Full asset search investigation tutorial

the most common type of investigation requested by clients to an investigative agency is an asset search investigation and typically this has to do with some type of a loss or litigation where there's a judgment or a prospective fraud against the client that they want to recover money or assets from the debtor or from the fraudster and the way an asset search is done is by categorizing all the different types of asset classes and doing a search within each one for example their assets that may be bank accounts there may be real estate there may be vehicles there's also intellectual property assets such as websites trademarks domain names even things like DBA fictitious names those could be valuable assets and we'll talk a little bit about why some of these assets are valuable to recover but also why they're valuable to claim against even if direct recovery may not benefit the creditor there's other asset classes that are corporate assets and even tangible assets that are not vehicles for example vessels aircraft equipment those are assets which may have an extreme utility value to the debtor so claiming them in many cases has more value to negotiate settlement that it does to claim and then recover and resell for the creditor so searching assets isn't like doing a Google search it's not like a magic database where you push a button and all the assets for a person show up there are investigator databases that a licensed private investigator will use to begin the search they get an idea of where some of these assets may be searched for but any kind of database search or online search really will not have results that are first of all usable the second of all probably accurate it'll give you some identity information it's more really a background check than it is an asset search the way an asset search is done is looking at the registration and recording official records for each class for example for real estate you can to search at the original deed Clerk of Court or recorder of deeds in the county where the records are that way you can use these records and they're valuable and more importantly there may be more valuable information in those deeds than just the ownership of a property you pull up a real estate deed the actual document it'll show you that your debtor Joe Schmoe might own the property but it will probably show more valuable information than just their property ownership things that might lead you to bank accounts so we'll get into that when we look at each category and that's what we're gonna do in this video we're gonna look at each category we're gonna show you how to do the search for every type of asset class because most of the cost of doing a asset search and an asset investigation is labor it's time consumed its man-hours of research so for many clients the option of being able to do some of this research yourself and obtain the same results might be a way to save some money and if you're an investigator this will give you some of the search techniques used for an asset research case in addition to that the different types of asset searches should be done in a particular order you should do the real estate first the vehicles second and save the bank accounts searches for towards the end because much of the information that you obtain and extract from the first searches can be used to either eliminate some of the bank account search requirement or to make that go faster because the bank account search has the highest outside cost for example a real estate search if you do it yourself might only have a five or ten dollar a hard cost to perform to access the records where bank account search could be hundreds of dollars so if you do a lot of the other searching first it may eliminate some of the cost of the bank account search process so take a look at the order of the searches as we do them and you'll see how the results from one will chain to the next search to make the the subsequent search of the asset class simpler but also maybe eliminate some of the requirement to do some of the more expensive costly search types follow along each of the categories and keep notes of as you're doing each one if you do a real estate search keep good notes because the matrix of information that you get from that first search you'll need for the next one so let's dive in first to the real estate section of the asset class and then from that will jump into the vehicles and then follow up towards the end with the bank account searching types the section is the asset search regarding real estate and properties what you'll find is every county has a separate recording division for real estate records deeds mortgages liens quitclaim deeds that kind of thing and real estate recordings are done at the county level so ever the property is that County will retain those documents and these are truly documents they are paper forms it's not data it's not any kind of electronic records and here's a perfect example this is Manatee County in Florida and you'll go first to their public records hub and you can search these official records by several different types of data you can search by the name of the person by the subdivision case number book and page but in most cases you're gonna be searching by name and an example of that kind of search we just put in a random name of Smith as a last name and it'll bring up all of the documents that have the name Smith as a recorded grantee or grantor you see you know Riley Smith Steven Smith Eugene Smith and it could be a from war to a buyer or seller or a mortgage company or a lender and you know we'll just pick a couple random ones and see what it looks like because not only do these documents show ownership of real estate there is valuable asset information contained on many of these documents so for example we're gonna look at this mortgage and again these are public records it doesn't mean anything about these particular individuals it's just random selections that may come up so here is a mortgage that was recorded by a credit union where this particular person borrowed money on a revolving credit mortgage the first thing you're gonna look at is a very top of the page it's going to show a recording record the book and page how much it costs to record that document and other recording information that's done after the fact this was a paper document that was signed usually at a law firm or at some official office you'll notice above the line that has their what's called a return to block this is where the document goes after it's recorded this is valuable information because many times it'll show the name of the mortgage company maybe the accountant maybe the bank or lender that's kind of retain this document so you always want to look at that to see if there's any relationship to the subject being investigated if it's a deed sometimes it'll show the mailing address for that subject or the prior address which is valuable information in this case it's gonna go right to the credit union that did the mortgage and they'll have the information about the mortgage it'll show the name of the party and also many cases their marital status a married man accompanied by his wife because in some states that's a legal requirement to show the marital status it'll show maybe a mailing address for that person then the amount of the mortgage in this case it was $25,000 and again remember this mortgage made me pay this is a prior archived documents not for the purpose of information it's just for the purpose of an example of how these things look it'll have also a book and page legal description of the property it'll have some details about the terms and conditions of the mortgage usually the first page it has valuable information then you can scroll through until you get to the last one or two pages and here's why when you get to the signature page you'll see a bunch of good information here you'll have the signature of the borrower okay it'll have the printed name of the borrower it'll have a signature of the seller or lender and also a notary okay and in many cases it'll require witness signatures and this one doesn't have witness signatures but we'll look at it later it'll show where this document was signed so if let's say this is a Florida mortgage but it was signed in DuPage County Illinois then that means that maybe the the borrower's live in Illinois or they have a house in Illinois this is valuable information from this document so we'll go back over look at another example to see if we can find any more information let's look at a mortgage release here is a release of mortgage return - just goes back to the lender so there's nothing really of any value on this one let's find another mortgage or see there's judgments there's all kind of all kind of documents here this mortgage is there you know when recorded return to inden calm Global Services so this is where that mortgage goes to is prepared by Sandra hack Phoenix Arizona okay so what does that mean okay here is a mortgage in Florida it was prepared by an individual in Phoenix Arizona that individual may have some valuable information about your debtor okay they may have a credit application they may have tax returns they may have banking information so always look at this prepared by block for potential asset information okay the borrower melissa myers formerly known as there's a maiden name usually and here's an address okay so this address maybe another address it's not known it might not be the address of this mortgage it may be a second home or a a rental property so always look at these top blocks to show who prepared it and where it goes to afterwards because there's valuable information there and again most of the rest of it is usually boilerplate it doesn't change much from one property to another parcel ID number it gives you the address which you probably already know and then we'll scroll down to get to the signature pages to see what information and always look on these pages see if there's any markings in the margins sometimes an attorney or accountant or even the bar will write something in a margin a phone number and email address a lot of times we see that showing up there's always going to be initials on all the pages to verify that they read all the pages again this requires mortgage insurance that may be something you want to look at for contact information and then once we get to the signature pages you see mortgage is a very lengthy documents usually a lot of pages in a boilerplate mortgage deeds not as much let's take a look at what the signature page has any time I see bold I always slow down there because sometimes that's information specific to that property here we go here's some some signature pages okay so you have these are the two parties the sign of mortgage remember the mortgage was in the name of Melissa Myers Timothy Gordon signed as a non applicant title holder what that usually means is that the borrower borrowed money on a property that's owned by two people and this other person had the sign saying look I'm not borrowing the money I don't owe you the money but I'm acknowledging that my property is pledged for this mortgage again and may be a source of information about the debtor or the borrower banking information tax returns that kind of thing there you go to witnesses okay lynn bond Anza and Linda Myers well guess what Linda Myers Melissa Myers same name what this probably means is that these parties were present when this mortgage was signed they may have gone to the closing agency or in some cases when a mortgage is done remotely they mail you the documents you sign them and you have witnesses with you these may be people that are associated with the borrower's again nothing specific about these people or this mortgage it's just an example of what to look at these may be parties of they may be relatives they might be associates they may be co-workers it may be people that work in the same office but you want to look to see who these people are and what the relationship is to the other parties and worst case scenario they have some knowledge of the signing of this document and then there's gonna be a notary okay here's a notary here's Linda bodanza again well she's the one who signed as another witness which is fine one of the things we'd like to do with notaries is look to see where it was signed Manatee County so it was signed in the same County where the property is located but maybe do some research on this person google search them to see if they show up on LinkedIn where do they work if they work at a bank if they work at Wells Fargo Bank or they work at Chase Bank well guess what a lot of people will go to the bank where they have accounts to get something notarized because it's free if you just walk into a random notary it might cost you ten or fifteen or twenty dollars if you go to your own bank where you have accounts a lot of times it's a service provided for free by your bank because you're an account holder so it's something to look at you know a lot of times we'll do a Google search or a LinkedIn search for the notary or even the witnesses to see if we can find out their employer and find out what bank they work at because in some cases that might be a bank where this debtor has a potential debtor this you know a subject not this particular person but the subject has an account of might be worth looking at and then we scroll down to see what else is of interest okay these are just addendums for the property well how could that help you well this is a condo association Planned Unit development is a condo it'll give you the name of the Development Creek would and it sometimes the contact information for the HOA well that HOA has received payments from this property owner for HOA fees for maybe assessment fees and that may be something that has valuable information maybe account balances for the HOA maybe what type of checks were written for that who paid for those fees because if your debtor has a property in their name but somebody else is paying for the fees that may be a source of funds for your judgment so all these pages have valuable information we call it title forensics this is one phase of the asset search just for real estate and if you notice just with this one document there's a lot of potential information about assets well let's take a look at one more just to see on a deed what information might be on a deed so here's a property deed you'll it'll probably a lot shorter fewer pages a Dean isn't usually one or two pages again booking page who is prepared by Alliance Group title well that title company in many cases will have vast information about the subject copies of driver's licenses may be tax returns they could have financial statements they certainly wrote a check at the closing for closing fee so there's an account there and it'll talk about who the parties are to the transactions again signatures witnesses you want to see if any of these witnesses show up more than once if the same witness sign on documents for the same party two or three times especially over a period of time this was dated 2008 this witness name is les McMillan it looks like our here it is Leslie McMillan if Leslie Leslie McMillan signed a document as a witness five years later for the same person well that means there's probably some relationship between the two so you always want to look at all of the extra information again you might want to look to see if Leslie McMillan works for a bank because that might be a bank where the borrower or the deed holder may have account so you want to look at even properties that have been sold if let's say your dad that you're looking for assets sold a property well you might overlook the deed to the property they sold but if you look at that deed and you find out where the recorded deed was sent to who signed there's a witness where the bank was you can still get valuable information for anything related to that person so let's look at one more in a real estate category then we'll move on to vehicles so you'll have that information here's a judgement let's just see what might be on a judgment if you have a debt against the subject likely somebody else does too so here's a judgment state of Florida against Steven Smith again you'll see the social security number is redacted normally you'll find that but sometimes they slip up and you might see a social at least you'll find the date of birth this might help you if you look at the name Steven Smith if you're looking for records on Steven Smith there might be 50 million Steven Smith records because it's a common name but now you have a date of birth which you might narrow it down to other documents now in this case it's alleged again this is not anything that's for certain that a court has a judgment of total of $451 against this person and you can get information about who had the judgment the lien holder is actually the clerk of court and it has another address maybe this is a prior address maybe a new address but there's always information on a document that might be of interest and you can't overlook anything the more time you spend sifting and sorting through all these documents the more information that could go towards your judgment I know it's a little bit long-winded for the property records but we'll look at one more release of lien okay Steven Smith now this is a different Steven Smith because it's v instead of pH okay has an address as a parcel ID and this is just a release of lien showing that this person or these people in consideration of funds had their lien released so what was the lien for originally it's unknown but you could backtrack and look at what this original lien was for so in property records this is all public records there's a vast treasure trove of information that you can look at that will help you you track down potential assets potential bank accounts places to look parties to contact and remember if you don't have records or the debtor is not willing to give up records either through legal processes or it's just simple requests you may find parties in these documents that are willing to give up records let's say there's a landlord that rented property to Joe Schmo and they were late on their rent and they have a lien against them you call up that landlord and say look I'm trying to recover funds you have a credit application do you have information about this person many times creditors are willing to give you information and there may not be any legal requirement that they don't you may find former spouses you may find counterparties to lawsuits maybe your subject sued somebody else and had to give up financial or information in that lawsuit again get good legal advice make sure what you're doing is legal and you're not you're stalking anybody or harassing anybody but there's a lot of information in these Official records that will help you pursue your lien or your judgment and recover funds and we'll get to vehicle's bank accounts and the other types of assets next but this is the the real estate portion of it that could come in handy for a vehicle records asset search it's usually a two-step process and we'll go through both of those steps the first step is requesting the information from the various motor vehicle departments and here is an example in the state of California all vehicle records information is regulated by a federal law called the DPP a the driver's Privacy Protection Act in order to have information about vehicle ownership revealed you have to go through that process at the state level here is the form INF 74 California every state will have a different form and it's a request for records information and it tells you to read this carefully before using the form you don't want to use it for nefarious purposes like stalking or illegal purposes and that's where it talks about criminal penalties and then are using the correct form certifying records and then different requirements for driver's license information and via records requested in this case we're interested in a vehicle records request you're gonna need the VI n number or if you're requesting for a person to show what information is available on a person you're going to use a driver's license number and then once you get down for the purpose of the request these are permissible uses under the DPP a and again it references out here the driver's Privacy Protection Act United States Code even though this is being requested from the state the regulation of private information is at the federal level so the different states have to abide by that federal law and the permissible uses will be listed here legitimate business insurance purposes any other use specifically authorized under law and litigation would be the permissible use you have to sign it saying that you're using it for only legal purposes and then here's the form itself now you're gonna put in the requester information that's you the driver's license request if it's a person to vehicle vehicle vessel record request if it's a vehicle by VIN number and then the purpose of the request is says the instructions and you're gonna type that here while you're using it and then your certification you're going to sign under penalty of perjury that you're using it for a particular purpose and then there's a notice of records request if that's applicable and then you're going to submit this form now with the fee to the state and normally the fees are very nominal in the case of California it's either five or twenty dollars depending upon how you want that record presented to you if it's certified or not different states will have different fees some states are free some states are nominal two to three to five dollars but this is the first step of requesting the records the next section of the video will discuss how to use those records in order to recover assets or to discover further assets prior to doing a bank account search this is the vehicle asset search section of the investigation and as you'll see it's important to do this and the others prior to doing a bank account search you want to save the bank account search for last for a couple reasons that we'll get into so in the vehicle section you'll see that first when you do a vehicle record search using the DPP a form that we showed previously you'll get results back that will first describe the vehicle and as you can see we've blurred out and redacted some of the records for privacy because it really doesn't matter what the exact ownership of this vehicle is it's for demonstration purposes only so in this case it's a 2003 BMW it'll have the VIN number body type color which is important because sometimes people will change color or a vehicle if they painted it you want to know what color is currently reflected in the title records and then down here it will show title hold information the name address county it'll have the registrant which sometimes the title owner and the registrant are two different individuals or companies it'll show the dates of registration and that's important because if a registration was renewed or reactivated that'll give you information of when the person was at that address in addition if it's a new purchase and you can show the date that it was purchased sometimes you can go back to the selling dealer and find out information about how that vehicle was paid for what bank was used or maybe even the source of funds if there were others there they will have a lot of records at that dealership about the subject and then below the ownership information it will show lien holders in this case it's real reliable rides that's probably some type of buy here pay here or dealership in-house financing that sells cars and finances them to the buyer directly and again that dealership may have a great deal of information about the purchaser in many cases a buy here pay here dealership will have pay stubs in direct deposit banking information about the purchaser if it's traditional lender like Wells Fargo or chase that'll have different records and we'll get to that momentarily it'll have the tag history the license-plate number which is important because if somebody transfers tags they normally will keep the same tag number and that's good information to have if you're having surveillance or monitoring of a person a tag will be a license plate will be good information to have here's another example of how a title record may reveal some ownership information you'll find that in this case the title holder is a different name and that the lien holder is a credit union penny R Federal Credit Union and SunTrust Bank so these are potential sources of accounts a lot of times if somebody has a loan with a financial institution they're given incentives to open an account at that institution so they may have banking relationships with that institution at the credit union or at SunTrust Bank and you can use that as a source of recovery of funds a writ of garnishment again get good legal advice from an attorney on doing all this rather than having to do a full bank account search that we'll talk about later so these are two examples of how a vehicle records asset search will assist in finding assets maybe that are vehicles that can be seized these may be vehicles that can be recovered or leaned against or sources of banking information that may have secondary purposes of providing a source of funds that can be recovered for a judgement no matter what type of asset search or research you're doing you should always look for corporate records for an individual the reason why is because even if a person is not a major stockholder in a corporation or has a major company they're self-employed there may be corporate records as an officer prior corporations or a small mom-and-pop business even a trade name that may be helpful to trackdown assets again they may be direct assets or lead to other assets here's an example of how that is searched in the state of Florida there is a Department of corporations the Secretary of State actually handles corporations in most states and you can search their records you can search by name of the corporation officer registered agent registered agent name many other types of searches but if you can search for officer or registered agent name let's type in a random name last name is Smith and we'll search now and it'll give you all the corporations that have a officer a registered agent with the name Smith and of course a name like Smith there will be many many many records so we will select an example from this list Aaron Smith don't know who he is don't know this has nothing to do with an investigation but it'll give you the name of the corporation SN n H landscape and tree service ok this was filed in 2005 but is now inactive it was dissolved for a new report basically when the report was due in 2006 they never filed the report so the company closed it'll give you their address mailing address registered agent which may be a different person it also gives you authorized persons and officers here's a manager Dean Hulk Lake Mary different all of the same address as the business address so this is an example of where you can find information about this person they had a business at one point so maybe now you do a search about this business did it have a website that I have a Facebook page do they have any equipment you can also take a look at the original filing the document to see how it was filed sometimes will be a name of a bank that has their original principal office it has the members it has a signature of the organizer okay this is a business filings Incorporated company in Wisconsin so that might be a source for records about this business has a certificate of registered agent against by that person I look at all these documents as we normally do to see if there's any other information which might be and actually from the looks of it it's SNH not SN agents SNA so it's two abbreviations for initials so if you look at the party's s NH well I don't know who the H is yeah Smith and hunk so there you go that's the reason this company was started so maybe this is a former business partner there may be records a tax return that exists for this business or for these parties that the other business party might have the partner they may want to share that so this is another type of search again these parties have nothing to do with an investigation it was a random search a random example given corporate records should always be used let's look at one other example to see if there's anything and again Aaron Smith looked like you had a lot of businesses right so here's somebody who may be a an entrepreneur and any one of these businesses look at all the Aaron Smith is it the same person I don't know Caribbean clean clean freaks let's take a look and see if it looks the same well maybe maybe not but this is a business that's active okay it was formed originally in 2019 so it's less than a year old again you have a couple of addresses and for this one you have one two three well a lot of them to same people at least three or four different authorized persons let's see what their corporate filing looks like standard corporate filing again all the members this is done by LegalZoom prepared it right so anytime you have a record always look at as many details as possible to see what might come up let's take a look at one more Center doing this Aaron B Smith and again when you're looking at these records look to see if any of these companies have websites that might be or you can go back to the domain name search which might be of value there we go here's an Erin Smith Clermont Florida only one person formed in 2010 dissolved in 2011 here is the corporate filing signature of member Heidi Stouffer attorney so what we would do next is see if that attorney ever represented this person in any cases will do a court case search in Florida for this attorney name to see if Erin Smith or other parties show up as a represented parties in cases which might lead to other assets any type of searching it's just a matter of time the more time you spend on a search the more records you look at the more places that assets can show up and I know the thing you want to get to our bank accounts we'll get to that shortly because that's a type of search that seems like it would be the most direct route to get cash and assets but in many cases some of these other searches for example submit trio exteriors they may have a website that may have equipment they may have client lists these are things that seizing them may not give you a lot of value but there may be negotiations involved in preventing the recovery of assets through those sources so what you do is you select the names that you believe may be owned by your debtor your subject and we selected randomly this one at the bottom T F and C us and you go to the Registrar which in this case is GoDaddy and you do a who is lookup for that name and here the results for that who is look up at GoDaddy it'll tell you the name of the registrant which is at the bottom the functional neurology center address phone number and it'll give you an admin email and this is additional information that to look at Chelsea at sundry arts comm and now you can go back and do a search for sundry arts comm find out what business that is what the connection to the functional neurology center is you have a phone number you can reverse search you also have the dates at which this was created was created 2019 so it's less than a year old the expiration date so it gives you a valuable information and then of course you can go to the website itself and see what's on the website you can even go to sundry arts comm and see what is there so let's just do that randomly you see what happens when we go to sundry arts com maybe an internet company yeah so here it is here's a internet marketing company that is the administrative contact for this particular domain name it's probably that this dr. Jeremy Schmo has this neurology center he wants to stay busy being a doctor and pay attention to that hired this web development company to develop the site but if you were searching for assets for a subject like Jeremy Schmo and again this is just an example this is not somebody who you know is being investigated just somebody who we just pulled up the name you maybe get some other information about their location you may be able to get some information from the administrative contact it's just a rabbit hole you can go down to find out more information about your potential subject or your debtor or where assets may be you can maybe even look at this address here where the location of a registration is to see if there's a business location facility or even if it's just a mailing address sometimes it's the mailing address for the accountant that pays the bills that pays the renewal on this domain name so there's a couple intellectual property searches that are very valuable to find information about your subject and next we'll take a look at another type of asset class that may yield results directly or indirectly from that search there are a couple of very valuable intellectual property classes to search for when doing an asset search these searches by themselves can result in finding assets that are claimable for recovery but more importantly they may also lead to other types of assets like bank accounts or other assets that may not be as visible in the first place a search is for patents trademarks and copyrights and that's done through the USPTO and they have a an online portal you can see it on the screen and they have one for patents one for trademarks and if you look in trademarks there's a search database called test to ESS and if you click that it'll give you some options for how to search that trademark system there's a basic search a logical search so we'll just do the basic search to start with and we'll start with let's say IBM and we'll hit enter and it will show all the different types of searches that have IBM in it but you're gonna find here IBM soft it's not owned by IBM it's owned by a company in China so how do you get the exact company or the exact name you want what you want to do is put it inside quotes okay so if you get submit now if you click on this serial number this is a trademark IBM Watson owned by the International Business Machines Corporation aka IBM and we'll show you the trademark so you can search for business names persons names to find trademarks and then when you get into that trademark record you'll find you have when it was filed other information about what they do and you can see this one's filed a 2011 if it's been updated so this is the first intellectual property search to do and you can do the same thing for patents now here's another very valuable search type that will search for online website addresses that even more valuable information comes out of this than does from patents and trademarks other types of tangible assets include vessels and aircraft and a good way to search for those are through the federal registration of those types of vehicles so here is the FAA which is responsible for registration of aircraft and they have an FAA registry named inquiry so I just put a random name Rob RUP if you hit submit it'll show you aircraft that are registered with people with that name and even extensions of the name with two peas or different first names and if you use decide to select one of those because it matches your debtor letter or your subject let's say we're gonna select this particular one here again this is totally random that doesn't mean anything about the party it'll show what type of aircraft it is what year it is it'll show when the certificate was issued that might show when they purchased the aircraft so you want to look at different asset adjustments around that time that they sell property did they write a check from a bank so you want to look to see who the prior owner was to maybe see who paid them for this aircraft it'll also show an address which is very important because this address may not be the same one that you have a lot of times people will register aircraft at another address for liability purposes or the form an LLC at that address and that's something to look at it'll show the air worthiness date that's originally when the plane was certified to be used as an aircraft it'll also show what the transponders if it's a mode s or the ASB has been installed and sometimes that'll lead you to an aircraft EMP mechanic that also may have some information if somebody brought a aircraft to a repair facility for upgrades and it cost ten or fifteen thousand that facility has some information about that party contact information may be the name of the bank that the check was drawn from so from this you get a lot of good information and their aircraft number can also be searched if you take this this n number okay it's n three 3pl okay and you search it in other online databases it may show flight plans of where that aircraft was flying to it may show photos of that aircraft at different airports is there our aircraft plane Watchers that do this so by looking at those types of aircraft locator services you could find that the person visits other areas that may be a source for business interest it may be a source from relatives no one's going to spend hundreds of dollars flying there playing to a location if there's not some legitimate reason to go there in addition there's probably a location where this plane is based you know you look at Oakland Tennessee find out what the airport that's nearby if it's tied down at that Airport there's going to be tied down fees and an account for that aircraft at that location another thing you can look at is for vessels sometimes you'll find vessels are registered as a Coast Guard certified vessel if you put in a the name of a vessel I just put in sea swirl you'll find that there are vessels listed with the hole ID number okay so we're gonna select this one it'll show you that hole ID number where it's Flag recreational and I'll have information about the ownership and registration of that vessel and many times owners of larger vessels will make their their boat become a u.s. Coast Guard certified vessel gives you some advantages you don't have to register in the state where you're located and there's also some advantages for being exempt from certain types of salvage liens if your boat gets stuck they can't take your boat because they towed it and charge you storage so if you find a boat is a certified US coast guard vessel that may be a source for finding out more about where it's kept maybe the original purchase date and who the prior owners are so those are two types of non vehicle and real estate assets that are tangible boats and planes that a lot of time is overlooked and you can find valuable asset information there so next we'll take a look at some intangible intellectual property assets that might be worth looking at to find the best way to get recovery for your debt or the bank account search portion of an asset discovery there are three types of bank account searches that can be performed and as you can see from the prior types of asset classes vehicles real estate intellectual property there may be banking information that is discovered in those sections so we recommend doing that first because those are types of searches that either can be done yourself as a as a claimant as a plaintiff or creditor or even if you hire an investigator those are the least expensive types of searching that can be done takes the least amount of effort the banking searches first of all have a higher hard cost and also more labor involved as an investigator so we recommend doing the other types of searches first once you get to the bank accounts then you can make a decision of which searches to do and there are three types the first is a swift banking messaging system search source so within the banking system there are Swift codes and swift communications that are done that exchange banking codes and activities amongst the different financial institutions and that data and those records can be searched to discover bank account records and there's various sources for that you'll have see those listed on our website at active in telecom that's the first type of search the second type of search is a check verification system research process so there are various check verification systems you know checks free pay checks the different systems you'll see those listed if you go to let's say a major retailer Walmart Target and you go to write a check at the cashier stand there's a system that shows that they're verifying the check and those systems have access points where there are banking bank records search sources that can use that to verify a bank records and banking balances for a subject debtor and the third type is a public record search and those are searches of like data that's been posted normally by the debtor that shows their banking information each one of those searches may have different results for example if you search for Joe Schmo with a certain social security number you may find that each search will have different results sometimes they're exactly the same sometimes you'll find that one shows certain banks that another one doesn't so the first decision is gonna be do you want to run all three do you want to run just one of them and and maybe have fewer results the issue is even if you run all three there may be banking records that don't show up on any of them if they're not reporting to those three sources so as an example you may find that one of the banking sources might have a cost of one or two hundred dollars another banking source might have a cost of eight to nine hundred dollars so if you run one of them you could spend a couple hundred if you run all three you could spend over a thousand so it's a cost reward type of a decision process and if you look at her website active in telecom you'll see the various options ordering directly through those sources or having us do it for you to see which bank search source you want to do but this is just a narrative of what types of sources are available and what the difference is between the two are typically the Swift banking system search will have more results in most cases however if a depositor has a level of account through some obscure banks you know credit union small regional banks brokerage accounts they may only show up in the cheques free system or vice versa so as you're doing your bank account search look at the different sources we'll have a link provided in this video or you can just go to active in telecom and look for the asset search section to see what options you have for the bank searches now once you have all this the real estate the vehicles the banking intellectual property then you can take a look and see what next steps are available for recovery of those assets it may be rid of garnishment it may be liens and maybe foreclosures and you can get good assistance for that using qualified attorneys or qualified legal assistants coordinate that with your investigators so that your attorney knows what information the investigator has in vice-versa you want to make sure your investigator knows what legal theory your attorney is using to pursue these assets and make sure it's done right make sure you're not violating any privacy laws or collection laws but first identify the asset to make sure you have the good documentation of what the assets are and then you can start the process of recovery after the asset search is completed so those are the various types of asset class searches to be performed if you do them in that order you'll have the best results make sure you keep good notes and spreadsheets on the results you get there's some forms that you can use that we provide on our website active in Telkom you can download those for free and use those if you would like to have the sources for each type of search for your particular subject we have an assisted do-it-yourself search option available you'll find that on the website active in Telkom and once you go through each asset class you'll have all of the available asset claims that you can make against your debtor ways to make that or usually done through the court or through a legal process where you do a writ of garnishment or other type of seizure and then once you have those in place you'll have the maximum amount of probability of collecting and recovering your losses whether through a judgment or through some fraud against your debtor and you have that information you can start at the beginning of a case and you can match it up with the assets at the end of a case and see if that dinner has squandered or diminished and of the assets which in many cases your attorney or your legal theory can use for proof of bad faith or fraudulent conveyance of assets and check with your attorney on how to best prosecute those there any questions you can reach us on our web site active in Telkom and we'd be glad to help

Channel: Active Intel

Views: 4,484

Keywords: Investigations, private investigator, asset search, hidden assets, due diligence, corporate records, company investigation, fraud investigation, corporate fraud, company assets, litigation support, litigation research, background investigation

Id: dYgCOreegAo

Length: 50min 51sec (3051 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 08 2020