295: Pt 2 MemberVetting-Lies & Misrepresentations w/ Paul Dank - Kennis

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Private Club Radio. This is part two of our member vetting lies and misrepresentations episode. If you haven't listened to part one, make sure you go listen to part one. As we move into part two, we're going to talk a little bit more about the technological side. The technology side of all of the background and investigations from facial recognition and a whole bunch of other things. It is absolutely wild. So welcome to part two with my man, paul Dank, from Kenneth's member vetting.

Speaker 2: 0:33

You know one of my favorite analogies when it comes to comparing the fact checking and looking for lies and misrepresentation. Think of college. Think of what inbound college students go through from testing. You know the writing, I mean the letters of recommendation, the application itself, all for the privilege of paying them 60,000 a year for your undergrad right. But think of the scrutiny and do universities even have a pause about saying no? They say no and you don't get to know why either. And they're allowed to. They're allowed to tell you no within that system. Look at Greek life. What is more representative of what clubs are than those clubs? They will literally bring people in and say that guy had a weird shirt and he's not getting it. Or that person made a comment that he likes kittens, he's out. I mean, you know, that's that's really where you see people using whatever criteria you want to fit into the culture. So clubs can obviously adult country clubs and golf club can be much more professional in their approach to it. But again, you're you're looking at those things and saying do they impact whether or you fit? And the worst one is are you a threat, are you a problem? Is it, is it representative of something bigger? Do you have real behavioral issues that are toxic, and not just in social ways, you know, is this going to be somebody who's going to end up in some kind of tragedy and the club could potentially be woven into it? There is no member that's worth that zero. You know, I belong to a club and when it's a big city club it's a fantastic club. But every once in a while we'll have a member that'll be in the news for something really, really bad. You just hope it doesn't reflect in the club and vetting would help. Voting would help. If there's anything predictive in that background, just say no, move on. There's lots of people who want to be in clubs, so there must there.

Speaker 1: 2:36

There's this pressure to. I can see what I can under. I shouldn't say that. I can see why people would do this because of that pressure. They are so nervous of that, is it? They're nervous of that rejection, like what do you think?

Speaker 2: 2:54

Why they would misrepresent themselves. Yeah, yeah, because they some. For some reason, they have an idea of what the club is really about and they don't think that they meet that. So they're going, they're going to create that to get in. I understand what it's like to to climb the ladder. I believe it or not. I was a young guy trying to figure it out at one point and I wanted to be impressive. I wanted to look as good as I can be, as polished and seasoned as I could when I wasn't seasoned or polished, and we want to do that. There's a fine line between doing things like that. You had a responsibility or two that maybe you only did that once, that one day, when Joe, your supervisor, wasn't in. But you had that responsibility. Your resume right I regularly. No, you didn't regularly do it. I think we could all probably look past that and something like that's never, in my opinion, going to be an issue for a club. It's when those misrepresentations or outright lies are big and meaningful and you have to stop and say why would someone do this? The ludicrous one and this person was very this person from San Diego was in the Navy and had to say was a Navy SEAL and had to make a deal about saying I will be retired SEAL officer and he was not a SEAL. Oh, never, ever. He was in the Navy and he was an officer, but he had to knew the Navy seal. That's right. My point is, and I remember talking to the membership director about it and she said you know what's the point here? And I said I have no idea why you wouldn't take someone who was a naval officer. By the way, he's a consultant, you know he's got a probably you know high six figure income. You can find him all over the place. He's spoken on panels. His professional life is out there, but he's not a seal.

Speaker 1: 4:42

So I don't, david Goggins, he just couldn't make the cut.

Speaker 2: 4:48

No, yeah, I don't think you want to accuse Goggins of that. He'll physically run to your house.

Speaker 1: 4:55

So that sounds like I wouldn't say that that's more than a red. That is the red flag, but are there, like what would you consider? Smaller flags that you know, you find or that have become common and you've put the pieces together throughout your own research and stuff in just years of doing this? Oh boy.

Speaker 2: 5:17

So probably the most common is your occupation or your title or your business ownership, what your businesses are about. After that, it's probably like professional achievements and things like that. So you know, I said I won an award. We've in understand. We see a lot of these cases, not just for clubs. My agency represents a lot of investors, whether it's private equity groups or hedge funds, who are family offices who want to do business deals, and they will ask us to vet the people because they want to know about character people they're going to invest with or buy or and have a relationship with. And so we do a lot of these and you'll see the professional achievements and I'll never forget we had one person who, on LinkedIn, had like a half a page of professional achievements and all of these things. My staff came back and said this guy has won all of these, except that none of them exist. None of them exist, they're fabricated. So what are you doing? Now? He's got bigger problems because he's telling everybody in the whole world about this as opposed to just the club that he didn't get into. So you see, those other prior club membership is something that you know when you're a transplant from somewhere else. If you think that that gives you an angle right? Oh, I was. You know, I was at this club and now I know some of the clubs like to check that on their own. They do that, that phone call. I think they should be very careful about the phone call. And I think if you receive a phone call from someone who says I'm a manager at another club and you're probing for information unless it's a resounding, we love this person and support him and we're super happy with him I don't think you should say anything. And a phone call without a release? They're asking questions. Those people are putting themselves in harm's way if they misrepresent that person or that relationship. It opens up. It opens up a door that you don't have. If you have an outsourced uh, betting fact provider like us, we do that, but we do it with a release so that nobody can get in trouble. Here's the other thing. It's a. It's a very telling moment when my clients slide the release over to the applicant and say can you just sign this so we can verify your prior club membership? And then they say I think I left my pen in the car.

Speaker 1: 7:33

I left my ID in the car. Uh, I cannot purchase this alcohol. No, oh my God.

Speaker 2: 7:39

That's yeah, when that comes over. And when that comes over in the packet, then you tend to say you know, I'm not, I'm not Whoops, Whoops Shouldn't have said that. So, but again, do you want that member, Do you want that guy?

Speaker 1: 7:53

No, besides what you do, are there any other like legal ramifications that?

Speaker 2: 8:00

could come up. No, this is, this is when clubs are home gaming and, and that's that's something where you're asking somebody else to give their opinion and that opinion can have a consequence toward whether that person gets internet. If that person doesn't appreciate that opinion, um, and and you you potentially say, well, you know, or someone finds out, you know, people talk, maybe somebody the other club tells somebody who lets that applicant know they called and billed our GM, said really bad stuff about you. I. Is it remote? Yep, could it happen? Yep, and when it does, what? Why take that risk? Why take that risk? It's there's no reason to take that risk. Now, listen, I think if you can verify that somebody was a successful member of the club, I think it is very, very telling of whether they're going to be successful at your club. If you've been in a club, you get the game, you understand how clubs function and you want to be in that environment again. I think that's a great sign for clubs, that prior club membership. But if it's a lie, it's not such a great sign, it's, it's a super bad sign. At that point, if I were in a membership committee, that would be a hard no for me.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Do clubs? Can clubs do this once they for their existing members? Could they, should they? And what happens if you can, if they do like what happens if they find stuff out?

Speaker 2: 9:25

Yeah, I can't imagine that there would be a purge at a club where they want to look for that information. No, I think once you're in, there's a standard that's set at the time that you join. I was grandfathered in before they started doing common sense stuff like using facts. That's the only reason that I would get into a club anywhere is if there were no facts checking and vetting being done. So I would imagine that it would cause a real problem to have to say to somebody hey, you know, you've been here for eight years, danny, but it's time for you to go, amigo.

Speaker 1: 9:59

We found out, you actually have an associate's degree and not a bachelor's. Are there certain industries that people tend to misrepresent themselves more than others?

Speaker 2: 10:11

Sure. So professional services people I mentioned them earlier they all have documents from the state that say who they are. So if you're a lawyer, you have a bar card. It's confirmed that you are. That a CPA is the same way. I'm a professional investigator I have a license. It came somewhere. So those are the easiest to verify and those people tend not. If you're going to misrepresent yourself, you're not probably going to say well, I'm a doctor, because somebody can check very easily and word gets out. After that you get people that tend to work for big companies and are in established roles, so much so that their company is broadcasting information about. So if you work at let's pick a random company Exxon If you work and you're an executive at Exxon and you've spoken at conferences and there's pictures of you at Ribbon Cuttings and there's blog posts about you and what your team did, it's pretty safe to say that you work at Exxon and you're an executive. So you don't see a lot of people imitating that. When you get into the entrepreneurial zone, that's when it gets really, really weird. What does somebody do? And it's an unorthodox kind of job, or they're overly vague because the club doesn't check. I mean, one of my favorites was. One of my favorites came from us doing the background and as soon as we got started we didn't think about what we were looking at. But then we started to look at the wife and the wife was somebody who did not sit in country club mode at all. She was all country girl and pretty and pretty raunchy. I'm going to say, and yeah. And then we looked into dad and so dad indicated to the club that he was in the transportation space and he is, but he's a repo man and he's got a couple of guys who do repos for him and I don't think he was going to fit the club culture. Now he was a successful repo man and he had enough money and he had an interest and somebody nominated him. But yeah, they were definitely going to be the outliers at the club. So again, he tried to contain that information. I'm in transportation. He wore a tie when he showed up at the club and left it at. You know I work in transportation logistics. Yeah, the logistics are finding the card to take him in the middle of the night and, you know, hoping that the owner doesn't shoot you in the process.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Now did he wear his bulletproof vest to the fit.

Speaker 2: 12:42

I think there was so much machismo that he didn't need one. So got you Gotcha. So the wife would jump out of the truck and distract the homeowner and then they would take off. But but again, I think that I think that they were all very shocked at the club. You know, while you know came seems genuinely interested. I just think he would have been a horrible fit, and they thought so too.

Speaker 1: 13:08

What. That's gotta be a little difficult, though, if for the person recommending right, so like if I, I endorse somebody, how do you tell a member? Or do members get upset if their friends aren't allowed in? Like, how do you, how do you handle that? What's the best ways?

Speaker 2: 13:24

So I think the clubs have to take the high road and say we have a process and we go through that process on every applicant and we reserve the right to say no and don't stop being friends with them and it's just not the right fit right now for us. There is no obligation to go deeper. Other clubs and I won't say there's a small number of them, many clubs just say that the board hasn't had an opportunity to review the application and it's not on the schedule for a while, and people get the hint they have the right to do that as well. So yeah, but is there going to be potentially hurt feelings? Sure, but what's better to let someone in that doesn't sit and remember something? Members nominate others for membership for a wide variety of reasons, and it's not always because I've known you my entire life. I'm your doctor, I'm your psychiatrist, I'm your reverend and you know kids have sleepovers. I'm Godfather, yours, you mine. It's great when you get somebody that recommends someone, that has that closeness. Most of the time it isn't that way, and I have a very good friend who sits on the board of a pretty prestigious club and he said to me I cannot tell you the number of times I have people that I don't know but I have encountered through business or socially in a very loose way, who will call me up and say I know you're a member, can you nominate me? Would you nominate me? Will you please nominate me? It's being requested. I didn't think to nominate you, for instance. I would never nominate you under any circumstances, but you know you might call me and ask and I meant that seriously I would nominate you.

Speaker 1: 15:07

I just want to find out which club you're a member of and just call me. Like Paul said, I'd be a great member. I'm going to bring my tow truck, my backhoe, and then I'm going to wear my Daisy Dukes. So I'm not wearing a tie, just straight to the Daisy Dukes. My head was going how do you know that? Fairness, I was kind of going into but I shouldn't really say anything's fair because it's all this information that is out there. But how accurate is the information? How do you ensure the information that you're giving is the right stuff?

Speaker 2: 15:53

Sure. So a quick piece of information that we provide, we show you the source for it so you can look at it. So if somebody were to post something negative about you on Twitter one time, maybe it's a comment that's inappropriate and shouldn't be there, maybe it's unfair, maybe it's fair, who knows but somebody is going to give one tweet one time about someone like you who's in the entertainment industry, and I don't think that that would matter at all. So you get to see the con, you get to look at the context of the information as well as the information. So you know, I think we talked about a long time ago with the I'm sorry in our last podcast about the criminal records, and with somebody who had a misdemeanor conviction and claimed it was for noise at a party. But when you really drill down into it, that's what he ended up getting convicted of. So he pled out to disturbing the peace. But there were seven different things that happened and the call for the police to come to his house was because he was holding a woman by the hair on his front lawn. It wouldn't let her leave Right, and it degraded I mean the situation just completely digressed into spitting and he had to be tased. But here's the reality. What do wealthy people do when they get in trouble? They muster all the troops and they get great lawyers and they work out deals. That's part of the game. So when you see conviction for this misdemeanor offense, that he's explained away. I had a party and got too loud and the cops decided not to give you a break. It was really tragic. But in reality that's his character. When he's way too tuned up and he's unhappy, I would say, if you're an adult and you're at that point, why would you risk having that person in the club? How could they possibly make enough enhancements to offset the risk that we're going to have one of those kind of episodes? You know, I'm sure clubs walk around regularly and say that's the hothead and the one that everybody has to watch. That's the guy that people don't want to be around. That's the woman who's you don't want to be friends with her because it's going to turn bad and definitely don't make her angry. I think that that's normal, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Don't wear a hairpiece or your wig to the club. That's right, You're going to get taken. Yep, the wigs always suffer. Has it gotten easier, harder in, you know? Now we're in 2023, going to be 24. We're very digital now, so I'm assuming it. Maybe it has been easier, but harder I'm. You know how. How's the playing field been?

Speaker 2: 18:35

So actually, technology has been good to us in a really weird way. So the unfortunate thing is the conflict in Russia and the Ukraine is going on. But one thing that I've noticed is, if you follow it at all especially on social media like like Twitter or X I guess is what I should be calling it If you follow it. There's a community of people out there that do nothing but find information about what the Russian army is doing, and it's called open source or OSINT, and OSINT means you look up and you find a post that was put out there by a Russian soldier, but you're able to break it down and figure out where that soldier is, and then you're able to use other believe it or not public information within a place like Russia to find out what unit the person fights for. And then you can find, maybe colleagues of that person's on their social media who are also in their unit. And then you can say, ah, the 104th mechanized brigade is at this location right now and they're getting their butts whooped and they post this stuff constantly. Well, this community of people who comes from OSINT have been developing tools, and they're not the kind of tools you can buy someplace, so they literally find ways to find more information think of them as hacks and they publish those. Not only that, there's a huge community within law enforcement that looks for any evidence that they can track through these traces using open source, meaning it's completely public and available but I can take this information, this data, and turn it into information. That's exactly what Kennis does on members. So I'll give you a great, great tool that we have now that works with almost without a flaw I'm going to say this facial recognition, so I can take any photograph of you and I can look for any other photograph, untagged or not, of you, and it's good enough to almost always give me the exact match. My investigations manager is a fantastic guy and he tested it out for himself on himself and he found pictures that were posted both at his kid's school and at his church, that he had no idea he was in those pictures, and in some of them he's in the background and barely visible, and in some he's with a group of people. And he said you know, I didn't even remember that, but it was four years ago. And here it is. It's not tagged, his name is not connected to it, but we're finding it. So that's been a cool, cool advancement. You know something that people should probably you know. I guess it really doesn't matter. Ai is creating a lot of content and it's creating a lot of content at a breakneck pace. So there's more and more information being flooded into the internet than ever before in his bots that are writing it or largely writing it. So it's good and it's bad because, yes, there's more information to surf, sift through, but we can sift through information quickly. That's not the problem. That's not the problem. The problem is finding information. So now we even have bots that are the source of putting information out there about the subjects of our inquiries. So it's kind of cool. But that's another thing that's happening is AI is really getting. Ai is really getting involved in the game.

Speaker 1: 21:38

I want an. Oh my goodness, the facial recognition.

Speaker 2: 21:42

Yeah, it's kind of cool because then, let's say, somebody who we don't identify. I remember we look for all the people around you and we look at what they do but now, if we find somebody else that could lead us to a whole new group of people that are your people, and from that, well, there you go, we can enhance the investigation and find even more information. So those are some of the innovations, oh man.

Speaker 1: 22:09

And that's a perfect way to wrap this whole thing up. Wow, because it does just start with that one photo, or it starts that one oh, I didn't know they were linked up with this or affiliated with that person and then you start looking oh, they're in the same. Oh, there you go. This is, oh, this is juicy. Hope you all enjoyed that episode. So if you are interested in discovering how fact-based member vetting could protect your clubs reputation and integrity, head on over to membervettingcom and schedule a consult with our friend Paul Dank. Catch you all on the Liberty Flip.