Complaint Review: crossroads investigation services - westwood New Jersey

Crossroads Investigation Service

Crossroads Investigation Service are a danger to themselves and their clients.

There are two primary reasons I'd recommend not hiring Crossroads Investigation Services. The first is OpSec, or operational security. This is their (in)ability to conduct themselves in a discrete manner and not allow their clients to become exposed as such. The second reason is InfoSec, or information security – this is their (in)ability to maintain sensitive data and keep it private.

Unfortunately, to explain why this company is so terrible, I'll need to expose them a bit. First, we can see that they claim to be in a town called Westwood, in northern NJ at 99 Kinderkamack Road. This is actually just a mail drop service where they can have mail sent. Although they probably think this affords them a layer of anonymity against having an easily traceable physical location, in fact, it's the opposite. Now, anyone who wants to find them will know that when they send emails, those emails are coming from private addresses or their own personal mobile devices.

To elaborate on that point, Kenneth (Ken) Cummings, the former Navy SEAL and partner at Crossroads, has a personal IP address of (((REDACTED))) , from which he uses his the AOL account (((REDACTED))). With that information, it's easy to find out things like his mobile phone number (((REDACTED))), and since his name is uncommon (plus being a retired SEAL gives us an age range), and we know his IP + area code give us a general idea of where he's located, simply using Google (once we discount the PO Box in Ridgewood) tells us his exact home address. I'm not exposing his incompetence just for fun, I'm doing it because he can't keep his own information private, and the more layers these fools add (like a mailing address that they don't work from), the less alients either. ctual protection they have. This is exactly why they don't have the ability to protect clients' personal data, because they can't protect their own.

This is part of the reason why their clients can be traced back to them, like the City of Hoboken, a town across the river from New York City, who paid them $5,280 back in 2012, for security services. Using simple legal methods (not much more than Google), anyone can trace any of their clients back to Crossroads. 

The company founder/owner, Glenn Smail, is basically a former park ranger (his “Law Enforcement” experience) who moved on to get a job busting shoplifters at a department store (called “asset protection” when you're trying to make your self seem important). However, while clients think that he has access to all sorts of foreign intelligence in all kinds of markets, the truth is that he takes his client's money and purchases information from Stratfor (Strategic Forcasting, a global intelligence company), then he passes it off as his own. His email (((REDACTED)) ) can be found numerous times on WikiLeaks, as a Stratfor client, and from the context it's obvious that he is purchasing information and passing it off to clients who think it's actually from Crossroads Investigative Services.

Literally, most of the services offered at Crossroads Investigation Services (i.e. the list on their website that includes: “Research Domestic & Intl Asset research on individual and corporate financial matters, Due diligence of foreign corporations, Overseas threat assessment analysis for International Corporations looking to expand into foreign countries.”) is just information purchased from the real company doing the work. Go to Stratfor.com or just look up what they do, and you'll see that Crossroads are just pretending to be investigators. If you were thinking of hiring Crossroads, just buy the information from Stratfor, it'll be cheaper.

At this point, a reasonable person should be asking why Smail is still using this email address, when it's all over Wikileaks and exposes him as a wannabe. The truth is, he probably doesn't even know that this information is out there. Also, if Ken Cummings were any good, he'd be working for Stratfor, as it was founded basically the same year he retired as a SEAL, since they hired a bunch of other SEALs at that time.

Crossroads' founder (Smail) and partner (Cummings) are both horrible at keeping their own information private, clearly. Rounding out the dream team is John Delesio, an ex-Marine and former State Police Officer, who never made it past Sergeant because he barely got out of high-school. He's almost a senior citizen, lives in Glenwood, NJ, and again, is very easy to find (age + general location and Google does the rest). This point is only being brought up because people who can't keep their own data private, usually can't do it for c

Hence, why it's easy to find these guys' home addresses, phone numbers, IP address, and even the fact that they have been passing off Stratfor's intelligence reports as their own (or that they were hired by Hoboken to do security). I'm not going to even bother telling you about the guy who runs the Florida office, Raymond Bishof.

Even the girl who did their website (Danielle Padalino, nee' Gardner, a Ramapo College graduate now residing in Oakland, NJ), who did their website, has had her personal information exposed simply by working for Crossroads Investigation Services. These guys are incompetent, they can't keep their own identities and locations off the map, and they certainly can't do it for anyone who hires them or works for them. But they also can't do their job at all, since they pay real intelligence firms to do it for them.

Stay away from these guys, you'll get scammed, or worse, put in danger when they allow all of your personal data to leak out.