Following a guilty plea for wire and securities fraud by Danny Boice, the founder of Trustify, the now-defunct “Uber for private investigators,” The Washington Post quoted our founder, Philip Becnel.
‘I knew it was a scam,’ said Philip Becnel, a partner at a D.C. private investigations firm and early Trustify critic. ‘I knew that there was no way it was profitable. . . . There was no way he was making enough money to live the lifestyle he was living and pay people the way he was paying them, based on his business model.’
In his plea, Mr. Boice admitted he lied to investors by fabricating millions in revenue and seed money. He also lied about having thousands of private investigators in his network, while in reality his company was hemorrhaging money and he was syphoning off company funds for personal use, like $600,000 for a “never-completed documentary about himself.”
Since Trustify’s launch, Philip repeatedly pointed out flaws in the company’s business model that made it ethically problematic and an altogether poor investment choice. He was quoted in several other articles concerning Trustify, including in The Washington Post and the industry’s Pursuit Magazine. Mr. Boice’s guilty plea was something of a vindication for Philip, who for years decried Trustify as a scam.
We think this makes Philip something like Trustify’s Harry Markopolos.