Cody Shultz is a senior director and leads Guidepost’s Private Client Protection practice group. As a former CIA officer, Mr. Shultz is regularly called on to advise ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals and family offices as a strategic advisor for executive privacy, and reputational decisions in response to public and private crises, particularly those that related to AI and deepfakes. Clients frequently ask him to advise on maintaining their digital privacy, conduct discreet due diligence on potential business partners, and provide physical protection when traveling internationally.
Mr. Shultz also works with enterprise clients on managing the privacy and security of their C-suite, focusing on the tax benefits available with IRS Code 132 and working condition fringes. He assists clients with social media unmasking, which identifies digital bullies and cyber criminals who harass or make online threats against executives and their families. He has written several articles on these subjects and his work has been featured in Security Magazine and Security Info Watch.
Mr. Shultz’s practice focuses on the unique challenges of UHNW families and routinely assists clients in matters such as: digital vulnerability assessments, “fake news” or negative press suppression, cyber threat monitoring, ransom and extortion response, business due diligence, and global executive protection. The following are highlights of his experience.
Digital Privacy
- Oversaw the development of a comprehensive privacy program for a client and family that included designing and assisting in the implementation of a privacy asset acquisition and holding structure by creating a legal entity and using a proxy agent to create firewalls between potential adversaries and the principal’s new home address.
- Has overseen dozens of online vulnerability assessments of high-profile and high-net-worth families to provide a comprehensive overview of cyber risk such as: identifying breached usernames and passwords; locations and schedules of school-aged children; and uncovering a spouse’s unannounced plan for divorce based on a public Amazon wish list featuring books on how to live as a single parent and helping children during divorce proceedings.
Reputation Management
- Oversaw an engagement responding a competitor’s global publication of “fake news” stories to damage the client’s reputation to make the client acquiesce to an unfavorable business deal.
- Led an investigation into an organized group masked protestors that showed up at the client’s home and workplace making claims of anti-Semitism ultimately identifying not only those who wore masks at the protests, but also the source of their funding as originating from an extremist group in another country.
Discreet Investigations
- Led an investigation into the fiancé of a high-net-worth family’s daughter that revealed the fiancé was maintaining inappropriate sexual conversations with several Instagram models both before the engagement up and through the week prior to the wedding.
- Led and supervised an investigation involving a theft of over $500,000 of designer clothing from a client’s property, in which mobile device tracking identified a vehicle that left the subject’s home to a public storage facility several hours away. Law enforcement involvement ended in the arrest of a suspect.
- Led and supervised an investigation into an “anonymous” stalker of an on-air personality ultimately identifying the individual behind the unwanted communication and coordinating a law enforcement response.
- Led a multi-year investigation into organized crime’s use of fraudulent passports to steal a company’s intellectual property, ultimately leading to the arrest of fourteen individuals in India, Turkey, Thailand and the Philippines.
Due Diligence
- Managed multiple pre-transactional due diligence investigations of people and entities in difficult jurisdictions such as Russia, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Laos.
- Led and supervised business intelligence investigations on entities to determine ultimate beneficial ownership of companies, undeclared connections to government agencies, and uncovering reputational concerns related to proposed incoming members of boards of directors.
Prior Experience
Prior to joining Guidepost, Mr. Shultz was the senior investigator for ACT, Inc., where he brought his experience as a federal investigator to the educational testing industry. He stood up an entirely new investigative division, responsible for international security matters, which included intellectual property protection, developing country-specific risk assessments, creating, and deploying data analytics to detect testing misconduct, and managing ACT’s global hotline reporting system.
Mr. Shultz began his career with the Central Intelligence Agency. Throughout his tenure, he performed personnel security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism investigations in Eastern Europe, South America, and the Near East.
Community Engagement
Mr. Shultz is a lay leader in his local church, serving as co-director of the men’s ministry. He teaches weekly classes on systematic theology, church doctrine, and reformed dogmatics.
Education
Mr. Shultz earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Philosophy from Texas A&M University. He is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with a focus in Biblical Theology and Biblical Spirituality.
Did You Know?
Cody grew up in Texas, and the first time he saw snow was after he graduated college and moved to DC.
