Ready to have your perceptions of member vetting completely upended? Join us as we uncover the hard truths about vetting in club applications with our esteemed guest, Paul Dank—board-certified investigator, and seasoned leader of investigative agencies. Paul is here to guide us through the labyrinth of the application process, deciphering the significant implications of seemingly small misrepresentations. He teaches us that oftentimes, the devil lurks in the details omitted, rather than what is explicitly stated.
Our conversation with Paul goes far beyond just lies and misrepresentations. We delve into the reasons behind why applicants might resort to embellishing their information, and explore the potential consequences of such actions.
Paul generously shares his expert advice on how clubs can elevate their member vetting processes, so whether you're curious about the intricacies of club applications, or simply wish to understand the need for transparency in member representation, this episode is set to be a real eye-opener.
You won't look at vetting the same way again.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Private Club Radio where we bring you eating and everything Private Club related Country Club, golf Club, city Club, yacht Club, athletic Club, all the clubs you fit inside. I'm very excited. I'm your host, denny Corby, happy to be here. We are so close to coming up on our 300th episode, very, very, very excited. And if you have not done so yet, make sure you head on over to privateclubradiocom and sign up for your entry into the 300th episode giveaway. We're doing a big 300th episode giveaway. We have some tremendous prizes. There'll be multiple winners. I'm very excited, even though I can't win any of the prizes. Can you imagine this one? Oh, it's me, because KE Camps did send a beautiful bourbon basket, very, very tempting. But I am excited because I had a guest turned friend join me a few, a few bits ago, a few episodes ago, episode 274, the dark side of member vetting at your club with Paul Dank, with member vetting, Kenes, asg investigations. He just kind of gave us an overview of what proper member vetting is and I realized there's so much juicy content, there's so much knowledge and viable information to be learned. So we are going to do a couple episodes together all about member vetting. So we're going to do a couple part series Dangerous and destructive behaviors, lies and misrepresentations, and decorum and bad fit. This one you're about to listen to is our first one lies and misrepresentations. This one is all about the lies and misrepresentations that happened during the application process and it's not always lies and the lies aren't always what you think and this really opened up my eyes. Paul opened up my eyes to this is when he said misrepresentations. It's not always the information that you give that you change. It's the information that you don't give at all and why. Maybe you didn't give that information, which that just blew it away. I thought that was awesome. So before we go on, I just want to explain again what is member vetting and what is Kenes. Kenes is a platform and is a specialized research service designed and built specifically for your member vetting processes. They use like really cool specialized tools and data collection that goes just way beyond traditional background checks, employee screening services, public databases, googling because Google is only like 5% of the internet, apparently Isn't that wild. There's like 95% more. That's just out there and between facial recognition and everything else and guess what they can find this about your potential members. So really, all this is about protecting our assets, protecting our biggest assets, our club and our members. We want to make sure our people, our club, our reputation is protected, because if there's one thing we have found out over the past couple of years is reputation is everything. We broke this up into two parts instead of being one longer episode, made them a little bit shorter. We know you guys like that, so please welcome. He's board certified in investigations, is a certified fraud examiner and has led a variety of investigative agencies and industry associations spanning a career of almost 30 years. I want to welcome to the show from member vetting Kenneth Paul Dank from member vetting and Kenneth's master investigator, board certified in investigations, certified fraud examiner and has led a variety of investigative agencies. So if you haven't done so already, I highly encourage you to go over and listen to episode 274, dark Side of member vetting. That's a really good episode as well, but we're going to get right into this episode. Please welcome Paul Dank. Ever since we first talked, this stuff fascinates me. So how common is it to find these misrepresentations, which is a great, great word? But I'm assuming it's probably not so common, but I'm sure there's common things. But like, how, how often do you find stuff?
Speaker 2:Well. So how often do we find something that's either left out Left out is probably the most common. So I told you an error about myself. But then you've learned other things about me, right. So I told you I'm a country doctor, but then it turns out that what I really do is I run supplement companies, and I've had many of them, and they seem to last about 18 months to two years and they close and then I reopen a new supplement. So what I really do is do mail order supplements. I don't even actually have a medical practice. So I have a license but not a practice. But I told you I'm a doctor. Does that matter? That's something you didn't know, but might not necessarily prohibit somebody from getting into the club. It is just unusual to say I'm an accountant, except that instead I'm actually a funeral director. Neither one is bad, necessarily, but you left it out, and it is kind of weird that you keep opening and closing companies. So I don't know what that means or what that does, but it would be difficult for me to talk to you and have you say I'm just a doctor. Well, you're not just a doctor, so why leave that out? So there's missing information that we find, probably more often than information, that is erroneous. But the misrepresentations are always interesting, right, and that's where people embellish, because they think they have to put on ears to get in and they have to create a persona that will be accepted at the club. Why won't they be accepted being who they are? So if you're the associate project manager, you're not the VP of development. Why did you say you're the VP of development?
Speaker 1:And I think that's where it clicked with me is you had to say it a couple of times but it's not up to you to say if anything's good, bad or whatever. It's just to give the information over. It's up to the club and that would left things out. Oh, I even think about that. That is so good. It's not what you put in, it's what you leave out. Oh man, yeah.
Speaker 2:What are other? Because think about it this way the club has, unless somebody knows the person and has firsthand information and wants to come forward. Has the club ever going to find this out, or else they not? The remember this whole series of videos is really touching on the fact that the applicant controls the entire process. They control what information you get. If they've been nominated by someone, chances are they've spun that exact same narrative to that person. So I know you, but I don't know you well enough to actually know you like I would if I did do diligence on you. Our relationship doesn't require that you want membership in a club. Who are you really and what are you really about? And should we actually expose you to our members? It's really fact checking, right? It's fact checking is being done everywhere. We can no longer rely on the media because there's so many things that are close but not accurate. Right? Putin's really bad. I don't know he's a devil incarnate, but he's really bad, I don't know. Should we invade his country because he invaded another country? Depends on which media I'll let you look to. Right? So it's one of those things where I think fact checking is being done in more and more places, I think with without any signs that it's going to abate. Why would you ever want less facts in a decision? So clubs can say simply you know, I want less facts by virtue of the concern that we don't want to get rid of our time-honored ways and it's worked really well here. Or they say something trite like we're insulated in our community. We're a community of good, wealthy people and no one here is bad, because that would be distasteable to be bad, and you know no one in our club is bad or dishonest, but you're silly. That probably happens in weird clubs and that's just absolutely wrong. And as Americans become more transient, you know, let's face it, how many people do you know from high school who don't live anywhere near high school anymore, and how many have been right? How many have bounced around a whole bunch of times? It happens there's other people that stick around, but a lot of us move around and so we're strangers in the town. You can't rely on that and that's not accurate unless you're in some strange hamlet that I haven't encountered yet, that nobody leaves. It's just not the case. Where do you see like is there?
Speaker 1:where do people kind of misrepresent? Is there certain areas more than others? Are there some really strange things, you see? Actually, no, let's, let's just. Where are there some common areas or common ones that are like for the most part happens a lot, or more common?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there are things that are left out of the conversation and left off the application that aren't necessarily harmful. Yeah, we're going to find lots of information. I've seen clubs that have a very robust application where they asked for lots of personal information about the person because they're already dialed into the fact that vetting matters and the quality of the member matters. It's also a really good idea to have on a piece of paper people's conveyances, right? I told you that I was this and I signed off on the document that it's truthful. Right, that's powerful when someone has to sign a document and say everything in this is truthful, even though the worst that happens is I don't get in the club. Just the act of having to do that and to lay out my life and say these people are really serious and they're asking serious questions, they want to know who I am. It has a lot more strength. But even the most powerful of those applications that are well written and in detail, you usually find information that somebody didn't share. Sometimes that information is is, you know, negative and I don't want to share it with you because I don't even tell you about a business failure. And does it really matter that you have a business failure from seven years ago. You tried to do something entrepreneurial and it didn't work out. That shouldn't preclude you from getting in the club. It's also not something that's probably going to shock anybody. When it's time to admit you, it's the things that are more personal, right and closer to you, like this is my residence, except it's not your residence, it's your friend's house, your rich friend's house, or it's Nana's house. Nana's really rich and when she dies one day maybe you'll be rich, but you don't live there and that's not your house. And you didn't want to show your apartment. You didn't, and so you know. You can say something like oh, you know, it's an oversight and spilling it on a her kitchen table, that's, I must say you know. But they realistically, you're trying to present yourself as being somebody wealthy, right? You say that you've won awards. Well, I look on the awards and the awards are awards that anybody that joins wins. So you know, it's kind of like yeah, it's a field day ribbon, but you're holding that out as your red badge of courage. Before you say you're in another club. Well, I was in this club. In you pick Rhode Island, and you don't know anybody at that club. You can't call them. It was a couple of years ago. You don't verify that. But the person says oh no, I was a great club member at this club. They loved me there. You know what? Again, why are we lying? I don't know that there are any clubs that say we don't want first time club members here, but I don't believe that. Maybe that happens. I have never heard of it. So why lie again? And that's what we're finding with these misrepresentations, and sometimes it's. You know, sometimes it's really, really egregious and the person has a completely different life. It turns out that they're a bartender. They're not a financial planner. They don't have a financial planning license. Professionals are pretty easy right, because they are licensed by some authority. Those are very easy to check. So when people lie about that, it's the things. When someone says I'm an entrepreneur, I'm very successful and I have 30 employees, well, you might be an entrepreneur in the technical sense, but you don't have. You have a company that has no employees. I can tell that. I can find out whether you have workman's compensation insurance If you have any employee other than yourself. You have to have a work comp policy by law in every state in the union, so it doesn't matter, I can verify. Do you have employees? No, you don't have employees. Oh well, I have them in another company that don't know, because actually I know every company that you own and I listed them, and you don't own any companies that have any employees. So now you said you have 30 employees. You don't. You have 30 subcontractors. You claim to have this big business, but it's an online business. This was the best. There was a guy who owned an athletic apparel company for marathoners, and I love this. It was a guy who literally there's no registration of any kind. There's a web page where you could buy a couple of things like a tank top and socks or something like that, with the logo on it that he made up of this athletic team. The team has never sponsored anything. There's a picture of him wearing the swag running and he's an athletic apparel entrepreneur Yep, yep. And he's just a guy who ordered stuff from one of those big box companies that printed his logo on it and delivered it to him. It's crazy to me. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:I mean, did he sell a bunch?
Speaker 2:Like what was the? I don't think anybody paid attention. Well, we can see web traffic too, right, so we can use SEO tools to analyze the website. I think there's been seven people there, mostly his mom, and you know I mean. So no, it's hardly a venture that you could say is even real. I don't think anybody knows it's there. There's no references to it anywhere. You're a brand, that apparel company, and there's no reference to you anywhere. Okay, well, and here's the thing. Maybe secretly, he thinks that's a success. But is that really who you want, right? That's the forward phase he wants to put out. I'm an athletic apparel entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the more I then go down the rabbit hole, it's I'm a member, I start talking and learning about this guy. I then go and see his products and go, oh they let anybody in here now these days, huh Like, now you start looking at the club possibly a little bit different.
Speaker 2:Well, let's face it, I think anybody who he's telling that he's telling that tale to he's lying to. Who is he really? Well, what does he want out of the club and why does he feel compelled to lie? How about this? I'm independently wealthy and I don't really do much at all, but I like golfing and I could pay your bill and I like to have dinner and cocktails, but no, I don't work. I don't care for work. It's not that great. I inherited wealth. Maybe that's his story, but why make up this bizarre lie? And then there's more to it, right? So as we dig, can we find what he's really associated? What does he really do? I think he works at a gym. Actually, I think he's a manager to gym, but he's definitely not. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, again, at the right club. There's an awful lot of clubs that if you said I'm the assistant manager to gym and but somehow I'm gonna scrounge up the down strokes for my initiation fee, Is that what you really want in the club? Do you want them to scrounge up 50 grand because it was important to get in the club? What? Why are you doing this? That's your life savings.
Speaker 1:Or it could be the person that's the same one who is independently wealthy, inherited, but just their job is to stay busy. They just work at a gym.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, nothing wrong with that. Well, there's not, and there's probably clubs that he would fit in. There's also probably a lot of clubs, a lot of clubs that he wouldn't right, and there's a lot of members who would raise an eyebrow and say this is really weird. He told me the following things, but I don't think they're really true. I think this guy is bsing right out of the chute. It's just again fit. Fit is a big part of what we do, fit in culture. We assist with that.
Speaker 1:Now I know there's like stage one clingers, stage four clingers. Do you have different levels of misrepresent? I don't know. Is there like an industry, like standard? Do you have your own levels? Is there a degree?
Speaker 2:No, no, you really have. Every club has its culture. Every club and their board will sort of set the tempo. Maybe that's the tempo that they inherited and the club has been like this for 100 years or 20 years where they're the same and they approach things the same. But I think each club has to decide for themselves. So if you have someone who has made a misrepresentation and it's in poor taste, maybe whatever they're doing would violate the decorum policy of the club and maybe they would say, oh gosh, we would actually have this member to leave if we accidentally onboarded them and then learned this about. They all have to decide. So remember, we do. It's a club environment and that's sort of the same everywhere, but it's really different. In Florida almost everybody's a transplant and I think Florida clubs operate slightly different than clubs maybe in Louisiana or in Kansas. Right In the Midwest, people behave a certain way. On the East Coast they behave differently. Their politics are differently, their passions are different and compare Portland to Naples. You're going to have very different values. Texas, I think on the last time we did a podcast, I talked about a club that I represented in Texas. They're incredibly conservative and they're not interested in somebody who has really liberal viewpoints, coming in and upsetting the members. So they say we're a conservative club, we're going to let in people that we can identify as matching our values, and they're very overt about it. They're not at all afraid, unabashed about it. Other clubs are like well, you know, we want to be all inclusive. You do want to be all inclusive in the areas that are really smart, to be all inclusive like people with disabilities. You shouldn't look at disabilities, that you should be blind to that gender race. You know all of those things. You're right, you should be diverse in that way, but you can have people from all spectrums that fit into your culture at the same time. I think people are the same as a company. Well, I think so. I mean, I think so. But maybe in club environments we've always been this right. We've always represented this kind of person. If you're on the wrong side of civil rights decisions and ADA decisions, I think that's very bad for you, even if you are a truly private club in every legal sense and you can get away with it. It's really not where society is at anymore, but I don't think your members would represent that. If you do, you probably have a pretty creepy club and you should tell me so I can take you up my list to market, to Hashtag creepy club yeah, but the club culture is theirs and they will make decisions by saying this behavior would be unacceptable here, period. This behavior isn't great and remember, when it comes to vetting, it's part of the process. My reports I'm sorry, our reports aren't a yes and no, it's not a stoplight. It might even be a precursor to a conversation where a GM or a membership director has to say you know, we're processing your application, but we have questions. We did note this. This was some information that we have. This is also information that's publicly available and floating around and other members will find and you know, like your comments on this, what happened here. You know how do you accidentally get four citations for animal abuse?
Speaker 1:I guess we can be happy. I guess we're really good with animals.
Speaker 2:You know. But what does that say about you? Can you? Can you imagine you have a dog, right, Two, Okay, you got two dogs. Can you imagine if you got a citation over how you were raising your dogs? You'd probably die of embarrassment. You'd feel horrible and one thing that would never happen again is you wouldn't be in that position. Nah, you know, it's the third time. If I get one more of these, I'm gonna shape up. I mean, what kind of person are you? But that's where it comes back to your character, right, there was an individual lots and lots of money, had a property out west Over and over and over and over again citations for destroying public land. He would take his friends and his quad runners and he would go on state property and tear it up and he would laugh about the citations and he would post it on social media. This wasn't. This wasn't like. I found the citation. I saw social media posts where you know it's time to pay my entrance fee, Right, and that was his joke. But what he says is rules don't matter, I behave however I want. It's up to me to decide. I would say, despite his money and his golf handicapped, he's probably not a great guy to have in your club. So again, character. So let's say you see that and you decide okay, our club, we have a lot of people that play it loose and that's okay. But I've had GMs who have said thank you, because what I can do is I can have a meeting before I let you in the club and I can set the tone for the relationship. I can sit down and say, hey, the club is an extension of a certain part of your life and the behavior here is expected to be A, B and C. That is not demonstrative of what we're looking for at the club. Do you understand that? How there's an expectation on how you're going to behave? There is a decorum policy and it won't work out if you decide that once you're here, you're going to play it like you do when you're with your buddies drinking beer and your quad runners. So is there a quad runner Paul versus golf club Paul? And that might work and be enough, and you also might get a. Hey, you know what I pretty much do what I want, Danny, and I'm rich, and so I'll do what I want here too, which you say, okay, then this isn't a good shit, but you can set the tone and to the relationship. You can't tell me that that's not helpful to check somebody's behaviors at the door before they come in. Over time, might they loosen up and their true colors come out? Sure, but at least it's another option. So clubs don't have to. It's not just about the hard now and, by the way, we sometimes harder to get into a nightclub in Vegas or Miami.
Speaker 1:The bouncers are more strict. They don't like the, the attitude, the outfit, the attire. If they don't like the vibe that you and your friends are bringing, you're not getting in. That's right. That's right. And there are other people who you know can, can, fake it and they get in and then truck colors come out, security comes like uh-uh yeah. Hope you all enjoyed that episode. This is one of many to come. All about the member vetting process. We are going to be giving away the farm and providing tremendous value on how you can enhance your member vetting process at your club. If you are interested in stepping up your member vetting process or just to have a conversation, head on over to membervettingcom. Contact Paul. He's a super nice guy. I will also put a link to his LinkedIn in the comments or in the notes section. That's it for part one. Stay tuned for part two.