Case Study – Major U.S. Professional Sports League Undercover Investigation

Kroll was retained by outside legal counsel of a major U.S. professional sports league. Kroll worked closely with an outside web analytics firm to cluster tens of thousands of individual online sellers of the client’s merchandise. Over the course of several months, Kroll carried out dozens of undercover purchases from these unauthorized online sellers. Using an organized strategy, Kroll logged all of its purchases, identified information on the sellers and maintained chain of custody for purchased merchandise. Testing by the client revealed that all of the products purchased were counterfeit despite most displaying authentic hangtags with holograms. Working with outside legal counsel, Kroll supported and testified in two federal civil cases resulting in judgments ranging from several hundred million dollars to nearly USD 2 billion against the counterfeiters. Kroll also supported the client in analyzing and identifying the prevalence of counterfeit product being sold on auction, wholesale, B2B and mass retail sites on the internet.