eBlaster Case Studies

“Primarily, with the proliferation of offices and PCs, I found we were beginning to have problems with downloads,” said Huite. “Whether it was via the web or games being brought in, it became an issue.”

“We had porn sites popping up on the PC,” said Huite. “I felt we needed something to stop that. We definitely did not want a client in for a tax return and having a porn site pop up, perhaps with their children there. It was important to be proactive to stop that stuff.”

“Windows comes with three or four games built in,” said Huite. “We told our employees that when you have eliminated all your work, you can go to it … but ‘don't load in anything new.’ Yet they do.”

“At the beginning of a tax class all the PCs in the room are configured exactly the same,” said Huite. “Thirty minutes later you find the configurations have been changed. It's one thing when fixes are simple, but some require a technician, which becomes a chargeable event.”

“In the past, we have had some employees wanting to take us on … to go to court,” said Huite. “If you have to get up in front of a judge and say this and this was going on, you better have something to back it up.

“We had a gal that thought she was a computer tech. She was told not to, but she would mess around on the PCs and change things. Her activity is one reason I determined we had a need for monitoring. She pulled up tax returns someone else had worked on, and changed the employee ID so she would receive credit for the commissions. I had so many complaints from other employees, she was fired. Later on she called and wanted her bonus. I told her no bonus and she sued us.

“If I had something to monitor and record her PC activity at the time, there would have been no question.”

“I saw it, saw it worked, and I liked what I saw. Plus, the price was reasonable.”

“No one balked except one person … and he threw a fit,” said Huite. “He claimed the software was interfering with the operation of his PC. He even formatted his hard drive. I had to call a technician to reinstall everything, including eBlaster, but we didn't tell him that. Not knowing it was there, he had no complaints.

“Eventually, we learned this person had ‘jazzed up’ about 150 tax returns. All were incorrect refunds. I never monitored this individual to the point that we noticed, but once we discovered the problem by other means, eBlaster reports gave us the documentation to prove it.”

The individual concerned not only inappropriately prepared and filed tax returns, but processed fraudulent loans against client refund checks, and placed the money into debit cards -- a Jackson Hewitt product – so he could go to area ATMs and withdraw cash.

“He confessed,” said Huite. “He was fired, and is facing several hundred formal counts … federal, state, bank, and insurance fraud … as well as counts of debit card theft and identity fraud.

“The IRS was elated. They knew about eBlaster and said ‘Well, if you've got that we can pin him to the wall.’”

Part of the Jackson Hewitt process is yearly training of tax return professionals prior to the onset of tax season. Huite provides a classroom with a PC at each seat, and in his opening remarks respectfully requests that system configurations not be compromised or the Internet connection used for entertainment.

“This past year, not too long after we purchased and installed eBlaster, I made my presentation to a class and not more than 30 minutes later, I got an email report from eBlaster concerning activity in that very classroom,” said Huite. “Using eBlaster reports of a few events, I made some overhead transparencies.

“I put them on the projector and said ‘the person at PC 4 … you've been playing games for 15 minutes. And the person at PC 7 … you've been on the Internet.’”

Huite ended that particular part of the training session with some simple advice: “I told them ‘now you can see that I can see it.’ And yes, we got the ‘jaw drop.’”

“Our acceptable use policy was verbal only,” said Huite. “It pretty much was ‘don't do that.’ With eBlaster we went to a written policy and told them we had a product called eBlaster. Some were unacquainted with it … but they know what it is now.”

"The software works as its supposed to,” said Huite. “From a technical viewpoint … no problems. My IT guys installed it and I didn't hear of any problems.”

“eBlaster has helped us meet our goals and objectives,” said Huite. “This coming season we're expanding to 8 franchises with 24 locations, and some of our new offices will be 175 miles away. Without eBlaster, it would be impossible for me to keep track of what’s going on.”

“Once eBlaster was installed and everyone knew about it, problems were almost 100 percent eliminated,” said Huite. “That's what we had hoped for … the emails, the chats, and the Internet connections … all gone. That was the nice surprise.”