Robert S. Mason is an Executive Vice President of IGI, with more than 20 years of experience conducting complex fact-finding investigations. He has managed major cases involving contests for corporate control, competitive intelligence collection, and corporate internal investigations. Before joining IGI, Mason was a foreign affairs researcher at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and an intelligence analyst producing studies for U.S. Department of Defense agencies.
Mason was a principal investigator in IGI’s 1992 internal probe of the United Way of America (UWA), conducted on behalf of the national charity’s Board of Trustees, which set a new benchmark for independent internal investigations. He testified as a government witness in the 1995 trial in which the former president of UWA and his associates were convicted of federal fraud charges.
Mason received a B.A. degree from the University of Washington and an M.S.F.S. degree from Georgetown University, where he completed an honors program in international business and economics and received a Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence. He also studied business at Templeton College (one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom) and completed military intelligence courses at the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C. (now the National Intelligence University). From 1980 to 1981, Mason studied and worked in Damascus, Syria, as a Fulbright Scholar.
Mason has significant case-related experience, including:
- In Dubai, managing an internal investigation for an Emirates bank to uncover and identify the perpetrators of a sophisticated international identity theft, ATM card counterfeiting and money laundering ring that spanned Europe, the Middle East and southwest Asia.
- In Kuwait, interviewing whistleblowers and witnesses, managing computer forensics, reviewing documents and employing undercover and surveillance operations to investigate multiple cases of alleged Iraq War contracting fraud.
- For the Board of Trustees of the New York State Teamsters Funds, working on an internal investigation into the integrity of claims payment systems to identify claims processing employees and outside co-conspirators who had exploited vulnerabilities in the Funds’ accounting and computer systems to embezzle substantial sums. The Board of Trustees referred IGI’s findings to criminal prosecutors.
- Obtaining evidence in a European country to assist IGI’s client, an investment bank, in mounting a successful sophisticated investor defense against allegations stemming from complex speculative foreign currency derivative transactions.
- Working for counsel to the estate of an iconic rock star to assist it in years-long litigation against former managers who had misappropriated royalty monies and other assets over a 25-year period. Our investigation helped lead to the recovery of stolen assets and supported successful litigation for restoration of music rights and royalty income streams to the late artist’s surviving family members.
- Leading a litigation support investigation for a regional Bell operating company that hired IGI to gather information in connection with a lawsuit filed by a competing local exchange carrier. Through interviews of former employees from all levels of the plaintiff company, we elicited information integral to our client’s successful settlement of the suit, including signed affidavits and documentation improperly withheld from discovery demonstrating that it was not our client’s actions that caused the plaintiff’s financial woes, which were instead attributable to myriad internal problems and an inept and inexperienced executive team.
