With 6% of Americans owning a hidden bank account, it’s no wonder investigators need to go sleuthing to find hidden assets to ensure judgments are enforced. A hidden asset search will be incredibly helpful and important in a number of situations, especially when it comes to judgment enforcement and recovery. You can locate hidden assets all over the world, which can result in recovering millions of dollars owed from litigation and criminal actions. This makes finding hidden bank accounts well worth the time, money, and effort. Here is how to find hidden bank accounts.
How Assets Are Hidden
Once you understand what hidden assets are, you will be very keen on finding out whether your person of interest is hiding anything from you. Regardless of what the asset is, if it can be seized to put towards a judgment, it can be hidden. When a debtor who has a judgment against them deliberately shifts an asset, to hide it from a creditor, it becomes fraudulently hidden.
Once a hidden asset search is initiated, the investigation has begun. The most obvious places to look should be the starting point. This includes the debtor themselves, as well as those who are close to them. Any people who have an obvious connection to the debtor should be looked at.
Most often, assets are hidden by transferring them to someone else. This is usually a family member, close friend, or business partner. It may even be an alias of the debtor.
When searching for hidden assets, the focus will be on any transfers that were conducted between a debtor and someone else that could be an ally on a day close to that of a defaulted loan, lawsuit, or bankruptcy.
However, the process of collecting becomes several orders of magnitude more difficult when hidden assets are moved offshore via offshore bank accounts. There are some countries around the world that have secretive banking laws, leading to them not recognizing claims made through the courts of other countries.
A majority of assets that are hidden stay liquid. That means the money will generally be placed in hidden bank accounts and hidden brokerage accounts. These liquid assets get transferred into the accounts of allies of the debtor.
Sometimes, a debtor will be particularly sneaky and hide their assets in a trust, be it a living trust, multi-generation trust, or one that’s offshore.
Of course, not all transfers to hidden bank accounts, hidden brokerage accounts, and trusts are definitely done to bypass a judgment. What can give a transfer away as being fraudulent is the timing, as well as what the radio of a transfer is when we compare it to a debtor’s net worth. The proof of this type of transfer is done as a response to litigation or bankruptcy can help reverse the asset transfer.
How to Find Hidden Assets
There are a handful of methods that can be used when it comes to how to find hidden bank accounts. These are the following:
- Performing an online search – There are services that exist specifically for the purpose of finding hidden assets.
- Conducting a mud search – This is when an investigator follows a debtor, to identify who they are interacting with. Investigators will also conduct other forms of intelligence gathering, such as looking through the trash for any clues as to where assets have been hidden.
- Phone and in-person searches – Investigators will either call or personally visit allies of the debtor, to hopefully gain additional insight into any hidden assets.
- Bring a debtor’s allies to court – This can be done to gather any documents or information that involves a debtor and their potential hidden assets.
While you can do this yourself, it is highly advisable to hire private investigators who have the knowledge and experience when it comes to doing this properly and effectively. Investigators can successfully do the following:
- Identify hidden bank accounts and hidden brokerage accounts that a debtor uses to hide their assets.
- Identify sources of income that a debtor tries to obfuscate.
- Uncover large financial transfers to accounts used to hide assets from creditors.
- Work with lawyers to coordinate on objectives, particularly when it comes to subpoenas for financial documents and other relevant information.
- Physically track a debtor’s movements, identifying any new assets that they are using, and monitoring activities they partake in that show they are using hidden assets.
- Review financial reports and public records, while also inquiring discreetly with allies of the debtor.
Professional Hidden Asset Investigations Are Worth It
When you hire experienced investigators to help uncover hidden assets for judgment enforcement and recovery, you are hiring people who know where and how to look for hidden bank accounts and assets. These investigations require a great deal of time and documentation, which is what RCI International Process Service and Investigations specializes in. In fact, the services are used in both high-profile and lower court cases. They are regularly used to enforce judgments and help recover hidden assets.
When RCI International Process Service and Investigations conducts an investigation into hidden bank accounts, it will discover precisely what liquid assets a debtor has during the midst of an investigation. This goes for both businesses and individuals.
We have the tools, knowledge, and experience that will turn up the hidden assets you suspect may exist. We employ tools and techniques that are not readily available to the general public, which helps us help you when others cannot, and usually results in positive locations 80% of the time. In more than 50% of those successful searches, the search produces not only the location of the financial institution where the defendant has his depository accounts, but the account numbers and balances as of that date.
Above all, any information we procure is collected using only legal and ethical means, keep to our high standards of professionalism as private investigators.
