Hello Diligence International Group partners, clients, and friends,
Here we are at the beginning of another year. Traditionally, this is a time for celebration, reflection, and looking to the future. I find myself doing all three, champagne in hand. Naturally, my thoughts turn to our business, the work we’ve done in 2019, and the people we’ve served. So in the spirit of celebration, I’d like to share a few of our highlights with you.
First, we created a new website. This was a major accomplishment and we’re very excited about it. The new site reflects our range of offerings, outlines our processes, and truly expresses the breadth and depth of our expertise. For our clients, it links our secure client portal so you can reach your information quickly and easily. If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to take a look.
2019 brought a significant increase in due diligence requests, particularly in the global corporate and foreign nationals sectors. To meet this growing need, we welcomed Al Ortiz to our team as Director of Global Due Diligence. Al is a former FBI agent with over 20 years of experience in white collar crimes, such as insurance, investment, and wire fraud as well as cyber-crimes. He’s worked in 12 U.S. locations and 17 Latin American countries and has led numerous security teams. Al brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our talent pool. We’re pleased to have him guiding this area of our practice.
In terms of casework, Mexico and China continue to be our two most frequented locations for foreign investigations. In fact, one of our largest China-related cases was featured in a U.S. District of Attorney’s Office for the State of Massachusetts press release this month. It’s always gratifying to see our hard work to a successful conclusion. To see it acknowledged at this level is icing on the cake.
We continue to focus on utilizing advanced technologies to further our investigative solutions and are hard at work to develop new technologies to help our clients detect and deter transient and domestic fraud schemes, of which we continue to see multiply.
Many of us attended the industry’s top conferences throughout the year. This helps us stay abreast of new resources and technologies as well as giving us an opportunity to network with our peers. I had the pleasure of presenting at the 7th Annual RGA Fraud Conference in Missouri in August. My presentation, Life Insurance Fraud Trends, was well received and gave me a chance to introduce Paul Marquez, our Vice President of Business Development, who joined me on stage.
All told, it’s been a productive and engaging year. We’re looking forward to more of the same in 2020. However, we can’t do it without you. To our clients and friends, thank you for trusting us with your work. It’s truly rewarding to use our skills, talents and know-how to help you. To the Diligence team, thank you for your ongoing passion and commitment to our work. You are the heart of this company.
Best wishes for the new year ahead,
Richard Marquez
President
