"If you look at Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford, one of the things that they have in common is that, until recently, they didn't have criminal records," says Kenneth Springer, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who is the founder of Corporate Resolutions Inc. "You can't just look for criminal records. You have to look at the problematic patterns, the disconnects. It's not what they tell you, it's what they don't tell you." Corporate Resolutions provides a range of investigative services to financial institutions, private equity firms and others. For more on the importance of conducting in-depth background checks for executives, including those that run the information technology department, see Springer's story in The Deal magazine, "On background." - Mary Kathleen Flynn