Toni Chrabot retired in 2015 after 24 years as an FBI special agent and formed Risk Confidence Group LLC, a global consulting and private investigation firm. She is based in Ponte Vedra Beach, where she moved for her last six years with the bureau. Her experience includes hostage negotiating, instructing, management, investigating and crisis operations, including the Quinn Gray case. Gray was a 37-year-old Ponte Vedra mother of two who faked her kidnapping and, with the help of her 25-year-old lover, tried to extort money from her husband. Risk Confidence Group works with Fortune 100 companies, sports leagues and organizations in the technology, manufacturing and health care industries as well as legal teams.
I took my experience in investigation, leadership and executive management operations and brought that to the private sector. My clients typically have come from boards of directors, CEOs, CFOs, COOs, human resources and corporate security. I have examined C-suite dynamics for boards of directors. I have prepared active shooter response plans and policies. Another area is building intelligence into business operations. I had one large global organization with a global board that lost its name. It was re-registered and they thought it was an oversight. It turned out to be an insider.
A lot of people ask me, what’s the weirdest thing that ever happened? I say, fact is weirder than fiction. There was a corruption case with a 28-year-old police officer in Gary, Indiana. He killed three people with his bare hands, put them in the trunk of the car, drove it to Chicago and set it on fire. He came from a good family, a nice family, an educated family. But he created this lie for himself and said he had all these certifications and was decorated military. None of that was true. He was just a wannabe gangster and he got on the payroll of some pretty notorious traffickers, so he was helping them get rid of a problem. When you’re working it, you just follow the facts. The facts led to him.
My colleagues said I looked like a kindergarten teacher, and it served me well. I still believe most people are good, so you go out with an open mind. It was all about being objective and getting to the facts, which is what I do in my business today. I was able to be disarming and go places where my male colleagues maybe would not have been as successful. I had a presentation at my son’s class. One young man said, “Well, so what if I got up and attacked you?” I said, is that what you are going to do? It threw him off. He said, “Well, no.” We wrapped up that session and in the hallway the little boys were saying, “Joey, your mom’s a badass.” It’s kind of a joke because I’m totally not a badass.
The Quinn Gray case was my first case here, I was here like a week. I was a field executive of operations. There was not an FBI negotiator available. I didn’t know the staff yet, so I said, “give me some of your best interviewers.” They gave me these two young gals and one called me and said, “Mrs. Chrabot, I don’t think I can do this.” I said, ‘Oh honey, you can do this and you have to do this. So here’s how we are going to do this.” She did a great job. I said to my boss, “I thought you said nothing ever happens in Ponte Vedra.” There are so many different facts that unravel a story. You couldn’t script it.
I’m the oldest of four, two girls and two boys. We were fortunate to be in a very small town. My dad was superintendent of schools so I did not miss a lot of school. I loved school. Being in a small town, I was able to be a part of everything: track, basketball, cheerleading, ran the candy sale. In a small town, you were exposed to everything.
I went to college, graduated, and I thought about working for the bureau but was not ready for the application. I went into what I really did love, the hospitality industry. It gives you a lot of responsibility at a young age. I worked in the big 2,000-room hotel in downtown Chicago and moved around with Hyatt. One of my husband’s friends said, “Toni, the bureau is really looking for women.” It was time I could see my way through the 10-page application. It was a two-year process then for training and 16 weeks at the FBI National Academy. There’s a lot of money and time invested in you.
Kidnapping cases are always interesting. An 88-year-old woman was kidnapped on her birthday. She was reading by candlelight in Racine, Wisconsin. They pulled her from her kitchen table, put her in the trunk of a car and held her hostage. We communicated with the kidnappers by phone, by notes left in the mailboxes and via email. They were asking for $50,000 in ransom. She told them that nobody’s going to pay that for her. It was a distant relative who knew that some within the family were fairly wealthy and they could afford it. She was held in a cold trailer with no heat on a bare mattress. She was chained in there for three days. She had one hamburger and a three-ounce glass of orange juice, which messed up her stomach and she was madder than a hornet about that. The resiliency of people was really interesting. I interviewed her afterward. She survived it and she was a tough cookie.
From my specialized training, I learned a few things. Listening is incredibly important. I listen for what is said and the emotion behind the words, especially when addressing conflict or in contentious situations. There are at least two sides to every story, and one rarely gets the “full story” in one sitting. Ask a lot of questions and be resourceful in gathering and assessing relevant pieces of information. It is how investigations are solved and informed decisions are made. As a negotiator and in interviews and interrogations, that is a key component, listening for the emotion behind what is said and messaging that back. It also helps in daily life. It helps with your children, it helps you with employees, colleagues. It’s messaging things out and framing it.
Effective communication is when a message is received exactly as it was intended, and how rarely does that actually happen? Especially with email and texts. You work your way through family relationships, personal relationships, conflict in the workplace and all of those situations. What I learned along the way is if something doesn’t sit right with you, give yourself 24 hours, maybe 48. Take that time to find balance in your response.