we can do this all ourselves. We don't really we don't really need you. I can I have two other lawyers that work for me.
00;22;51;08 - 00;23;13;08
Gregg Sofer
We have other people who can help us in HR and IT. I can have my IT guys pull all these records. We can conduct these interviews. We don't really need you. And this is going to cost us a lot of money and take extra time, both of which are not necessarily good things in a context of a of a clear interest by the government that they want to know what's going on.
00;23;13;20 - 00;23;18;13
Gregg Sofer
Why is that not an acceptable answer or why is that not always the best answer?
00;23;18;26 - 00;23;58;27
Chris Budke
Well, certainly it can be a very poor decision if if your assessment of the risk turns out to be wrong. And so at the very least, I think it makes sense to engage outside counsel to at least help you work through that assessment. It could be with outside counsel after reaching out to the government, you can reach a sort of higher level of comfort that your decision that the full independent internal investigation is not necessary.
00;23;58;27 - 00;24;33;07
Chris Budke
You can can reach a fairly high level of comfort with that after doing a little bit of work on the front end, that might need the outside counsel to communicate with the government. I think without at least putting in that initial effort, it's a risk that you are putting your company to and the the risk you may be correct, but but is also there's a risk that you may not be correct.
00;24;33;07 - 00;25;00;06
Chris Budke
And so you don't necessarily have to go from making the decision on your own to deploying a very expensive outside counsel, an independent investigation. You can sort of take steps so that you can assess and reassess as the situation plays out to determine and to make a decision that is has a fairly high level of confidence.
00;25;01;03 - 00;25;02;22
Gregg Sofer
Rick, any thoughts on this question?
00;25;03;14 - 00;25;48;05
Rick Shimon
I think to the optics of an independent investigation in a number of heavily regulated environments is absolutely critical. There's nothing that is going to create more suspicion on the part of the government investigators than some feeling that the inside in-house counsel is is protecting certain people or managers are afraid to be forthcoming because they know that what they're about to say in an investigation in House may be jaded because of the relationships internally with deceased weight and and other managers.
00;25;49;04 - 00;26;02;13
Rick Shimon
Interdependencies is, I think, critically important. In particular, it's going to be a publicized investigation or it's going to draw media scrutiny all that much more important.
00;26;03;06 - 00;26;49;11
Gregg Sofer
Yeah, we've we've discussed this in prior episodes. There have been some fairly blatant examples of this being botched by inside general counsel, where counsel themselves have come under significant investigation. In some cases, prosecution. Obviously, that's not the norm with our clients, but it is something that needs to be considered. I think this question of independence continues to come up and I guess the way I would look at it is, and I often say this to the clients, if something is not handled properly inside the company, the government's unlikely to take the position that that was an innocent mistake.
00;26;49;23 - 00;27;18;22
Gregg Sofer
And so just a classic example of this is if the government's asking you for a communications and because of the way that they're gathered, the response is not complete. Often, by the way, the government already has one side of these communications or has a good clue of exactly what it is that their client has in their holdings. So they actually will know whether or not they're getting a complete response and the lack of a complete response.
00;27;18;22 - 00;27;58;26
Gregg Sofer
I think without somebody from the outside, an independent investigator being there, that failure will be viewed as potential obstruction, as potentially nefarious versus if that mistake is made or it's just not there. When outside experts and that includes forensic collection of data and information, it's much more likely that that will be forgiven as an innocent mistake or that they're just simply it was a technical issue that in of itself often is very helpful to a company to know that they have a buffer between them and the government when it comes to the collection and production of, for instance, records.
00;27;59;23 - 00;28;25;13
Gregg Sofer
So this is another reason to do this. Again, I think we wouldn't be honest brokers if we weren't saying that this can cost a lot of money. And so to Chris's point, it is a balance. And this idea that you have to keep checking to determine whether or not there's vulnerability, whether or not it's in your interest to bring in someone from the outside or numerous entities from the outside to help you.
00;28;26;10 - 00;29;09;28
Gregg Sofer
Sometimes that has to be made on a rolling basis. The problem these days in particular is the pressure, the time pressure from the government's position, because the government has of late, certainly during this administration, made a big push for early and often disclosure and cooperation, and they have thrown out a litany of potential benefits that a company can enjoy by cooperating early and have also set out a bunch of sticks of late for particularly in the cybersecurity area, which we've had numerous episodes on as well, in which the company has to make a disclosure, particularly a publicly traded company has to make a public disclosure very quickly.
00;29;10;09 - 00;29;36;10
Gregg Sofer
So can you guys talk a little bit about the time aspect of this? But again, if I'm general counsel of a company and I've got this problem looming, I've got all this time pressure on me to be able to potentially make a disclosure, decide whether I'm going to cooperate, potentially make a public filing with the SCC. And yet and I can do that quickly if you let me do it and you let my people do it.
00;29;36;10 - 00;29;47;10
Gregg Sofer
So how does this whole concept of bringing an outsider square with the idea that companies are under increasing pressure to act so quickly? Rick, what do you think about that?
00;29;48;09 - 00;30;25;11
Rick Shimon
Certainly an understanding, really a quick resolution is desirable for everyone. And the understanding of of doing some sort of voluntary disclosure to the government as opposed to everything being produced under subpoena, makes tremendous sense in particularly regulated environments where that sort of reporting has to either the shareholders or its back to the regulators to understand the breadth of the concern that the company may identify in advance.
00;30;25;27 - 00;30;50;20
Rick Shimon
I think always time pressure is going to be an issue and that's probably where having seasoned investigators who've done these types of investigations for years and years is is useful because the ability to pivot quickly, the ability to isolate problems and to reset them to to the client makes tremendous sense.
00;30;51;29 - 00;30;54;28
Gregg Sofer
Chris, what are your thoughts about this difficulty with timing?
00;30;55;19 - 00;31;28;17
Chris Budke
Yeah, I would you know, if a subpoena or if an investigation, a federal investigation has been initiated, then a threshold of a reasonable suspicion of a violation of federal law has occurred. And so the government is approaching this investigation as something illegally or something that could be criminalized through civil penalties has already occurred. And so that tends to jade
00;31;28;17 - 00;32;05;01
Chris Budke
the government investigator that if they get more information, they're going to find something potentially larger or even more problematic. And that's the best sort of the starting point from the government's perspective. And so any delay in the investigation is going to be filtered through that and and be thought of as as an attempt to hide information or try to try to avoid further discoveries by the government.
00;32;05;10 - 00;32;57;18
Chris Budke
The government investigators, however, don't have an understanding of how the company is maintaining information, what systems might be involved, how broadly, how difficult the effort might be to gather the information that's been requested. And that's where an external investigative team that has experience and has the bona fides that would offer the government some assurance that that you understand what what they need and why they need it can be helpful in not necessarily slowing down the investigative process, but at least offering some explanation as to what efforts are being done to comply and why they may not meet the government deadlines.
00;32;57;29 - 00;33;36;05
Rick Shimon
I have just one other point to bring up in terms of timing. Certainly, we've seen our share of whistleblower cases where the genesis of an investigation is formed because of disclosures from a disgruntled employee or or an employee who thinks that the company's is behaving privately. And I think the timing on something like that becomes even more critical because now the government is potentially holding a tremendous amount of information that has to be produced.
00;33;36;05 - 00;33;48;29
Rick Shimon
And again, back to the government to show that a complete and robust response to the allegations is forthcoming from from the company.
00;33;48;29 - 00;34;26;14
Gregg Sofer
And I guess this goes back to calibrating the internal investigation to what the ultimate outcome is. Of course, that's exceedingly difficult. Many times to figure out. But my view would be that to the extent that general counsel, inside counsel is is concerned about timing, they're getting the outsiders. It's interesting we are the justice insiders were getting a firm like ours involved early actually is likely to produce a quicker investigation in terms of calibrating it and focusing on exactly what the problem is.
00;34;27;05 - 00;34;56;12
Gregg Sofer
And so I think there are there are some good arguments for bringing in an independent investigator and/or a team of investigators for the very reason that getting this done quickly is so important and getting to the heart of the matter is so important and catching up to where the government is, is so important that what you want are people who can give you the best perspective on where the government is ultimately headed and where your vulnerabilities are.
00;34;56;12 - 00;35;28;20
Gregg Sofer
And so although it seems like bringing in someone from the outside who actually will make things go slower many times, it actually can make things go faster. But again, I think to be fair, there are plenty of subpoenas and plenty of inquiries by the government where it's relatively simple are pretty quickly. Everybody can get on the same page about what it's about, where a determination can be made fairly quickly, that there is no vulnerability from anyone inside any individual or or the company itself.
00;35;29;05 - 00;35;56;03
Gregg Sofer
But you better be right about that, because if you get it wrong and you flip over a bunch of information and you haven't gotten ahead of or at least caught up to where the government is, to Chris's point, I mean, yes, it is true. Many times the government's investigation and they've already made determinations that there's probable cause to do things sometimes, not sometimes, that in a for instance, a grand jury investigation can be opened up on far less than probable cause.
00;35;56;19 - 00;36;31;18
Gregg Sofer
But they're fishing around with an idea that there's something that's gone wrong. And, you know, their job is to go out there and dig all this up and then bring cases. And if you're unlucky enough to have guessed wrong about why they gave you the subpoena and you say, oh, we don't have any liability here, and you but you never learn, for instance, that the employee, your employee was doing things that you didn't know about because they were utilizing, let's say, an encrypted app, were speaking to people in person outside the office, and you didn't conduct an investigation that picked that up.
00;36;31;20 - 00;36;56;02
Gregg Sofer
You could find yourself through your employee with a lot of liability and no real way of catching up before the government drops the hammer. And of course, that's what we're always worried about on our side is getting the investigation and into a place where we can communicate to the government before they decide to start locking people up, executing search warrants, doing things that are going to damage the reputation of the company or even put it out of business.
00;36;56;02 - 00;37;31;24
Gregg Sofer
So these are the stakes are enormously high. And the stakes of making a mistake can be the consequences of making a mistake can be very significant. For me, that means erring on the side of caution. And it's easy for me to say that because that's our business and that's what we get paid to do. I recognize that. But if I was being cautious, I would want a team like ours or similar to our or somebody else similar to ours who has the ability and the experience to do that.
00;37;31;27 - 00;38;02;26
Gregg Sofer
Well, thank you both very much for coming on this episode. We really appreciate your valuable insight.
Chris Budke
Thank you, Gregg.
Rick Shimon
Thanks Gregg.
Gregg Sofer
Thanks for joining us on the Justice Insiders. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts to subscribe, rate and review the Justice Insiders. I'm your host, Gregg Sofer, and until next time, be well.