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The Expert Podcast brings you firsthand narratives from experts across diverse industries, including private investigators, general contractors and builders, insurance agencies, vehicle specialists, lawyers, and many others.
About private investigations. one of the things that comes up a lot are on our investigative side is what are the things that investigators can do? How are they done A lot of…people have questions about. Things like asset searches. So today we're talking live with potential.
Questions about investigation So we had some that come by email. We also have our live chat on rumble where you can put in questions there. so far one of the questions has to do with divorce cases How do you handle, hidden assets there How do you do an asset search? One of the questions. has to do with forge documents.
another one gets into digital forensic So if you have a mobile device like a…cell phone or a tablet, Can you get forensics on those? Another very common question that comes up is what. information. is available from vehicle telematics Like does your vehicle have any information about location Can you hack into your vehicle and get usage of that vehicle computer? So we'll dive into those one at a time First the most common question is asset searching.
what. Goes into an asset search Many times the client for an investigation has a reason that they want to run. And at…
times it has to do with a. they're in litigation…
They have a…
They have a lawsuit where they've won money from somebody. And they need to collect that money They need to have a judgment They need to garnish assets from that person. Many times the way to do that is to find a bank account and then file a writ of garnishment on a bank account. Many times it's finding real estate and putting a lien. Sometimes it's finding a vehicle and.
Pudding a lien or owning that vehicle. Now remember we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice. Just giving you information about investigation but a lot of this is stuff we do for attorneys…
So when an asset search is done, remember it's not an electronic database search It's not like you punch in somebody's name hit enter and it pops up like a Google search. Asset records. Are held as paper documents For example if you have a vehicle, a vehicles evidenced by a title, there's a legal title document. real estate is evidenced by deeds. And recorded documents in the land records.
You may also have a bank account records that are held in financial institutions. There's other types of records like corporate records. Secretary of state filings. You even have things like intellectual property patents trademarks websites phone numbers email addresses those are all assets. So each one is search.
in the location where those records are held as an example…
Real estate records are held at the county recorder's office and you can go through deed books and you look at documents you look at filings and you find out what assets are held by that person…
And…
You put that section on the asset search. Bank account records This is the most common type of asset people want to find out about when people contact us about doing an asset search. It's usually about I want to find bank accounts Well that's part of an asset search. The way those are searched is the bank account records obviously as you'd want them to be are considered to be private records You can't just go into a bank and say Hey how much is Joe Schmo have in the bank? They're going to tell you.
Nor should they because you don't want somebody finding out about your bank records either. So if you're trying to find banking records there's a couple of ways to do that. If you have an open litigation with a Pearl. or a lawsuit or judgment. You can normally do a subpoena to get banking records from financial institutions.
But if you don't want to go through that or if it's early on pre-litigation. You want to find where those records exist that are outside private banking records Many times banking records are connected to what's called Mint which is open source intelligence. And those can be discovered by searching through other types of records Sometimes real estate records have references to bank accounts Payroll records direct deposit. Sometimes people use their bank accounts to pay bills that are…
public records Sometimes insurance records. Utility records. So that's part of the ocean search. There's also possibilities of getting banking records. Through…
Companies private companies that handle banking records For example, there's the swift code system. That creates a. A record of every transaction checking your balance checking your ATM. Writing a check. Those could be public records or records that could be searched.
You may also find that. Some records are held by private companies that do things like…check verification. You know when you walk into the Costco or Walmart. You go to checkout on the checkout stand. Normally you pay by credit card.
But there's usually a sign there that says if you're paying by check we use checks free or paychecks or one of these companies to do. Verification. And those may be. Ways that it could be searched. You want to search for all asset classes?
One of the things that's a huge mistake. Is to only search bank accounts because here's the thing. No matter how much you searched bank accounts…
You may not find all the bank accounts. Oh scent check verification account vetting all the different places you would search directly for bank accounts. We'll probably have most of them but there may be some accounts that don't show up there…
So you want to make sure you search the other records because if you search real estate records you might find a reference to a wire transfer for a purchase that was from another bank account. If you search vehicle records you may find a lien holder That's a bank that the person has an account with. If you find employment records you may find direct deposit to an account that's not in the banking records So you want to search everything. Plus you want to find assets that may be are more valuable to you than. bank account.
What could be more valuable Well we had a case. A couple of months ago, we've talked about this before…
Where there was a…subject who was a scammer who was a fraudster He did Ponzi schemes He stole money from people…
He basically said look I have this company it makes lots of money If you put money in you'll make a profit off my company Okay. So people sent him all kinds of money hundreds of thousands. Well it turns out he was just taking the money and spending it He wasn't. He was a Ponzi schemer. So what these victims did.
If they basically sued him they sued him in court for fraud. And they won. They won a judgment for. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, but now. They have to collect just to make sure everybody understands.
If you win a judgment in court…
And the judge says in your favor you went a hundred thousand the court doesn't write you a check for a hundred thousand dollars the day you win. They just give you a piece of paper that says yes you're allowed to get the money from the person. But now it's on you to find the assets. And get that money…
So. You get a judgment. Now the person says I don't have any money Good luck getting money for me. So we did an asset search for one of these plaintiffs. And there was a few bank accounts but not much money in it.
A few hundred a couple thousand. Found a vehicle older car had a lien on it already Not much value there It didn't own any real estate, but…
And looking through some activity we did find where this person. Had a website. And they were actually. Doing business as a landscaping company. And their website was their landscaping company website…
And you might think well, website's not worth any money How can I get money for a website Well you're right A website's not going to be worth any money to you. As a plaintiff you can't. You know take the website and get cash from it But what they found was this was that person's sole source of income and they were making pretty good money as this landscaping company…
So the website was located and that it wasn't in their name directly didn't have any bank accounts in their name, but the website had some code in it that we found…
That associated with this person So we proved it was their website. So we took this information gave it to the plaintiffs They went to court and got a judgment to own the website They own the website the. address and the phone number. So now. The plaintiffs went to this defendant this judgment debtor and said look.
We own your website This is where you make your money website was taken in 20 30,000 a month in revenue They had some expenses but it was good profit for the, for the fraudster to scammer. And they said look we own your website. You know, we want our money If you don't give it to us we'll just sell your website to a competitor or we'll shut it down. So now the fraudster said well let's negotiate something And they CA they found some money All of a sudden magic magic. event imagine that they found money, that they were able to pay.
Okay, so you want to search for all the assets and don't overlook anything You may find something that doesn't seem like it's a good asset but. She's a good example. You know we found a…
A a…
life insurance policy that is an asset for somebody…
So look for all the assets. now. Let's talk about. Other types of fraud…
That might need an asset search. One of the most common types of fraud that we are seeing today. Is what we call probate fraud. What is probate fraud? Probate fraud is when somebody dies or if they're about to die they don't even have to die yet…
People who are associated with that person…
Are going to…
Start thinking about all the money all the assets Hey wait a minute Grandpa Joe has a bunch of real estate Grandpa Joe has a bank account Gripper Joe has an old. Classic car in the barn. Right. At some point when he dies that those assets will be distributed according to his will…
But I don't know if I'm going to get anything or I don't know if I'm going to get as much as I want or how much I deserve. So I'm going to start taking some a grandpa Joe's assets before he dies. or if he dies I'm going to grab some before anybody else gets hold of it…
And…
Grandpa Joe. Has a will that says okay the car goes to grandson Bobby. The house gets sold and distributed to the three sons and my bank accounts go here Well, if one person knows about these assets before they die right When they die they write a big check from bank account. When the trustee or the executor of the state looks at the bank account says well there's only this much money in it And they distribute that They don't know that one of the children took a bunch of money before anything ever was distributed…
They don't know that somebody took the car out of the garage that's worth 20,000 before it was distributed. Right. They don't know there's this other piece of real estate that was sold off. Probate fraud is absolutely huge…
It's more than half the cases that people call us about…
Ever day…
hundreds of calls a day half of them are probate fraud or divorce fraud which is similar. The difference is divorce Fraud is understandable It's expected because those two people are already in a fight. They hate each other already So why not try to hide the message from the other person? Probate fraud is different These are people that are your family that you're gonna see on family reunions Thanksgiving and Christmas in the future. Right Maybe you're the God pair of their kid…
And. You want to know even if you thought about the money it's on principle you want to know if that person's taking money from you. The other reason you want to know is because. Thinking about the word will when somebody writes a will to give away money the will is not just a name of a legal document. The will is what they want It's their will.
My will be done. Last will and Testament. It's their wishes of of what happens with their assets If you let somebody take the assets you're kind of insulting or not honoring the will of that person. Right. Even if…it's not about the money…
Sometimes the person in the family who has less money than others will think well, My sister's already rich so they're not going to miss it They don't deserve it They don't need it So I'm going to take more than my fair share. Look, if you want your sister or brother to have more money than you. Go ahead and take the money That's. That's from your will or from your inheritance and give them some, don't let them steal it…
Make it your decision. Don't make it their decision…
So that's probate fraud…
So there's another type of fraud that we're seeing…
In business Let's take a look and see if we can find this Maybe we can put it up on the screen here…
Yeah…
Is it here Is it here…
Fraud. Yeah. So this is automotive fraud…
And what's happening with automotive fraud. Look, a vehicle is a pretty significant. Value in terms of dollar amounts like vehicles now are tens of thousands of dollars. Easily…
And what's happening with vehicles is people are finding ways. Two…
Steal some of that money. And how are they doing it? Well here's a good case of it's called fast money, fast cars, fast fraud, auto fraud tops $8 billion per year, $8 billion. And there's a couple of ways that people are doing it…
they are…
Finding ways to get a vehicle from somebody…
By not paying for it but thinking they are they go to a dealership…
Oversimplification as they write a bad check Well dealerships are too smart for that They're not going to take a bad check. So they say you need to get a cashier's check. They'll go to…a bank, get a cashier's check based on a wire transfer. They get the cashier's check and then canceled the wire transfer What people don't understand is a cashier's check is not golden money. It's not guaranteed money.
A certified check is guaranteed money, but a cashier's check is not guaranteed money Cashiers Trek could have a stop payment on it It's just like any other check. A cashier's check just means the cashier wrote it Not you. The bank wrote it, but you can stop payment on a cashier's check. So if you go to your bank, You wire transfer money from one account to another. You get a cashier's check and then you say you know what?
That wire transfer was fraud. I didn't authorize that they were going to pull the money back cancel that cashier's check And now whoever you wrote it to is out of money So people use it to buy cars because it's a high dollar thing…
I can't do it for real estate You might think we'll do it for a bigger for real estate Well real estate title companies Don't take cashier's check for that reason They are take a wire transfer…
Another way to do it is what's called payoff fraud pay off fraud. So pay off fraud is when. You have a car that has a loan on it…
And you artificially lower the loan balance when you sell it. So let's say that you have a car that's worth we use round numbers It's worth $20,000…
And you owe $19,000 on that car and that's your loan You owe $19,000 on that car…
So if you sold it you would make a thousand dollars equity. You sell it for 20 you pay off your loan for 19 you keep a thousand. So what people will do is do the same thing with that. They will write a check to their bank for let's say $10,000…
To pay the loan down from 19 to 9,000. And then they'll go. Try to sell a car to a dealership or even a private party and the private party or the dealership calls up the lender and says, how much is owed on this car? And the lender says well our records show $9,000. So what that buyer the dealership or the private party will do is they will I write a check to the seller for $11,000 and say I'll pay the other 9,000 to the bank and get the title…
So they write you a check for 11,000 as a fraudster scammer. Get the car. Then you send a check to the bank for 9,000. And they say. Oh this isn't enough It's 19,000…
So now you're out $20,000 and you don't have a car. And what happens then to make it worse is the seller will come back and say Hey thanks for paying off. The 9,000 in my car and they get the car back and they own less money on. But this is a very very common fraud That's happening with automobiles…
Very common fraud. Next question from our email list is. Has to do with…
As to do with telematics. Telematics…
Telematics is what happens with your vehicle that you drive? You know your vehicle now connects with your phone. Right. I was talking to. The person who runs a sales department of an auto dealership the other day.
And he was saying look every car now has, GPS Every car now has, has…
You know maps…
Right. Has navigation. Used to be that navigation was an option. Well now they don't even put navigation in cars anymore They just put a screen You Bluetooth your phone. Or connected with USB.
And now your navigation on your phone connects to your car which is in some ways, because it has all your contacts it has your directions on it. But what that does is, and now connect your phone to your vehicle. So now your vehicle can collect information about you where you went location speed. Contacts emails text messages. How many of you have a car now that if you get a text message your screen on your car says would you like me to read this to you?
You push yes. Or you say yes, and it'll read you the text message with an artificial voice. And it even asks you do you want to reply? Yes I want to reply. What's your rusher your reply.
Hey I'll be there in 10 minutes. Your car is collecting all that information. So if you have an investigation…
You can now use vehicle…
Telematics. To get records from the vehicle. In fact it goes more than that. Vehicles now keep track of when the doors open and close what gear it's in…
It can even tell if somebody was sitting on the passenger seat how do we know that Because if you don't have somebody in the passenger seat it's not going to activate that airbag If you get in an accident…
It has a scale a weight, if it's more than 40 pounds or 50 pounds whatever it is. The airbag is now active. On that vehicle. Right. So.
Vehicle telematics is crucial. Good example of a case. We had a person who claimed. That…they drove their car…
Too. Pick up. Food. At a drive-through I…
went to a park and ate it. And then went home This is a divorce case that have to do with infidelity…
We looked at the odometer or the amount of miles was about right for that route. But the…
Client. The spouse suspected something else is going on. So we did vehicle telematics. What we found was. That the VA…
Was…driven to a location. Both doors opened passenger and driver. It was stopped for 42 minutes…
Both doors closed…
And then there was a passenger in the seat because it was a weight in the seat. In addition. When the car first I…stopped at that location Both doors opened. Both doors closed. But now there was only one person in the car.
For another minute and a half and then the car shut off What does that mean? It was valid. So not only did they go to a restaurant they went to a restaurant that had valet…
And there were two people in the car…
So what we did was we looked at the amount of time in the average speed of that vehicle. We did a circle of what restaurants were in that possible. Distance driven. And there was only seven restaurants that were in that distance. Only four of them had valet…
And one of them I didn't have valet at that time of the day Cause it was mid-afternoon they only had valet at nights and now we're down to three…
So now. We do a little…foot work. Talk to the valets are working Ask them Hey do you remember…
This car. And that day yet Remember this car Now we know the restaurant. Now we can pull. Credit card records, receipts. From that restaurant and find out.
When they went what they ordered, what was on the menu what was on the bill…
The check showed. Romantic dinner bottle of wine. Dessert to desserts to dinners. Right? So…that was good information where.
If you didn't have that telematics you would never know to go there…
So be aware that that's available Also be careful if you're doing something wrong. your car can tell on you your car could be a rat. If you're not careful…
Another big subject of investigations. Let's take a look…
Is…
Ghost vendors for our company. If you run a company run an operation. People ask well, how are they going to steal from me? What people will do. That are in the know in your company, they will find out…
What types of businesses you do business with? And they'll even find out the names of them. Let's say if you're a contractor you might do business with ABC paint company buy a lot of paint from ABC paint…
They'll create a fake invoice for. ABC painting or ABC paint distributors similar name and the former corporation. And they'll send you invoices. And most companies will know…
That…
There's a threshold in your company. Above which or below which there's no. Scrutiny of bills. So if you get a bill that's under a hundred dollars it just gets paid Nobody does an audit of it. So they'll just keep sending bills for $82.
You know $91, $68 every month. And they can steal thousands. Over the course of the year. That's never discovered. So ghost vendors is important.
One way to look at that is look at the address. Of your vendor list your accounts payable compared to your payroll Many times they use the same home address. We found one. last year where…the address the person was sending their…
Payables to. One of them. Was the same as the address where a payroll check went to. They didn't even bother getting a PO box. So…
Embezzler from companies is huge. Every company has some losses from embezzlement, guaranteed. Every company is going to have some…
So let's take a break here for a minute. And…we'll pull up another couple questions
…
We have another question about cyber attacks and other question about surveillance…
Let's see what else is on the board…
Credit scam Is that really an investigative question? So let's take a look at those Be back here less than a minute
…
All right We're back. So here's a case that was. Something we worked on a while back and we've told this story before but it's important to know about from an asset search standpoint…
A…client had a large judgment against another party…
And this judge. Was in excess of a million dollars and the other party claimed to have no money They claimed that they were basically broke. No assets Okay…
So we did some research and found a few bank accounts a couple of credit cards, a couple vehicles nothing really that big a deal. It was a vehicle that was worth probably 11,000 at the time. This is back maybe 10 years ago…
Bank accounts had you know seven or 8,000 in it nothing major. But we started going through the. all the records and we found some payments to restaurants so they were spending some money and some money coming into these accounts It wasn't a lot it was like 300 here 400 here always even amounts. And. It wasn't through an ATM wasn't cash.
It was through a money transfer. And there were all different original origination accounts…
Okay. How was he getting their money…
And when we added it up, there was probably 60 to 70,000 a year coming in. Which is almost exactly the same as what went out and what we found is. Each month was a different amount. For example it might be 4,001 month 5,800 the next month. 4,800 the next month.
And the amount coming in was almost exactly the same as what went out So basically what they were doing is whatever they spent that month for funding They were just…getting that much coming in and it was all even hundred dollar amounts…
So we did some research on the codes swift codes that were coming in to that account. And what we found was they were all had one thing in common. They were all business accounts They weren't personal accounts or business accounts but different businesses…
And what we discovered was this person was taking money that they had hidden. In a hidden bank account in a corporate name. That wasn't even in their name but it was a corporation they had control over. And they were going to friends of theirs that were companies' businesses and said look, I'm going to put in. $400 in your business.
You transfer out $400 to this account number…
And that was their way of. Wa laundering or washing the money…
And. What was in it for the business Well the business. Was having more revenue. It wasn't taxable because 400 went in 400 went out so they didn't have any taxable profit, but they could show a higher revenue So that company got a benefit of maybe they needed to go for a loan. Or show more revenue for maybe investors.
So the benefited them…
And. The fraudster the scammer that owed the money. Didn't have to have a direct contact between his personal bank account and this hidden money There was an in-between. Intermediary. And allow them to.
over the course of a couple of years. You know several hundred thousand dollars through this account…
And avoid having it go to creditors and it was still over a million dollars in this. Hidden account and we're all able to find it by going back to these. You know companies that were laundering the money and say look we found the you're passing this money through, show us the invoice show us your purchase order that you actually…did work for this person or they bought something from you…
And once they were all kind of called out on it they said well I'm doing a favor for this guy blah blah blah. And so. It turns out that the money that was in the fraudsters account was still over a million It was not enough to satisfy the judgment. There was still some money short. So what the attorney did…
For the victims is they went back to these other companies and said look, We're $242,000 short of paying off these victims. Plus our legal fees was a hundred grand so we're three 50 basically short. There are eight of you that are companies. That did this Mon money laundering scam…
We're going to take that three 15 divided by eight…
It's about 42,000 whatever it was. Everybody needs to come up with 40 grand. And we'll call it even because you enabled this fraud You extended this fraud, you enhance the fraud you let this person get away with it. So now you have some liability. And three or four of them right away said okay we'll pay it.
A couple of them resisted. One of them got sued in court. And I don't remember what happened with that case but two of them submitted it to their insurance companies and their insurance companies paid full. Claim. Because it was under policy limit.
So keep in mind that there may be third parties that are also. Liable for losses. From a fraud or scam…
All right So keep an eye on our channel. Make sure you bookmark it If you're watching on…YouTube. on rumble on Facebook on Twitter wherever you're watching it. make sure you bookmark it…
Check out our website active Intel You see it on the screen. We do these live question and answer with. Private investigator. On a regular basis you can see our email. on the screen.
Or on our website If you have questions you can email in advance we'll answer them as they come in…
Everybody has questions about private investigators or for private investigators One of the questions that comes up a lot is how do you get a license We'll talk about in the next one…
And if you do. Have a need to contact…
An investigator or even people in other industries this website here. Actual human allows you to. book live consultations with an investigator or cyber insurance or mediators or many many other professions you can book live consultations One-on-one undivided attention. With people in those industries…