Smear campaigns

Problem

We live in an era where negative comments online are a seemingly inevitable by-product of success. So, when our client, the owner of a highly successful investment fund, started seeing the odd blog rant about him, he initially thought nothing of it. But when the nature of the posts started to follow a pattern of deliberate malevolence, we were brought in to investigate.

What we did

Working in parallel, we immediately initiated a three-pronged attack. Our intelligence team set about analysing the posts and finding correlations and connections between them - while simultaneously working out how to get them taken down. Our cyber-security team started digging behind the written words to the technology trail behind the messages which led to the culprit. And our legal team started preparing the complex, multi-jurisdiction legal proceedings that would eventually bring the perpetrator to justice.

Result

After uncovering a trail of highly sophisticated smear campaign activity that included phishing email attacks against an affiliate of our client, we successfully identified the perpetrator of the campaign. In addition, we helped the client put new procedures in place to protect against further attack. Most importantly, we brought those concerned to justice with no less than 28 suits of action in jurisdictions across Europe, Central and North America.

Capabilities Used
  • Defamation & libel
  • Litigation & dispute support
  • Digital forensics
  • CISO-as-a-service
  • Technical Surveillance Counter Measures (TSCM)

Need help with a similar situation?

Schillings represents high-net-worth individuals, families, C-Suites and global businesses. We advise on high-value and complex issues relating to protecting privacy, security and reputation.

To discuss how we can help you please call +44 (0)20 7034 9000