Corporate Investigations · Empire Investigation
Discreet, fact-driven investigations for businesses, executives, legal teams, and decision-makers facing fraud, misconduct, internal risk, and high-stakes uncertainty.
Empire Investigation provides corporate investigation services in Pittsburgh and across the United States, including internal fraud investigations, executive vetting, due diligence, trade secret matters, insider threat investigations, workplace violence assessments, and litigation support.
Request a Confidential ConsultationWhat You Feel Before You Can Prove It
Internal fraud, a trade-secret leak, an executive who isn't who they claimed to be — the damage happens quietly, then all at once. The question is never whether something feels wrong. It's whether you can prove it.
How Empire turns suspicion into documented, court-ready evidence is laid out below — along with the 1993 exposé that named our founder one of the country's top counter-espionage investigators.
From the Field
“The books were clean. Every audit passed. But he kept losing bids to the same competitor — always by a margin just under his own.”
“He didn't have a leak. He had a listener. By the third week we had it documented — the device, the courier, and a name on his own payroll.”
Composite of multiple corporate engagements · details altered for confidentiality
When something is wrong inside your organization, you feel it before you can prove it. Revenue that doesn't match your books. A competitor who knows your proposals before you submit them. An executive whose expense reports don't hold up. A key employee who's been acting strangely since you announced the acquisition. Empire Investigation LLC has been helping Pittsburgh businesses, law firms, medical practices, and institutions answer these questions with documented, legally admissible evidence since 1982.
Corporate investigation is not the same as HR inquiry. HR relies on witness accounts, document review, and internal interviews — tools that are valuable but limited, and tools that sophisticated bad actors know how to defeat. A professional corporate investigator brings surveillance capability, financial document analysis, covert operational expertise, background intelligence resources, and the institutional knowledge of having worked hundreds of similar cases. We know where people hide things. We know what they do when they think no one is watching. We know how to document it in a way that holds up in court, before an arbitrator, or in a regulatory proceeding.
Empire Investigation LLC works with Pittsburgh-area corporations, small businesses, law firms, and HR departments on a fully confidential basis. We sign NDAs before any engagement. We work within all applicable Pennsylvania and federal law. And we produce reports that your attorneys, your board, or law enforcement can use.
Whether you're facing suspected embezzlement, a trade secret theft, a harassment complaint that needs independent investigation, or a business partner you're not sure you can trust, Empire Investigation is the firm Pittsburgh businesses call when the stakes are too high for guesswork.
Who We Work With
Most corporate engagements begin with one person who has a problem they cannot hand to anyone inside the organization. These are the calls we take most often.
General Counsel / Outside Counsel
The call usually comes after something has already been said in writing.
A confidentiality term has been breached, a departing executive is suspected of taking more than their contacts, or a recording has surfaced that nobody can account for.
You need facts that survive scrutiny, gathered lawfully, documented so they can be evaluated before anyone commits to a position. We work under counsel direction, with reporting restricted to the recipients you name.
CEO, Board or Chief of Staff
You are about to have a conversation that cannot leak.
A transaction, a leadership change, a negotiation, a board matter that a competitor would pay for.
We conduct pre-meeting technical inspections of the rooms and devices involved, document what was examined and what was found, and stay out of the way. Discretion here is operational, not a promise: unmarked arrival, scheduled around your calendar, findings to you alone.
Corporate Security / Risk
You have a suspicion and no clean way to test it internally.
An espionage concern, a pattern in access logs, an employee whose behavior has changed, or a board-level requirement to demonstrate that the organization checks.
We work as an independent external resource: no internal reporting lines, no institutional history, no stake in the outcome. That independence is often the point.
HR / Employee Relations
The complaint is credible and you cannot investigate it yourself.
The subject is senior, the complainant fears exposure, or the matter is likely to end up in front of someone other than you.
An independent investigator produces a record that does not carry the appearance of an employer investigating itself. We interview, document, distinguish what is established from what is alleged, and hand you findings you can act on.
CFO / Finance
The numbers stopped making sense and the explanation didn't help.
Vendor invoices that don't reconcile, expenses that pattern oddly, inventory that moves without paperwork, a partner whose distributions don't match the agreement.
Financial investigation is not an audit. An audit tells you the books are wrong. We establish who made them wrong, how, and whether it is still happening.
CIO / CISO / IT Leadership
Your tools found something they cannot explain.
An access point nobody provisioned, a device on the network with no owner, traffic that suggests exfiltration your controls did not stop.
Cyber tooling sees the network. It does not see the room. We inspect the physical and radio-frequency environment your security stack cannot reach, and coordinate with your existing security team or provider rather than replacing them.
Where It Starts
Corporate investigations are almost always triggered by a specific event. If one of these has happened in the last few weeks, the timing matters: evidence degrades, people talk, and devices get moved.
A competitor knew your number. A term sheet surfaced. A confidential decision was public before it was announced. The question is whether it left through a person or a device, and those are investigated differently.
Departures are the single most common trigger for trade-secret loss. The window for establishing what was accessed, copied or forwarded closes quickly.
Stop. Do not power it on, do not remove it, and limit who knows. What happens in the first hour determines whether it is evidence or a story.
Vendor invoices, expense patterns, inventory shrink, distributions that don't match the agreement.
Harassment, misconduct, retaliation, or a whistleblower report, where investigating internally would compromise the complainant or the record.
M&A, a new partner, a major supplier, an executive hire. Verification before signature costs a fraction of remediation after.
Board meeting, negotiation, sensitive strategy session, or a space that contractors have had access to.
Facts developed before filing shape the case. Facts developed after it shape the damage.
Services
Employee theft, embezzlement, vendor fraud, and expense abuse — documented for legal action.
Harassment, policy violations, whistleblower complaints, and executive misconduct.
Background intelligence before significant hires, partnerships, or transactions.
Physical and cyber-physical penetration testing for buildings, executive spaces, private aviation, campus environments, vendor paths, and event security.
Trade secret theft, non-compete violations, and competitive intelligence breaches.
Escalating behavioral risk, workplace violence, and internal threat assessment.
Asset searches, witness development, and pre-litigation intelligence for attorneys.
The Deliverable
The purpose of an investigation is not activity. It is a document you can make a decision from.
Case Insight
A business experienced ongoing inventory loss without a clear source. Internal systems showed no irregularities.
Through controlled surveillance and investigative strategy, internal activity was identified and documented, revealing consistent theft that had gone undetected over time.
Situations like this often persist because traditional safeguards are not designed to detect deliberate internal behavior.
How We Work
Confidential Intake
Direct conversation with a licensed investigator — no forms, no delays.
Scope & Strategy
Define exactly what needs to be established and what evidence is required.
Field Investigation
Surveillance, digital intelligence, interviews, and document analysis as needed.
Documentation & Reporting
Findings documented in formats suitable for HR action, legal, or executive decision-making.
Counsel Coordination
Direct coordination with your legal team when required.
Sectors
Western Pennsylvania's economy concentrates in a handful of sectors, and each generates its own investigative problems.
Not listed here does not mean not handled. It usually means we should talk.
Confidential Inquiry
All corporate inquiries are handled with complete discretion. We work directly with executives, counsel, and HR leadership to scope engagements appropriately.
All inquiries handled with complete discretion.
Why Choose Us
Established in 1982. Licensed in Pennsylvania since November 1982.
A+ BBB rated. Licensed, bonded, and professionally recognized.
Featured in national and regional media. USA Today, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh Business Journal, Executive Report, WTAE-TV, WPXI, KDKA-TV, FOX 53, and The Jenny Jones Show.
City's Best Award winner. 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Questions
Call Empire Investigation LLC at (800) 860-6068 for a confidential consultation. We'll discuss the situation, the scope of investigation needed, and provide a proposal. All consultations are confidential and covered by a non-disclosure agreement before any case details are shared.
Yes. Empire Investigation provides litigation support, witness location, surveillance, asset investigation, and fact-gathering services for businesses engaged in commercial disputes. We work directly with your legal counsel or independently as directed.
HR investigations are internal processes conducted by employees or HR consultants. They rely on interviews and document review, and are often visible to the subject of the investigation. Corporate investigations by a licensed PI firm involve covert surveillance, independent intelligence gathering, financial analysis, and field operations that produce evidence an HR investigation cannot.
Yes, within legal parameters. Surveillance in public or semi-public areas, background research, document analysis, and related activities are lawful. Investigations must comply with Pennsylvania wiretapping law, employment law, and other applicable statutes. Empire Investigation operates fully within applicable law and advises clients on legal boundaries before and during every engagement.
Cost depends on scope, duration, and resources required. Call (800) 860-6068 for a confidential quote. Empire Investigation provides fixed-scope and hourly engagements depending on the nature of the case.
In most cases, yes. That is standard practice in fraud and theft matters, and premature disclosure usually destroys the evidence. There are limits: some interview-based work cannot be conducted covertly, and certain regulated sectors carry notice obligations. We identify those at intake rather than discovering them mid-engagement.
Not to start a conversation. But when litigation, termination of a senior employee, or a regulator is a plausible outcome, counsel-directed work is usually the better structure, because it affects how findings are handled and who they belong to. If you do not have counsel engaged, we will say so rather than proceeding as though it does not matter.
It depends on scope, environments and urgency, and any firm that quotes before understanding those is guessing. What we will do on the first call is tell you whether the matter is worth investigating at all. Some are better handled internally, and we will say so.
Intake can happen the same day. Where evidence is degrading, whether that is a departure, a discovered device, or an active leak, say so when you call and we will treat it accordingly.
Our reporting is structured for that possibility: documented methodology, chain of custody where evidence is collected, and a clear separation between fact and assessment. No investigator can guarantee how a court will treat evidence. What we can control is that the work does not fail on how it was gathered or recorded.
That is a result, and often a valuable one. A documented inspection that finds nothing establishes a baseline, closes off a theory, and in some matters is exactly what a board or an insurer needs. We do not manufacture findings to justify an engagement.
Press Feature · The Saudi Gazette · 1993
Featured in The Saudi Gazette
By Tim Kennedy · The Saudi Gazette — Saudi Arabia's National Daily · September 13, 1993
A full decade before the Vision feature, this national daily named Empire Investigation's Robert M. Kresson one of the country's top counter-espionage investigators — tracing how competition was fueling a surge in industrial spying, and how corporations were turning to undercover operatives, electronic surveillance, and professional sweeps to protect their boardrooms and executive homes.
“When an accounting firm notices that one of their consistently stable business clients is experiencing increased sales and a decline in profits, they'll suspect that it's time for them to give me a call.”
Robert M. Kresson, The Saudi Gazette
Three decades on, the same pressures fill our TSCM caseload — and Empire still sweeps the boardrooms, phone lines, and private offices where corporate secrets leak. Flip through the original front page.
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Press & Recognition
Case Study
Internal Theft Investigation
A documented corporate engagement in which Empire identified and documented internal theft, providing the client with evidence and a clear investigative timeline.
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Case Study
The Art of Corporate Espionage
Recognized by Wealth & Finance International as Leading Fraud Investigator 2015 — a profile of how Empire confronts corporate espionage with TSCM, surveillance, and electronic forensics.
Read Feature
Case Study
Cosmopolitan Surveillance
A high-profile infidelity investigation in an affluent Florida community — deployed within 24 hours after three prior firms were exposed by local police. Discreet, cutting-edge, fully documented.
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