Slice MR panel charged with $10M in survey fraud

The US Department of Justice just announced the indictment of eight people associated with the US survey panel companies Opinions4Good (“Op4G”) and Slice MR.

Between 2014 and 2024, leaders at these companies sold an estimated $10M in fake survey data to their clients.

For further details, see the DOJ’s release available here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-nh/pr/eight-defendants-indicted-international-conspiracy-bill-10-million-fraudulent-market

Here are a few thoughts:

*I’m glad I don’t know any of these guys, but if I did, I’m not sure I would have suspected anything. Slice MR said all of the right things about data quality, and I know people that are connected to Daniel Harriman and Frank Nappo on LinkedIn. Slice MR even attained ISO certification last year. It’s worth noting, however, that they received ISO certification 27701, which is just for information security and not for panel operations. Nonetheless, ISO certification is supposed to be a rigorous process, including data audits. Presumably, the audits did not uncover any fraud, and as a result, Slice MR got to market their ISO certification and masquerade as a good actor.

*The Insights Association needs to immediately and aggressively reassure panel sample buyers that there are steps you can take to ensure you are not working with a fraudulent panel company. I’m not sure what those steps are, but the industry can come to a consensus within the next two weeks I would think. I’ll be very curious to see what we come up with.

*Related to the point above, I wonder if there were any warning signs related to Slice MR’s operations. Did the data they provided to clients look suspicious? What about the metadata? Did any of their clients ever complain about the integrity of their operations? I suspect not. Clients that worked with Slice MR need to revisit the data the company provided and look for anything suspicious that might help catch future fraud. The Insights Association should set up a task force or hotline or provide some other way of making sure people come forward with any information that might be helpful.

*As I mentioned on LinkedIn earlier today, a theme from the Insights Association’s conference this week on survey data quality was that trust can only really come through transparency. That rings even truer today.

*This story may seem to be a good thing for good actors like Ola Surveys, but it feels like a black eye for the industry, and a sinking tide lowers all boats. I’ll do what I can to support the Insights Association in reassuring buyers that the vast majority of panel companies are good actors and that online panel surveys are still valid and vital to the industry. Nonetheless, there are obviously bad actors in the panel world, and we have no way of knowing if all of them just got indicted.

*Bernie Madoff did not ruin the financial services industry. We will get past this, but it’s going to take a lot of communication and collaboration. Transparency is the way forward. But on what metrics? Again, I hope we’ll know within the next few weeks or months.

Thanks for reading.

-CW