Robert Kerbeck flopped as an actor. But, as a company spy, he gave Oscar-worthy performances.
Working with nothing greater than a phone and a laptop computer pc, he satisfied executives, assistants and receptionists at America’s largest corporations to half with secrets and techniques price thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
As chronicled in his new e-book, “Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street” (Steerforth Press), Kerbeck specialised in getting employment data for headhunters trying to poach staff within the finance, well being care and tech fields. He deployed a course of referred to as rusing — mainly, mendacity over the cellphone to be able to receive data beneath false pretenses — and claimed to be everybody from an auditor on the agency to a compliance officer.
“Let’s say the two top traders at a Wall Street firm are managing directors,” Kerbeck, 58, instructed The Post. “They make a ton of money and would be expensive to hire. But if the number-three broker is an associate, he’s a rock star who’s unknown and won’t cost you the farm. I specialized in finding that guy for the headhunter.”
Describing himself as having as soon as been “the world’s greatest corporate spy,” Kerbeck had no qualms about being outlandish.
“The funniest ruses were the ones in which I put on phony accents,” he stated. “I was particularly good at sounding German.” Speaking within the voice of a harried man from the Fatherland, he stated, “I am calling from Frankfurt. The regulators are breathing down our necks. I need everyone in the department and their internal rankings” — i.e., their efficiency standings.
If a suspicious assistant requested why he wanted it, Kerbeck stayed in character and stated, “As you say in America, killing all za birds with one stone.”
At the flip of the twenty first century, when corporations had been panicked about Y2K shutting down the world, Kerbeck pretended to be an IT employee who wanted to know the way a lot cash sure staff generated. Not eager to be accountable for crippling their corporations, staff spilled the confidential data he requested.
He additionally made outrageous guarantees to susceptible executives. As defined within the e-book, Kerbeck typically claimed to be calling from the tax division, on the lookout for folks whom an out of doors vendor — say, Price Waterhouse — may take to Knicks and Rangers video games. Kerbeck acquired worker names, numbers and flooring on which they labored.
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The son of a automobile salesman, Kerbeck went from his hometown of Huntingdon Valley, Pa. (the place he went to highschool with CIA operative Valerie Plame), to pursue a profession in appearing. That introduced him to New York within the late Eighties, the place he had some success performing within the well-received off-Broadway drama “Bovver Boys.” He was invited to take part in a studying on the house of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, appeared in a David Fincher-directed MTV video for a band known as the Hooters and, Kerbeck writes, was hit on by Kevin Spacey. (Kerbeck rebuffed him.)
Like most struggling actors, Kerbeck wanted a income. A pal launched him to a girl who employed underemployed actors to do spy work for company shoppers. “Every company uses spies,” he stated.
In the early Nineties, he moved to Los Angeles and divided time between freelance rusing and diverse appearing gigs. There was an look on “Sisters” with George Clooney within the early ’90s. “I sensed desperation and disappointment in him,” Kerbeck stated. “He had booked six pilots that didn’t go and everything was riding on [Clooney’s new NBC show] ‘ER.’”
Then there was an O.J. Simpson train video, which Kerbeck participated in as a background exercise buff as a result of he obtained to maintain the fitness center shorts and sneakers.
“I’d been using shoe glue to cover the holes in mine,” he writes.
By the late Nineties, after a failed pilot of his personal known as “NightMan,” Kerbeck’s appearing profession sank, however the spy enterprise soared. Between 2002 and 2008, he claims, he went from making $204,000 per 12 months to greater than $2 million. Then the inventory market crashed and the underside fell out of his spy recreation.
Just as cash obtained tight, one in all Kerbeck’s executive-recruiter shoppers supplied him a deal that appeared too good to be true: He’d purchase the rusing firm and rent Kerbeck to be a headhunter, which he welcomed as a extra legit career.
However, Kerbeck stated, “I went from being the ruser to the rusee. They promised to pay me back for office rent, which they never did. They stiffed me on my bonus, didn’t buy the company and stole my best employee.”
Kerbeck left and ultimately turned to writing and day-trading shares, however, he added: “Corporate spying still works … it is down and dirty, alive and well.”
