The Secret Keeper: Jules Kroll and the world of corporate intelligence.

[madfloridian]

20. Avon v Mary Kay, Jordache v Guess.

Kroll has suffered its share of embarrassments. Its agents have admitted to Dumpster-diving through shredded documents once they’re on public property. That happened in a fight between the cosmetics giants Avon and Mary Kay. But there are allegations that the firm has gone lower still. According to James B. Stewart’s book “Den of Thieves,” Martin A. Siegel, who, in 1987, had pleaded guilty to insider trading while at Kidder, Peabody, was harassed by Kroll operatives seeking to intimidate him so that he wouldn’t testify against an arbitrageur at Goldman Sachs. The Kroll employees impersonated a New York City police officer and a journalist; scared off a potential donor to a children’s camp that Siegel was setting up; and paid his sixteen-year-old babysitter fifty dollars for damning information about him. (Jules Kroll disputes this account.)

When I asked Kroll about the company’s low moments, he said, unhappily, “The jeans wars. Jordache versus Guess. It was a full-blown brawl.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/the-secret-keeper