The Expert Podcast

Here’s a really good example of the kinds of things that could be discovered in an investigation. Look, most of the time when we start a case, whether it's an asset search, a fraud case, or some type of embezzlement, there are a few things that we know we're going to be looking for. A lot of times a client will tell us, “You should look for these things.” In most cases though, we're going to look at everything because you never know what you're going to find. One of the things we love looking at are real estate documents—deeds, liens, mortgages—even if the case has nothing to do with real estate.

The reason why is because anytime you're looking at documents versus data, you're going to find things that don't show up in data. When you just look at a spreadsheet with numbers on it, all you're going to look at is numbers that were typed in by somebody. Documents actually have much more rich information. Here’s a case—we had nothing to do with this case, but this is the kind of thing that we'd love to find.

There’s a mansion in Los Angeles that recently sold. It was called The One, and the reason it was called that is because at one point it was the most expensive piece of residential real estate in the country. It had a $295 million listing price. It ended up going bankrupt; the developers couldn't sell it. They had 200 plus million dollars invested in the purchase of the land, construction, and all the fees. They couldn't sell it, they couldn't get it done, so it was auctioned off for $141 million.

So it went into bankruptcy and they auctioned it off. Now what's happening is there's all kinds of people fighting over that $141 million—the developer, the landowner, creditors, lenders, contractors, all kinds of people are trying to scramble for that money. A couple of the investors and lenders are trying to figure out who's first in line, who gets the first chunk, and who gets a second chunk. What they found is there was a deed and some documents that were forged. And whether or not it's a real document or not, it's going to be a hundred million dollar benefit to somebody.

So how do you determine if something was forged? Let’s take a look. Without getting into the details, there was a deal that one of the investors had approval for a loan that would become senior to their loan, basically saying, "Look, my loan is first. You can loan this person money and you become first, but it has to be done a certain way," right? There’s a lawsuit that says a signature was forged on that subordination agreement. A subordination agreement is when you're subordinating your rights to somebody else, and this guy says, "I never signed that; it’s a forgery."

Well, how do you prove that? What they found was the notary falsely notarized that document. The reason they know that is because the document said it was done in Los Angeles, but the person was actually in Montreal. So there's your smoking gun. If you just look at real estate data, you'd never see this. If you look at the document and read where somebody wrote "Los Angeles County" on this date and they put their notary stamp, you'll find that. Also, look at the name of the notary. You've seen us talk about that in other videos—notaries, witnesses, stray marks on documents—all of these things many times break a case wide open.

The problem is, you don't know which document it's going to be on. You have to look at all of them. It's like a needle in a haystack. That’s why the most expensive part of an investigation is time. If you have a hundred documents to look at, you're not just going to push a button on a Google search and the answer pops up on your screen. You have to read through those documents, find that notary stamp, and match it up to something else. But that's a perfect example. We saw that story and we all talked about dozens of cases we've had over the years where we discovered similar things.

One of the most famous ones that comes up in our office is a case where we had a person who had some real estate that they claimed they sold to their cousin to try to hide their asset. We looked at the document that was signed and witnessed and had notaries on it. We looked at the notary and the stamp just seemed a little off. So we tracked down the person who was that notary. We looked at prior documents from that same seller, and we found that that notary also notarized something for the same seller eight years ago. What are the odds that the same notary did it? Well, I guess you could say maybe they worked in the law firm or maybe in the same office where this person is.

But we zoomed in a little more on the notary stamp and we found there was a little extra piece of ink. When they put the stamp on, they pushed it to one side, creating a little smear. Well, the same smear was on the prior document. So it was basically a Photoshop job. Finding that hidden asset benefited the client to the tune of about $180,000. Granted, it wasn't hundreds of millions, but for that client, the extra $180,000 was a big deal.

So the moral of the story is: when you're doing an investigation, you don't know where you're going to find the thing that breaks open the case. A lot of times clients will say, "Look, I just want you to do a bank account search, just find money in the bank account." Okay, we can do a bank account search. But most of the time when we find hidden assets, they're hidden somewhere else. Even sometimes when we find hidden bank accounts, it's not from a direct bank account search. It's by finding a receipt from a vehicle transaction, finding a check that paid taxes or HOA fees. We find hidden bank accounts as often as not in other records besides banking records.

So keep that in mind. Work with your investigator, tell them what you're trying to find, and let them come up with a strategic investigative plan to get you the best results and get your case handled.