Surefire Intelligence, The CIA-for-Hire for the Rich and Famous

In a nondescript building in Orange County, California, behind a large, heavy, unmarked steel door, there are a group of intelligence professionals working on brainstorming the tactics for a new case brought to them by a high net worth client. They don’t work for the FBI, the CIA or any other government agency. Matthew Cohen, the sole partner of Surefire Intelligence, told me that the client worked in high finance, but was not willing to divulge more, citing contractually obligated confidentiality. The client, whose case represented an almost seven figure payday for the firm, hired them to execute what was described by one Surefire operative as “due diligence”.

I was allowed to visit Surefire’s office under the condition that I wouldn’t divulge the exact address. When I entered the first of two layers of doors, a Surefire employee, a well-built man in his late 40’s or early 50’s, asked for my cell phone before placing it into a metal box. Then I was scanned with what looked like an RFID meter, presumably to check if I was wearing any hidden cameras or recording devices.

The origins of Surefire Intelligence are little known. It is widely believed that the firm began as a group of former intelligence officials who were executing a-la-carte jobs for international clients, namely in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The firm’s head, Matthew Cohen, who grew up in Orange County, says that he moved the operatives to the area because “the money here is good, and the weather is even better”. The firm now employs more than a dozen staff, including forensic accountants, former intelligence professionals of various nationalities, cyber specialists, investigators and a translator who boasted that she was fluent in eight languages: French, Russian, Ukrainian, English, Swiss-German, Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. On the wall of the office, under the noticeably cold air conditioning, there was mounted 8 televisions, each of them tuned to a different news network.

Cohen, who founded the firm, is a young titan in this mostly shadowy industry, at age 25. The other eight operatives who were working inside the building on the two days I visited in early August ranged from 27 to 58. Surefire, which to this point has served mostly as a fixer for high net-worth individuals, is aiming to break into the realm of corporate intelligence and counterintelligence in the near future. While they have now worked on what the firm’s COO, Daniel Helms, described as “a handful of corporate jobs”, Cohen said “as we gain more experience as a team, and develop an even longer and more illustrious track record, I’m sure the Fortune 500 will come calling”.

I asked Matthew Cohen if I could speak to one of the firm’s current or former clients. Cohen said that he would “do his best” to put me in touch with one of them.

Three days after my initial request to speak to one of his clients, Matthew Cohen called me to let me know that he could put me in touch with one of his clients on the condition that I preserve her anonymity. I agreed, and three days letter I met her at a coffee shop in Denver, Colorado. The client, a middle-aged, seemingly well heeled woman, said that she paid the firm what she would only describe as “several thousand dollars” to investigate a former business partner that had absconded with hundreds of thousands of dollars embezzled from the business.

Based on the after-action report that Surefire produced, the client from Colorado described the operation as follows. Over the course of three months, Surefire’s operatives tracked down the subject of their investigation using both electronic and other means. Once he was located, they began a process of creating two reports designed to impeach his credibility and highlight his alleged financial crimes. Two Surefire operatives met with the subject of their investigation in public as he was picking up his morning coffee at Starbucks and asked him to take a seat so that they could show him something. He obliged.

When he was seated outside the coffee shop, the Surefire operatives, who the agency declined to name, presented the subject with the reports and threatened to present them to the FBI if the subject did not return the money to the company in full and turn over his share of the company to their client. The subject reluctantly signed the documents on the spot, and they were promptly notarized by a local 24/7 notary who was called in. The Surefire operatives then drove the subject to his bank, located about three miles away, and the subject wired the money back to the company bank account, in a step that made valid the contracts he had just signed in front of the Starbucks.

When asked to expand on the details of the operation, described to me by the former Surefire client, Cohen said “We do not comment on completed or ongoing operations”.