The Expert Podcast

Okay today we're going to tell some of our favorite private investigators stories These are some historical cases we've worked on over the past decades. Some of them are gonna be hidden asset stories Some are going to be interesting. human activity type stories. some of them are going to be, cases about clients and all these are done either with the. permission of the client or some of them are going to be a little bit kind of generic vague stories with the details changed.

But it gives you an idea of what kind of cases. We work on as a private investigative agency. And what are the realities of these different areas? Assets searches surveillance. hidden activities.

At what people really do. In private that many times you don't see on the surface. The first one we'll talk about is a hidden asset case that involves scuba diving com. Casino chips and a coral reef. So here's what happened.

The party that we were investigating. Was being accused of hiding assets from a spouse in a divorce case. And the spouse was suspicious. Of the.

person they were divorcing. That they said look they had so much money in the bank and then we get divorced and there's no money where the money go. So we went through some of the bank accounts that we found some regular deductions and some ATM withdrawals, but nothing that pointed to where the money was because most of it came out from ATM withdrawals or cash checks made out to themselves. And we wanted to find the money…

So we went through some bank statements and some ATM statements. And we found that some of the ATM withdrawals were made at a casino…

Hundreds of dollars thousands of dollars sometimes. And we did some more research ethicacy Now we found that this person had a…player's club card at the casino It's kind of like a frequent. account at a casino And if you have this kind of account…

What happens is you get comps and the comps can be things like free dinner at the hotel at the casino dining room, maybe your free show, maybe they'll even send you on a trip…

And we found that this person was on their comp card. we got a history of their comp account of their casino account. And they would go and they would buy. Two or $3,000 worth of chips, they would gamble for not even a half an hour. And they would go cash out and cash out about the same amount Maybe they lost a hundred bucks, right.

So they would buy $2,000 worth of chips They would cash out 1900. And there was never a deposit back in their bank account…

But many times the cash out didn't come from cash They would actually keep casino chips They would take their. Their ticket and they would actually get chips. So we added up. The amount of net outflow of casino chips was about 70 some odd thousand dollars almost $80,000 of net outflow of chips These chips were never played. They're never cashed out there Their comp account didn't show it.

So we were thinking maybe that's where the, the money is hidden and casino chips If that was the case it was going to be a problem because there's no record of casino chips where they are…

So. Part of our case, whereas awful also doing…surveillance. On this subject and he had a boat. A little fish and boat He would go out fishing once in a while…

And on one of the days. There was some video we're reviewing video of the surveillance, the…

The subject was seen bringing a metal briefcase on the boat. It didn't make sense It's going fishing He brought he's bringing a briefcase. When he came back there was no briefcase…

So. We got information. Oh, that's the other thing. On the ATM. Debit card.

There was a purchase of this briefcase from a local. department store. And this happened about the time that the casino chip things started to take place maybe a month afterwards…

So we were able to get from the boat. The chip for the GPS navigation for this boat. And we found that on half of these trips, the person was going through the same location. Marked. On their GPS.

So we send some scuba divers. And it wasn't that deep It was about 15 feet and there was a coral reef that had a ledge underneath and sure enough, here's that metal briefcase. So we didn't touch it It's not our property We can't take somebody else's property. But we presented this information to the court and the court. In a process called in-camera which means that it's outside.

of the, the The view of this party, you know our client went to the court with their attorney only and said we have this evidence. We want you to authorize us to remove. The. The briefcase to see what's there. And the court allowed it.

So using you know certified commercial divers and some you know strict protocols. we directed and, you know went out with the, the crew and went and retrieved this metal briefcase Sure enough, there was $78,000 with the casino chips in it. And there was also another copy of this person's casino card. With the chips because I guess he'd want to keep it on him for whatever reason. And it looked like from what's happening he was going on regular basis to add more chips to this.

Briefcase. So when presented with the evidence in court, The defendant not only have to give up you know in a divorce normally have to split the proceeds So half would go to the defendant half would go to the plaintiff. Well in this case the judge was so incensed by this case that. She the judge. Said that all of this ill gotten gains have to go to the plaintiff which is our client.

And they have to pay all the fees for the investigation, for the scuba divers the commercial all the other fees that were associated with they have to pay. For all of that So that was a really good case of finding a hidden asset That was a very unusual type of hidden asset. Another case that have to do with a, a fraud case This was a defendant who was involved with a criminal prosecution He actually had defrauded.

bank several banks actually. by doing fake loans and giving loans to friends and all kinds of you know bank fraud. And the person had filed bankruptcy. To try to say I don't have any money because the bank the. the government everybody wanted to take money from this person He was relatively wealthy person…

And he said I have no money i'm outta money but it didn't make sense because you could see from the expenditures that the money had not been spent we're talking millions of dollars. That was defrauded from these banks…

So. They filed bankruptcy The bankruptcy trustee also was suspicious They said look, This there has to be money somewhere So as part of our investigation, You know we did research of the records observation. The bankruptcy trustee also authorized. An inventory and appraisal of the property because this person had a property You might even call it a mansion. That they lived in that they have the cell for the bankruptcy.

But they were allowed to keep…personal effects When you file bankruptcy they normally let you keep a car and some furniture some clothes like normal things. You can't keep, you know, A hundred thousand dollar Ferrari but you can keep you know reasonable stuff…

So the person that filed bankruptcy and we're allowed to do an appraisal and. On this property. There were actually two homes one big mansion and a smaller what's called a carriage house There were allowed to keep the carriage house. Move things into the carriage house that they were going to keep and then sell the mansion and split the property. So we did appraisal on both properties and we're at the carriage house Yeah sure There was furniture kind of old stuff there.

We took a bunch of photos and document that everything that they were allowed to keep to make sure there wasn't anything else that they weren't trying to keep any gold bars or anything Right…

So when we went through and we're inventorying everything. We had one of our, experts W was looking at it and started to recognize wait a minute Some of this furniture. It doesn't make sense. Right? And then we looked at some other records and some travel patterns what this person had done.

Was taken. Almost $2 million. In a wire transfer to an offshore bank. They had flown to Europe. And purchased.

Almost $2 million worth of antique furniture from Sotheby's auction in London. Shipped it to the United States. Under a different name and put this furniture in their house. And to the naked eye it just looked like old furniture Yeah it was nice furniture and it maybe it was antique, but nobody thought it was any big shakes. But it was very expensive rare, high quality goods that appraise actually the retail appraisal was almost 3 million but he had paid.

1.9 something million and what his plans were was after the dust settled the bankruptcy was done to sell off these pieces little by little, and there's no record of these It's not like a car that has a VIN number or registration This. Type of antique. Really doesn't leave a paper trail as long as you sell it. Without creating…

any kind of connection to yourself and ma and matter of fact, even after the bankruptcy he had already sold one piece of furniture was a. Hepple Polite type dresser that he sold for $80,000 single dresser. And that was his spending money just selling off this furniture. So we're able to document it all in the carriage house. The government got a warrant They they did another research and because of the fact that he had concealed this from the bankruptcy, he had additional criminal charges added onto.

The case. Four…

Concealing from the bankruptcy trustee and…from not disclosing it to his criminal. disgorgement…

Another case they have to do with an asset search And you've heard us tell this story before. So we'll keep this one short. Had to do with a client who. Was being sued. For several million dollars lost a lawsuit.

Claimed he had no money to the plaintiff I have no money to pay you. Sorry…

Well…

It was obvious It wasn't true because his lifestyle was high end but he had nothing in his name No houses no cars no bank accounts nothing of substance…

So we went through everything with a fine tooth comb We went through his bank account his debit card all his payments…and credit card bills. And there was nothing there. And no real big expenditures either. But we want everything We went through everything thoroughly. We did find an expense.

Four. $35 Now this is back in in the early two thousands So this is 20 something years ago, $35. Four. A…store that had a generic name Goss's outlet whatever it was. So we looked it up and.

It was. In…a marina…

And part of our surveillance had seen this person go to this marina before but there was no boats on there There was nothing there We just figured maybe he went to see a buddy of his. So we went to gussets outlet and we showed this dollar amount on this day and said can you tell. was spent there And this is kind of a, a marina shop store and they had some, you know, Retail goods and some snacks and water and things. And parts. It was the parts department for their, for their marina repair.

And they said, and we also noticed it because it was $45 even you know when you buy something at a store when there's tax it's $48 and 22 cents Right It's never an even amount. So that was a little bit of a red flag. So the parts guy said yeah I can tell you what this is. It's invoice number 1, 2, 3, 4 40 $5 It's in our system Will can you tell what was bought? What was the list of items He said it was one item.

It was a clevis bolt. Well clevis bolt What's a clevis bolt. And for $45 and he went I'll show you what it is He went in the back and pulled it out. It's about a foot and a half long to bolt with a slot in the, on the

threads and a hole in the top…

And…the investigator asks well, what is this for He said well this is only used for two things either. A large. Or a large yacht. a motor yacht. Well can you identify what it went to And he said well in this case, when we looked it up we looked at the part number to match it up with a boat and it went to this boat whatever the name of the boat was out in our.

And our marina and we looked at it and sure enough it's a hundred plus foot yacht…

So now we're onto something He bought a $45 clevis ball for this yacht And we're thinking well maybe it's a buddy of his and instead of, you know, Doing them a favor He bought him a bolt right Or his buddy borrowed his card, but we did a little more research and we did some…history on this yacht and we found that it had been purchased. About eight months prior right around the time that this lawsuit was happening…

And it was owned by a Bahamas corporation. So we contacted the closing title agency in The Bahamas and asked them for records on this transaction. And through some conversations and some negotiation we were able to get a. of this settlement statement the closing statement for the yacht And we found a wire transfer of the money to buy this yacht And the money that buy the yacht was you know, almost 2 million bucks…

And the wire transfer We traced it back to an attorney. That was in Colorado We trace back this wire to this attorney Well this attorney in Colorado turns out was the attorney for this defendant. And after doing some surveillance and seeing him on this yacht many times now we knew where to look for him. by himself not with a buddy that he was staying with on the yacht. And contacting the attorney and said look if you're hiding money for this person, You know you may be getting in trouble yourself.

Once we broke the dominoes in it fell into place. We were able to negotiate. For the client for them to get their money for the lawsuit because there was obviously more money than that You don't buy a $2 million yacht and that's all your money Right You have to have money somewhere else. So we told them look. We can either bring it to the court and the judge and show that your hide money, or you can just write a check for what's owed as.

we won't. Blow it out of the water. And because of that negotiation he settled I don't think it was all up front I think it was, you know I think he owed him 2 million He paid him a million upfront and then a hundred thousand a month for the rest of the year whatever it was. But finding that was a good way to get that negotiation. The next one was something similar Again you've heard this story before and then we'll get to some new stories.

Where we were going through some debit cards and we founded again a bill for let's say $35 no tax. To a jewelry company. But jewelry store. And we looked at the jewelry store and it was in a shopping mall. We went over there and they said what costs $35 in your store Because isn't isn't their tax.

And they said well that sounds like a repair. They looked up the repair bill Sure enough It was a repair. For a $50,000 Rolex. Because it had the serial number When you do a repair on a Rolex you have to put the serial number, looked up the serial number, and that Rolex was registered to this debtor. That was claiming he didn't have any money Now this debt was a lot smaller It was only a.

hundred thousand, but he had to explain himself why he had a $50,000 Rolex and couldn't afford to pay the debt…

Another great case that has to do with a watch. Keeping the same subject is there's a very famous. Fraud case out of the state of Florida. There's a man named Scott Rothstein Scott Rothstein was an attorney. Who created a fake investment scheme and told people if you put money into this investment will pay you high returns 10% a month 20% a month whatever it was.

And he claimed that the money was going to buy lawsuit settlements, and then pay out of that. It turns out it was all a scam There was no settlements. Scott Rothstein was, was arrested He was he was tried convicted He's in prison right now. and the victims wanted to get their money back now Scott Rothstein had spent a great deal of the money. A lot of this money was long gone.

So what the plaintiffs did and this was done through. As a trustee. is hired investigators. To look for third party liability This is a very…

Prominent and valuable way to get money back If you put money into an investment or a fraud or a Ponzi scheme or even. A failed contract. If the principal does not have the money to give you, you can go after third-parties and the Scott Rothstein case they went after banks they went after attorneys They went after all kinds of people. But one of them. Was a watch dealer.

And Scott Rothstein was famous for posing with watches all over his hands In fact if you do a Google search for Scott Rothstein watches, you'll find pictures of him holding up all these big time watches. And that was his thing He collected watches. And this watch dealer that sold them a lot of watches. Was sued under the third party liability. legal theory.

Because they said look you knew that his this guy was a fraud or you should have. And you took money from him to buy to sell them watches. So you have to give the money. back. So this poor watch dealer was forced to give back hundreds of thousands of dollars It may have even been a million dollars.

And and he didn't get the watches back He would just out the money And the theory was he w he was, he he knew or should have known that this Scott Rosting was a scam and the money was dirty money And he took it anyways. So this was another example of a third-party liability And the reason we talk about it now is because it's on the same theme of watches that we just talked about. So the next one we're going to talk about is a failed investigation We like to talk about our successes and we'll talk about more of those in a couple minutes. But let's talk about one That's a fail. This was a case where there was a S a used car dealer

who was sued? For holding people's deposits on cars. The dealer was taking deposits on cars. And not selling cars and. Went out of business.

And all these people had deposits. And the some of the people. To start a legal case to get their money back…

Well this dealer had closed down his dealership and now he went to work for another dealership but they thought he was like the actual owner of this other dealership…

So he had a lot of inventory He had maybe 40 50 cars, maybe $5,000 each. He had you know, two or $300,000 worth of cars. That were…

Theoretically his assets that he could sell. Well we went to look for them Well when a dealership holds cars they don't get titles for cars They still have the title for the old owner. And they said well if he's in possession of him he should have the assets Well we found that he had what's called a floor plan line of credit. Which is a line of credit from a bank that funds these cars because of this line of credit had a security interest in the vehicles. The vehicles could not be determined to be assets in favor of the claimants So that was one that was a fail.

Because there was this floor plan line of credit and that inventory I was not shown to be liquid assets in favor of. the defendant So that was one that was a, was a fail. Next we're going to talk about is a. real estate we're talking about two real estate cases First one. There was a guy who had, lost the case on a contractor.

dispute. He was a general contractor that did building. And he was sued by person that gave him money to build a property. He lost the lawsuit. And he claimed that the house he lived in was not his.

Right…

So we did some title forensics on the real estate records And what we found was at one point the title was in his name. But he had since transfer the title out of his name into somebody else's name turns out that person was this cousin. So technically he didn't own the asset It was titled in somebody else's name, but that prior title ownership was still in the land records because what people don't realize is. When you have a. a property that's titled those land records go back in history as long as history survives and the records are still there The records aren't erased a new title supersedes the old one but the old deed is still there for that property.

So we found this old deed was in his name. He signed it over to his cousin Actually he signed it over to a company The company signed it over to a cousin He was trying to put some distance in between, but what we found is these type these deeds were quick claim deeds meaning that there was no compensation. Involved There was no change of money It was just I'm giving you the property So that's a red flag Number one. Red flag Number two is we found the insurance policy for this property and found out that the beneficiary. Was.

This subject. And we found that the HOA fees and the insurance and the taxes were all being paid by an account that was controlled by…

the debtor, the person who owed the money. So why would. He be paying. these fees for a property that his cousin technically owned. Well you might say well he's painting in lieu of rent and he's helping his cousin out.

But when the attorneys went to the cousin and said look, We're going to claim that you are what's called a constructive trustee Constructive trustee is a legal term. That tells a person that even though you haven't set up a formal. You know documented trust. For all practical purposes this is a trust you you're holding an asset for a third party. And if you're doing this to defraud somebody, you can get in trouble.

Right now remember we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice, but this is what the attorneys in this case did. And they told this cousin that look if you continue to be a trustee, In theory. And you do things to defraud We're going to make you liable So the house that you really do own that you live in we're going to come after that too. So this cousin said yeah you're right I'm doing this for my cousin And. Yeah.

really not not my house It's really his house. So once we had the evidence that the insurance was being paid the HOA is being paid. Quit claim deed, all these documents no money changed hands There was no consideration. The court did what's called an invalidation of the D they called it a fraudulent conveyance for the purposes of evasion of a debt. They undid the deed, put it back in the name put a lien on it And the.

The claimant got his payment. That was rightfully his…

we'll do one more real estate And then we'll talk about, well two more real estate We'll talk about a big time investment fraud That was all over the news all over MSNBC and Fox news and all kinds of places about. a cast of characters from New Jersey that was collecting money from people fraudulently, allegedly. Next one was at what I call the Boca party house We were contacted by a person in New Jersey. Who I owned a piece of real estate in Boca Raton Florida. That he said look I'm.

I own this property I'm getting some weird stuff in the mail I want you to do some research on it So we did some research and we found that. What the records were on this property, there was all kinds of mortgages and liens and some weird activity that didn't look like he had anything to do with. So we contacted them once we have the result and said here's what we found He goes well here's a story. My son…

Graduated high school in New Jersey. He is now moved to. Florida to go to college in Florida. Instead of paying for rental for a dorm room. I decided…

To basically. Buy a house for cash cheap house 150 grand. Or so. That I figure he'll go with the college for years At the end of four years maybe the house will be worth a little more money. It's cheaper than me paying rent at a dorm.

Right…

So he bought this house for cash Son goes down there Well, the son. Starts getting letters in the mail saying Hey you see this house is owned for cash Do you want to get a cash out Refinance? Well the son had a similar name to the father. He was able to convince a title company and a lender to lend him. $80,000 cash out refinance by pretending to be the father.

So now he has $80,000. Well, after a few months ago in the college as a freshmen having 80,000 in his pocket, he decided that maybe college wasn't really that much fun anymore. So he quit…

And he started spending the 80,000. He was able to get another…

Second loan second mortgage for 40,000 So now he's got 120,000 in his pocket. So now he takes off from Florida and he goes to Europe Well in the meantime he had brought in a few roommates that rented out some of the bedrooms and they said he said just pay me rent pay me two or 300 bucks a month Each he was getting a couple thousand dollars a month. Plus he had 120 in his pocket. along the same time a lot of. Contractors were sending notices saying do you want a hot tub for your house You want.

You know upgrades, we'll put a hot tub in no money down. It just puts another lien on your house. We'll put in, you know backyard. Outside kitchen, no money down We'll just put a lien on your house. Well now this house has all these liens taxes aren't being paid.

And now the father has no house and he's got a son that's disappeared Not going to college. Well, Obviously he had words for his son after that but that was the story of the Boca party house…

Last story for today and we'll do another video next week. Is a story about a company called N R I a national real estate investment advisors This was a company that advertised all over. Major. networks for investment put in money get five 10 20% a month Investment on real estate. And it turns out it was a big Ponzi scheme It was billions of dollars down the drain.

There's still some prosecutions happening with the sec and FBI. But when we did an investigation for a client for one of the investors, We found that…one of the. of this company A…

person named Scutaro. Had a prior history of fraud, very similar situation taking investments defrauding, but it didn't show up because he had changed his name. Instead of to tease it had one T or something like that…

And the reason we found is because when we did research on all the principles as we always do, everybody showed up except for him. We couldn't find anything on him and that's not possible It's not possible that there's nothing Sometimes nothing means something. So when we started doing some cross references on his phone numbers his emails his social media Facebook relatives, we found that his real name had two teas. Now when we run that and do a background on that we find that 15 18 years ago he had done another scam. That was similar allegedly that if investors had known about this.

This whole NRIA probably wouldn't have happened, but because he was able to conceal his true identity by just changing one letter in his name. He got away with it for several years. And this company I…really went to town with investors So this is another, another example of where paying attention to details and really not. Leaving anything to chance you know they had 14 or 15 executives that we searched for and all of them.

You know had. Records And some of them had a little bit of a borderline, you know background that was you know adversarial. But nothing That was that really bad Scutaro was the one who had the big red flags. And when we found it. It opened up the can of worms and that's what really made the, the government agencies start to take notice.

Of this. Scheme along with the fact they are offering high returns.

two. Make. more inquiries and basically shut it down At one point they froze all their assets closed their accounts. And they're now working on getting the money back for the investors which takes some of these other…procedures and techniques into account where you'd look for third parties You find people that maybe could be liable that aren't direct investors So those are some. Of our more interesting investigative stories for the last couple of decades, let us know in the comments if you'd like these kinds of stories and what type of questions you have about private investigations or agencies or.

what type of stories you'd like to hear about Are they the surveillance Are they the asset Are they the, the unusual ones What do you like to hear about And we'll do more of those in the future.