Introduction (continued)

Those online services on the Internet are great for searches, as far as they go. Problem is, they don’t go very far. If the system cannot find, or gives an old address on your target, you are done. Your only alternative is to put another nickel in and start over, perhaps with a different Find a Person system.

Skilled researchers, information brokers, and investigators use search programs that can be manipulated with several different variables. In the jargon of the intelligence trade, we use multiple information collection platforms. This not only provides flexibility, it allows for verification of the information gained from one or two basic platforms, or sources.  When you order a Skip Trace from a professional firm, you pay for expertise to know which sources to use for the most cost-efficient searches.

IRS  

Let me tell you about information brokers. These are the folks who purchase wholesale quantities (millions) of names. addresses, telephone numbers, and other data from utilities, government agencies, credit reporting agencies and the like. They repackage the data into searchable databases that Information Retrieval Services (yes, like ours) can either access directly or through the many servers owned by the brokers. The larger, more reliable brokerage houses update their databases often during the calendar year; they pay for these updated information packages. 

       Not all of them update the same data at the same time, with the same frequency. Some update once a year, avoiding additional expense.  This is why we use multiple sources.

       All that I have just told you applies to information used not only for finding people, but also for verifying background information and for locating assets.

In Case You Forgot….

Assets are hard to find when people hide them. That truth seems to elude victims who want to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few days, while spending “only a few dollars.” It takes time, patience, experience, education, and good sources — especially good sources — to locate assets purposefully hidden.

          Consider the husband, who, seven months before instituting divorce proceedings, sought the assistance of an attorney to “protect” his assets. We found that he had transferred the majority of his personal property holdings to his girlfriend; he transmitted large cash holdings by wire to various financial institutions in several states. These were legal transactions per se since he had acquired the assets honestly. Just that he was a tad sleazy in marital matters. But there was another way of looking at this legal matter.

Enter the United States Code

 Briefly put, the United States Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act states that a fraudulent transfer is

          A transfer of property that is made to swindle, hinder, or delay a creditor, or to put such property beyond his or her reach.

          The Act is “uniform” in most of the states, as enacted by their respective legislatures. My point is that hiding assets with the intent to deprive past, present, or future creditors of their benefit is a crime.

5 Ways to Lose Your Assets

You now see that we have several different types of people who con the consumer, business, a spouse, et al. Let us clearly identify 5 categories:

1. The person who is down and out, and can no longer pay her bills, because she has depleted her assets.
2. The sleazebag (like a Deadbeat Dad) who dumps his family and runs off with his money and his girlfriend.
3. The dishonest business person, who buys goods on credit from a wholesaler, without paying those debts.
4. The bum who takes advantage of others, incurring debts like rent, clothing, and cars, and then skips.
5. The professional criminal, who actively cons (mostly well-to-do) people, and then launders the proceeds. (Does the name Madoff ring a bell?)

In the next chapters, I am going to talk first about the fifth category, because the criminal engages all the methods that could be used by others, including the down-and-out person. Along the way, I will show you how to distinguish one from the other. It is essential that you do this early in your pursuit, lest you run down blind alleys.

How to Get Your Money Back After You’ve Been Scammed:  A Manual for the Conned Consumer and Her Attorney

Have you heard the expression, “You ought to write a book…”? Well, I have.  It has been sitting around, gathering dust for a while. I have decided to resurrect it, albeit a Reader’s Digest-type version. In this column (blog, article, as you please), I will offer you insight as to how you can lose what’s yours, how to get it back, and how to keep what’s yours, yours. And yes, it will be a series of blogs. Here is a table of contents:

Introduction and Overview

Part I: What You’re Up Against

1. The Money Launderers

Part II: How to Locate Assets (The Basic Course)

2. How to Acquire Basic Information to Locate Your Assets

3. How to Profile the Guy Who Scammed You

4. How to Develop Leads

5. How to Use Public Records to Find Assets

Part III: How to Locate Closely Hidden Assets (The Advanced Course)

6. Advanced Financial Profiling

7. How to Trace Cash Flow Through Financial Institutions

8.  How to Trace Cash Laundered Through a Business

Part IV: How to Protect Your Assets

9. How to Hire the Right People to Do All This For You

10. How to Protect Your Own Assets

Introduction

This is a manual for the consumer and her attorney. It will save you (both) time, money, and aggravation. This book is for you if you want your just due. Especially if you are a consumer just due several thousand dollars someone conned from you.

         The book is also for those angels (silent business partners) who are considering investing big dollars in someone else’s business. It is for the business firms who trusted a guy not to embezzle while in their employ. As well, it is for those thousand of lawyers who have stacks of uncollectables on their desks.

          By the way, remember that this blog will offer only excerpts from each chapter. If you want the entire (unpublished) book of 144 paper pages, call me at 703.468.4978 or email search@pitorriassociates.com.  The book is not available online, only by mail.

Relativity

If you want to locate your money, you must know how to process and use intelligence. If you hire someone to locate and recover your assets, you should understand how that analyst or investigator processes information into usable intelligence. I will show you how to gather information that you can use to recover money that is owed to you.

         A skilled investigator or analyst painstakingly puts together tidbits of information, assembling a mosaic that eventually turns into usable intelligence. She does this for a skip trace, asset search, background check, homicide investigation, legal brief, or influenza virus research. I will show you how the first three are related to locating your assets.

Frank Talk

If someone owes you $5,000, and has successfully avoided skip tracers for a year or more, you are going to spend big money to locate him and his assets (the ones that used to be yours). Now listen carefully: The range of (reasonable) fees on the East Coast  for a skip trace run from $95 to $250. (This statistic is from a sample of 17 firms between Florida and Massachusetts, that fell on the middle of the normal curve. Extremes were $300 to $900 on the high end, and $25 on the low end. I don’t know what you would get for 25 bucks, but you could give it a shot.) If the researcher finds your target, then the target was not actively hiding.

         Note that in today’s world, nasty people actually take lessons in how to hide from investigators and skip tracers — and then continue to run up debt. These are called hard skips. If a firm is charging you $130 or $140 for a skip trace, the firm will not go to the ends of the earth to find the skip. And no, $900 might not get it either. Just a reminder here about why we are discussing skips when the theme is asset locating: This is because many clients (including attorneys on behalf of a client) ask for a skip trace when someone has skipped out on a debt. Not a good move. Here’s why.

A Good Move 

Suppose you spend, say, $130 and you find your skip within a week or two. Then what? Okay, you need a judgment in debt, you need an execution of that judgment, and meanwhile your attorney is not working for free. Turns out, your skip is destitute. He is living with relatives, owns no property or other attachable assets, and is unemployed. (Remember — this is 2009!) So now your lawyer could ask the Big Question: What exactly do we execute against? What assets can we attach?

         Doncha wish you had checked for assets first? Doncha?

Don’t Feel Like the Lone Ranger

Chances are, the person who screwed you out of six months’ rent has done the same thing to others. Ah, but then you tell me that you saw him park a new car in the driveway.

• Chances are, he bought it new with a high interest rate, drove it a few months on one payment, and then skipped — without the car.
• Chances are, they have also bought furniture and clothes. After a few months — one or two payments — they stiff the merchants, leave the area, and start over again. Bottom line is that the individual or family that scammed you for a couple of thousand dollars, has done, and continues to do that to others.

Potatoes, Not Truffles

In the grand scheme of scamming, this is all small potatoes. The culprit is a bum, down and out, living by his wits to survive, albeit dishonestly. We are talking about welching on a debt incurred in exchange for housing, services, maybe a car and clothing. I have spent time writing about this person to dichotomize between the deadbeat bum who is in for a few thousand, and the SOB who routinely practices deceit and corruption on dozens of people, with the sole purpose of getting rich with their money. (Think Madoff.) The down and out guy probably has no attachable assets; the SOB guy has millions in liquid assets that were yours and your neighbors’, which he acquired by scamming, lying, cheating — and smiling while he swindled those millions. This book is about the SOB guy and how to neutralize him.

          Just remember, Assets are hard to find once they have been purposefully hidden.

Show Me — and IRS — the Money!

Assets acquired through other than legal means must be converted into cash; that cash must then be laundered and concealed. To launder money is to make illegally acquired cash appear to derive from legal means. Concealing assets in an effort to deprive past, present, or future creditors of their benefit is a Federal crime.

          See you next time.