The Expert Podcast

Fortunately, the big rush of crypto and online scams seems to be dying down a little bit. For the last couple of years, there's been an epidemic, no pun intended, of scams online involving people sending in money and fraudsters claiming you have a big investment and you're making all this money. There's still some of that going on, but a lot of it is dying down now.

The bigger scam that is growing even faster involves hidden assets or hiding assets. We've seen cases over the last eight to 12 months where assets have been hidden in all kinds of cases. There have been divorce cases, probate cases, and lawsuit judgments where the defendant debtor is hiding assets.
How do you go about hiding assets? What's successful? What can be found? How do people try to hide assets? One thing we have found is that when somebody is hiding assets for the first time, this is not a lifelong business practice for them. They're not a narcotics trafficker or some type of big scammer that always has to hide assets. Someone who may have lost a lawsuit judgment or is in a divorce might try to hide assets.

One of the biggest cases right now has to do with probate law, where somebody has a death in the family and some family members are trying to conceal some of the assets so they don't get distributed through the will or the probate process. These are the three most common types of asset concealment.
When somebody is doing this for the first time or they're not an expert asset hider, they typically do things that are very easy to discover. There are a lot of things that somebody hiding assets can do that will make it hard to find those assets. Most amateur, one-time, and first-time asset concealers don't do a very good job. They do simple things. In fact, some of the things that many asset hiders do make it easier to find the assets. Their actual activity that tries to hide the asset sometimes makes more noise and creates more visibility for that asset than if they didn't do anything.

If you have a case where you believe somebody is hiding assets, take a look at our website. You'll see some examples of where these assets can be discovered. Asset searches and asset tracing can be done; they are two different things. We can also tell you about the techniques that people use that are very amateur and easy to discover, as well as the more advanced methods that maybe you don't know about but are also worthy of looking into to find assets.

For example, one method that people sometimes use is the prepayment of taxes. They take the extra money and pay it towards their income tax. What that essentially does is put that money in a savings account with the IRS because it's not a bank account that can be searched through the usual bank account research process. They have a credit, so next year, when their taxes are due, they'll get that money back. Or if, for some reason, they don't owe any taxes, they can get a refund. It's kind of like having a secret bank account with the government, but that's also an amateur method that can be discovered.

There are other methods that are a little more difficult, but even the IRS trick can be discovered if you know where to look. If you just run a bank account search, you may not know that money exists. If you are involved with an asset concealment case, you want to know the advanced, higher techniques. Don't just look for the easy assets; look for the harder ones, which, quite frankly, 99% of people never even look for. These more difficult-to-find asset classes are what the scammers count on because most people don't know where to look for those types of more complex asset concealment processes.
So, anybody who's involved with any kind of case, even if you don't think there are assets being concealed, should take a look at some of those methods. Be curious or skeptical if the other party in the case might be trying to sweep some of the money or assets that belong to you away from you so they can benefit.