The Expert Podcast

So everybody's asking what's going on with fraud these days, what are the common types of investigations we're seeing, and we'd like to give an update about once a quarter of what our investigative agency is seeing in the marketplace for frauds and scams, and even asset searches.

To start with, we're seeing fraud starting to bump up again. Back in 2021, beginning in '22, there was a lot of fraud with cryptocurrency, the digital currency Bitcoin, where there were fake investments in these digital currencies that were offered. People put in money, were given returns on that money, and then when they went to take it out, they were told they couldn't take it out, there were fees, or the person just disappeared. Those scams started to go away a little bit at the beginning of this year—the end of '22 and the beginning of '23—and they started to migrate to some other frauds, but there's a little bit of a quiet period. Now it's starting to bubble up again. We're seeing a lot more of these scams, these online frauds. So be very careful of these fake investments and Ponzi schemes. Verify who you're sending money to. You can use our website, Active Intel, for resources on how to identify these scams, if you feel like you're a victim, and what to do to find out if this is a real company you're sending money to or not.

The other thing we're going to talk about is asset searching and hidden assets. It is probably the fastest-growing type of scam we're seeing in our investigative agency. Hidden assets are part of almost every single litigation case that we're seeing: divorce cases, probate cases, lawsuits, judgments, and employment claims. Many times, when somebody's involved in litigation with another party, they fear that the other party is going to get some of their assets. If you lose a lawsuit, you have a judgment against you. The other side can take your assets. They can seize your bank account; they can seize your real estate; they can put liens on your vehicle repossessions. So what the other party will do, even before the judgment is issued, is start to conceal assets. They'll start to move things around; they'll start to put things in other names; and they'll start to open up hidden bank accounts. This is difficult because if you are a judgment creditor, you may find out that the assets you thought were there aren't visible. It doesn't mean they're not there; it just means the person put a little bit of a cloak over them to conceal them. That's part of what an asset search would do—to reveal those, or asset tracing—to find out where they went.

This is especially important in different family law cases. In cases of divorce, both parties are already fighting; they already hate each other. So family estates are now much bigger. It used to be, 7, 8, 10 years ago. You know, a family had a couple hundred thousand assets; that was a lot of money. Now we're seeing many families have a million dollars in assets. You have a 401k, you have bank accounts, you have home equity, and you have all these things. So if one of the parties feels like, you know what, I want a little more than my fair share, so I'm going to take this $100,000 and hide it. By hiding $100,000, you just put an extra $50  in your pocket because most community assets are split in half. So if a party in a divorce hides $100,000 or $80,000, they're putting tens of thousands of dollars in their pocket if it's not discovered. If an asset search does not find that asset, it's free money. And in every case we've looked at for a divorce, there's always something that's concealed. Now, you may think that in a divorce you have to file a financial disclosure, and you do. Both parties have to fill out a financial disclosure laying out all the assets that they have. However, many times those are fudged; they're not completed properly. In fact, many attorneys will even tell their clients, "Don't worry about that financial disclosure; no one's going to verify it; even if you get caught, it'll be a slap on the wrist," which is kind of true. So you want to not take the word of that other person. Think about it: the reason you're probably getting divorced is because you took their word for something that they lied about, right? Or untrustworthy. So don't take their word on the financial assets, because that's going to take money out of your pocket. And even if it seems like a small amount, somebody steals $50,000 and hides it; that's $25,000 out of your pocket. If somebody handed you $25,000 in $100 bills right now, would you have a use for it? Sure, you would. So make sure you're not letting the other person get away with it.

Another type of family law case that you might not think of as fraud, but it's huge, is probate fraud. This is where somebody dies in a family, and the money is supposed to be distributed to various family members—children, grandchildren, siblings, whatever. And when that person dies, one or more of the parties wants more than their fair share again—a broken record. So they might take some money out of a bank account and hide it somewhere. They might take a vehicle that was hidden in a barn and then move it to a storage lot. They might even take a piece of land or piece of real estate and quick-claim deed the property to somebody else to hide it. It's a way to get more than your fair share in a death scenario with a relative. And it's more insidious because when two people are fighting in a divorce, they already hate each other. What do they have to lose if they're doing something bad to that person? With a probate case, these people are presumably family members, and they have to see each other on Christmas and Thanksgiving and, you know, family reunions, and they're stealing money from people that they are to their faces, pretending that they're friends with. They might even be babysitting for you, and they're stealing your money. So probate cases are huge in terms of hidden assets. Sometimes the executor of the estate is in on it, and sometimes even attorneys are in on it. So be aware that these probate cases have many, many hidden assets. We're seeing that big time.

How do you find hidden assets? Well, it is a process of doing research on documents, hundreds or thousands of documents, to find hidden bank accounts, to find hidden real estate, to find real estate that's been transferred, and to find vehicles that maybe are titled in somebody else's name. It's like a needle in a haystack. You go through hundreds of documents. We have files here with a lot of documents that we go through—electronic records, paper records, digital records, official government records—to find all these assets. Look, assets don't just disappear; the records exist somewhere; you just have to go through them all. And it's mostly labor; it's not a matter of just pushing a button and paying some money and having the assets come forward; it's a matter of investigators.