Chuck McKee spent 20 years working for the FBI. Now he leads the FBIS (Forensic Brothers Investigation Services) unit in the Augusta/Aiken area and TrustVault.
TrustVault is a “Good Housekeeping-like seal of approval” for people’s character and perhaps the companies they work for.
McKee’s FBI career brought him to the Augusta region in 2005, and he worked in the following fraud divisions:
- Healthcare
- Mortgage—McKee investigated those who misrepresented their mortgage applications related to employment, bank account information, property repairs, and more.
- Counterintelligence—McKee looked into employees at Fort Gordon, NSA, Plant Vogtle, and other federal institutions to ensure secrets and intellectual properties weren’t released to foreign entities.
- Human Trafficking—“By far that’s the most rewarding. A lot of the other cases, justice is being served, money may be recouped, restitution may be ordered, but when you save a life, when you can take someone out of a human trafficking situation where they’re basically being tortured and forced to do things day and night—by far is the most rewarding,” said McKee. He said he spent a lot of time at Washington Road motels trying to rescue victims and make arrests.
- Civil rights/ Public Corruption
McKee started developing an exit strategy during year 15 of his 20-year tenure at the FBI.
For a year, McKee sought mentors like an FBI colleague to refine what his business interests would look like.
“I tried to find some areas that I could leverage what I had gained in the FBI and prior to the FBI, and use that experience to help others, to serve others. And, yeah, I feel in a lot of ways that I’m still doing a lot of the same skill sets I was doing for the FBI in retirement, just serving a different client base,” added McKee.
He wanted to incorporate his FBI experiences with his former career as a CPA.
He knew it would be helpful to investigate employees stealing money from their bosses.
“I would see in the FBI a lot of these financial embezzlements and schemes like that that would be prosecuted federally, so I just assumed that there would be a market for that business upon retiring,” he said
McKee learned in his first year in business that there is truth in numbers and that strategically partnering with adjacent businesses can be lucrative.
“I worked with some local attorneys, doing criminal defense, helping them move their cases forward by interviewing witnesses and doing surveillance in some instances on matters that are typically non-domestic cases. “
Sometimes McKee’s FBIS company does surveillance involving insurance cases or executive protection type of surveillance.
“If a corporate client has a concern about someone that may be trying to interfere with their business operations, we would keep a close watch on whoever that was and make sure that they can’t go to the business or threaten any employees or anything like that by doing legal surveillance on the target there.”
How do you truly know whether daycare employees, church/school/sports volunteers, or prospective employees are of high character and don’t have a criminal background?
That’s where TrustVault comes in.
The idea came to McKee during his time receiving clearance to enter premises using his credentials, badge, credibility, and trustworthiness.
“I was taking that further and trying to figure out, is there a way to do such a thing in the private sector to allow all those benefits that I got to experience for other people that have made the right choices, who have led the right kind of lives, who are highly trusted, but there’s just no certification for it,” he said
McKee pulled from best practices with the government’s background investigation process and put it into a phased system.
Clients fill out a questionnaire that highlights their background in education, jobs, references, crime, money transactions, and more.
“So, with individuals, first off, it’s a proactive step that they’ve taken. And when those background checks are performed, the HR department usually looks at them, and they will make an evaluation.
They can see all these records that have been gathered, and they can see references that have been made,” added McKee.
What would disqualify applicants from receiving “clearance” with TrustVault?
“Let’s be truthful and transparent on this application form. So, some disqualifiers would be withholding of information purposefully with the intent to deceive me in this process. That would be an automatic disqualifier. A felony in the last five or seven years would be a disqualifier. So those are just a couple. Not fulfilling financial obligations would be another disqualifier and something we’d have to work around.
However, I believe everybody is redeemable,” said McKee.
That’s why McKee formed “Trust Vault Redeemed.”
“So, it’s for those people who have things in their past to still become a better person before we can certify them as a Trust Vault member. We look at a person like a pie, and we slice that pie into eight separate pieces. And so, one piece may be a financial piece, a relational piece. Education. Training. One may be like emotional state or a physical state.
And we recommend people volunteer, become mentors, become mentees, take financial-related courses, all these things to help build up those slices of the pie.
Even if somebody took courses in a prison environment, where they took a GED or they took a welding class, these are all things to improve themselves, so we give people credit for that.
But the entire process that is required for that self-improvement is seven years, but they determine when the clock starts, and the clock starts when they have that change in mindset of a criminal mindset, or a mindset that got me into these problems.”
McKee relies heavily on his Christian faith and principles of the bible to help guide him.
“And the reason it’s seven years is because in Deuteronomy 15, verse 1, it says, after seven years, the debts of the people will be forgiven. So that’s where Trust Vault Redeemed gets that redemption portion of seven years.
McKee also has a heart for those who’ve been incarcerated.
“Because I’ve heard too many stories of people who have had convictions or felony convictions in the past that run with them for 20, 25 years. And they’re not able to get jobs. They’re not able to get housing. They’re not able to get insurance. They’re not able to get banking. And it’s just a huge inhibitor for someone that made a bad choice or was involved in bad activity early on. But to have that continue with them throughout the whole rest of their life, I don’t believe that’s the way it should be. And that’s why I’ve developed Trust Vault Redeemed to help them not have to deal with that ball and chain forever.”
That’s why McKee is working with some prison ministries and organizations who try and re-integrate people into society.
Networking and Business Benefits of TrustVault
In some regards, McKee’s business is a bit like one of the area Chambers of Commerce.
Members of those business groups do business together and are in the directories.
“Once you become a member, then you’re part of the Trust Vault Network. And so, on our webpage, you can see a little write-up about each one of our members with a photograph there, with a link to their LinkedIn, with a link to their YouTube, and with podcasts.
And the idea behind that is, over time, as Trust Vault expands, and hopefully goes nationwide, if you need a banker in Salt Lake City, you could go to Trust Vault and search, banking in Salt Lake City, and you could find a Trust Vault member there.”
Memberships involve a one-time investigation fee that depends on different factors.
Monthly charges are $20 per month or $200 annually. Members can use the TrustVault logo, like some use the Better Business Bureau(BBB) logo, to highlight company ethics.
For companies with a local operation, if 75% of the leadership team are Trust Vault members, then McKee will certify that location as being a Trust Vault-certified company.
“Everybody’s benefiting. It could be used at the board of directors level, at non-profits, who you’re bringing in on boards. You want people that are trustworthy, right, and have a good standing and reputation in the community. So, if someone had this already, they could present that to the board, and it would save a lot of time and administrative effort.”
McKee would eventually like for TrustVault to be included in a suite of “insurance-like” benefits that a Human Resource Director could offer at companies.
“It actually benefits both the employee and the company.”
“And so in everything I do, I want to try to reward people in our society for doing the right things and being trustworthy on a daily basis.”
TrustVault and Forensic Brothers Investigation Services
www.trustvault.us and www.fbis-usa.com
Chuck McKee
803.215.4001
info@privatesectorclearance.com
