Brand Protection Program Leadership
E3 Legacy Intel runs brand protection programs for brands and retailers as your fractional brand protection director. We diagnose losses from counterfeits, diversion, organized retail crime, and marketplace abuse. We design the program, manage the enforcement vendors, run covert buys, and identify the people behind the problem. Everything is built for court.
We run the whole brand protection program on your side of the table: diagnosis, vendor management, covert buys, enforcement at scale, and the licensed casework that turns a storefront into a named person.
Every vendor sells you their own product. Nobody is accountable for your outcome.
The software platforms sell detection dashboards and automated takedowns. The enforcement shops sell demand letters by the thousand. The law firms sell hours. Each one reports on its own performance, and none of them answers for whether your losses actually stop.
The missing role is the independent expert who works only for you: someone who figures out what is actually draining your revenue, decides which tools and vendors the problem deserves, holds them to results, and brings in licensed investigators when a listing needs to become a name. Large companies fill this role with a full-time brand protection director. Most brands and retailers cannot justify that salary, so the role goes unfilled and the vendors run unsupervised.
We fill that role on a monthly retainer, backed by sixteen years of licensed investigative work and the intelligence platform behind it. We sell no software and take no vendor commissions, so our only interest is your result.
A takedown is not a program.
If your counterfeit listings come back within the week, if gray-market sellers rotate storefronts faster than your notices land, if stolen product keeps surfacing on marketplaces no matter how many reports you file, you do not have a tooling problem. You have an identity problem. Takedowns remove listings. They do not remove the people, the warehouses, the freight accounts, or the money behind them.
Our work is aimed at the people. Licensed investigators, covert purchases with documented chain of custody, and casework that follows a storefront back to a human being, packaged so your counsel can act: demand, lawsuit, seizure, or referral to law enforcement.
The engagement runs in four moves.
The Program Audit
A fixed-fee diagnostic. We quantify where your loss actually lives, test what your current tools and vendors actually catch, and deliver the program design: what to run, what to cut, what it should cost, and what stopped will look like.
The stack, assembled and managed
Detection volume, marketplace enforcement, location intelligence, fieldwork, counsel. We select the vendors, negotiate the scopes, and manage them against results. When the program calls for enforcement at volume, we run it: compliance and demand letters sent in your brand's name through an automated pipeline, built on enforcement patterns refined against noncompliant sellers since 2010.
Covert buys and identification
When a target matters, our licensed team runs the evidence play: test purchases, product authentication, shipping-label intelligence, and the investigative work that turns a storefront into a named person and a mapped network.
Court-ready delivery, then the watch continues
Findings arrive as evidence, with documented chain of custody, sworn where needed, ready for your counsel, the platform, or law enforcement. The monthly watch stays on so the network you just cut does not quietly rebuild.
Counterfeits. Diversion. Organized retail crime. Marketplace abuse. One discipline.
Product diversion and gray market
Who is leaking authorized product out of your channel, with proof you can act on.
Counterfeits
From the listing to the source, with authenticated purchases in the file.
Organized retail crime
Stolen product surfacing online, traced back toward boosters, fences, and storage.
Marketplace abuse
Hijacked listings, false complaints, and coordinated attacks on your catalog, resolved to the actor behind them.
Cargo and freight loss
Theft in transit connected to any of the above, worked with the same network discipline.
Program leadership without a license is just consulting.
The moment your program needs a covert purchase, a network identified, or evidence a court will accept, an unlicensed advisor has to stop and hand the work to someone like us. We are the someone. Florida agency license A-1400197. Sixteen years of licensed casework. Federal task-force collaboration. Every file is built for court from day one, because in this business everything ends up in front of counsel eventually.
Frequently asked questions
What is a fractional brand protection director?
How is this different from brand protection software?
What does the Program Audit include?
Can you send enforcement letters to violators for us?
Do you perform test buys and product authentication?
Do you replace our existing vendors?
Can your findings be used in court?
Your Examiner
Matt Aubin, CDFE, FBCI
Managing Partner, E3 Legacy Intel · FL Licensed Investigator A-1400197
Every matter on this page is worked under a named, licensed examiner. Matt Aubin brings seventeen years in cybercrime and open source intelligence. He is a Certified Digital Forensics Examiner (CDFE), a Florida Board Certified Investigator (FBCI), and a Certified AI Agent Developer, and he has investigated cases jointly with the FBI, the SEC, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Marshals.
His work has been featured on ABC News, Spectrum News, and The Daily Beast, and in a television pilot for Netflix and MAC Pictures as a cybercrime expert. He keynotes nationally and serves on the Board of Directors of the Florida Association of Licensed Investigators (FALI). About Matt Aubin
LET’S TALK
Bring us the problem. We will tell you plainly whether investigation can help.
Fill out this form and set up a discovery call with us. From there we will analyze the issues you are having and determine your intelligence needs. Then we will develop a custom, no-obligation quote for our services, delivered in writing before you commit to anything.
Brands that want the buying and the evidence file run every month, rather than the leadership layer above it, should look at our brand enforcement program.
Tell us what happened
A licensed examiner reads every inquiry. You get a written, flat fee quote before any work starts. Or call (877) 732-6648.