CPP CPP Investigations and Intelligence 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which type of corporate investigation is specifically concerned with identifying the unauthorized disclosure of proprietary business information?
- Workers' compensation fraud investigation
- Trade secret / intellectual property theft investigation (Correct answer)
- Workplace harassment investigation
- Supply chain audit
Correct answer: Trade secret / intellectual property theft investigation
A trade secret investigation focuses on detecting and documenting the theft or unauthorized sharing of confidential business information.
Question 2: The legal doctrine of 'respondeat superior' is most relevant to corporate investigations because it:
- Grants investigators subpoena power
- Holds employers liable for employee actions performed within the scope of employment (Correct answer)
- Requires Miranda warnings before employee interviews
- Prohibits recording conversations without consent
Correct answer: Holds employers liable for employee actions performed within the scope of employment
Under respondeat superior, an employer can be held legally responsible for wrongs committed by employees acting within their job duties.
Question 3: During an internal investigation interview, a security professional should use open-ended questions primarily to:
- Shorten the duration of the interview
- Encourage the subject to provide narrative details without being led (Correct answer)
- Limit the subject's responses to yes or no
- Comply with Miranda requirements
Correct answer: Encourage the subject to provide narrative details without being led
Open-ended questions invite free-form narrative responses, which yield more information and reduce the risk of coaching the interviewee.
Question 4: What is 'chain of custody' in the context of evidence management?
- The reporting hierarchy of investigators
- The documented record of who collected, handled, and stored evidence from collection to court (Correct answer)
- The order in which suspects are interviewed
- The sequence of security layers protecting evidence rooms
Correct answer: The documented record of who collected, handled, and stored evidence from collection to court
A continuous chain of custody record ensures evidence integrity and admissibility by tracking every person who touched the evidence.
Question 5: Under the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996, corporate espionage involving the theft of trade secrets for the benefit of a foreign government is a:
- Civil matter only, handled in federal district court
- Federal criminal offense punishable by significant fines and imprisonment (Correct answer)
- State-level misdemeanor
- Regulatory violation handled by the FTC
Correct answer: Federal criminal offense punishable by significant fines and imprisonment
The EEA makes foreign-directed theft of U.S. trade secrets a federal crime with penalties up to 15 years imprisonment and $5 million in fines.
Question 6: Which investigative technique involves placing an undercover operative within a suspect group to gather evidence of wrongdoing?
- Surveillance
- Covert undercover operation (Correct answer)
- Forensic audit
- Polygraph examination
Correct answer: Covert undercover operation
A covert undercover operation inserts an investigator into a target environment to observe and document criminal or policy-violating behavior firsthand.
CPP CPP Investigations and Intelligence 1
Which type of corporate investigation is specifically concerned with identifying the unauthorized disclosure of proprietary business information?