The Expert Podcast

Today, we're going to talk about the various types of assets and how they're searched, but more importantly, which ones are more likely to discover hidden assets. That's the most important thing for many clients: what assets are being concealed. For me, you probably wouldn't be looking to find assets if some of them weren't hidden, or maybe you'd suspect that they're hidden. Some types of assets are more likely to be hidden than others. Now, that doesn't mean they're easier to hide; it just means that this is the way that many fraudsters or scammers try to hide assets, and we'll talk about those.

We're going to talk about the 14 different types of assets. Each one is a different type of search. There's not one button you push, and all the assets pop up on the screen. Every type of asset has a different mechanism of being recorded and a different method of attempting a search. The most common reason for doing an asset search is usually something like a court judgment against a person. You have a judgment, and you want to make sure the person has assets to satisfy that judgment or to find out where they are so you can garnish them, seize those assets, or recover your debt. Many times, it's a family law case where there's a divorce and both parties are trying to split up marital assets, and one party might be concealing some of those assets, and we'll talk about where those are more likely to be concealed. Another type of case is probate fraud, where when there's a deceased person in a family, sometimes certain family members will go out of their way to try to take some of the assets and maybe secrete them so that other people don't get their hands on them and they can keep the asset for themselves. So let's first talk about the different asset classes. There's 14 types of assets; each one of them has pros and cons for how you search for them. We'll also talk about certain asset classes that many people overlook and don't want to search for because they don't think there's going to be a lot of money there, but in many cases, those are the asset classes that return the highest amount of recovery for a client.
The asset classes, so we'll go through all of them: real estate, vehicles, bank accounts, corporate assets, intellectual property, revenue streams, insurance proceeds, prepaid taxes, intangible property, UCCs and accounts receivable, personal property, and last but not least, constructive trust. And constructive trust is probably the most valuable type of asset to look for when somebody is actively concealing assets, so we'll go through them in order.

The first one is real estate, very familiar with that, most people are. You have a house, you have a piece of land, and you have a building that is owned. The ownership of that asset is evidenced by a deed. A deed is a document that is signed at the time of transfer from one person to another. The seller is called the grantor, and the buyer is called the grantee. The deed signs it over to the buyer. Now, that deed is recorded. That's the important thing about real estate records. Real estate records are good because they're public records and documents. In most jurisdictions, it's done at the county level. There's a county recorder that keeps all these documents on file. The problem is that searching for them is not as simple as just putting in an address, and it pops up on a screen. Land records and property records are indexed by name, which for an asset search helps you because you can just search for a name and find all the properties or deeds in that name. The problem is that deeds are not extinguished when they're transferred to someone else. So if you search for, let's say, Joe Smith, it'll show all the deeds where he bought a property, sold a property, used to own a property, and had a mortgage. So you first have to get all the documents with that person's name on them because the index search for that name is going to show you every document with that person's name on it. Then you have to look at each document to see: is this one where they got property in their name? Did they sell it? Did they get a mortgage? Did they pay off a mortgage? Right. It's also important to look at properties that were transferred away. This is where hidden assets come in. If you see a property that was recently transferred to another person, even though you might say, Well, they don't own that asset anymore, don't overlook it. Take a closer look at that transaction. Was it a quitclaim deed where there was no money changing hands and you just gave it away to somebody? Were any of the parties that were sold to a relative, an associate, or a colleague? Also, look to see if that property... Was it for sale? Was it on MLS? Was it on, you know, realtor.com, one of the websites that show properties? Because if it wasn't, that means... How did they get sold? If it wasn't advertised, maybe it was a fraudulent conveyance. Remember, we're not attorneys; we're not giving you legal advice, but we can tell you the things that we see in doing asset searches, mostly for attorneys. A lot of the searches we do for attorneys and fraudulent conveyance is something where if somebody owes money on a debt, they're in a marriage, or they're in a probate, they're not supposed to be transferring assets away, so that's what's called a fraudulent conveyance. So you want to look at all the transfers? You also want to look at mortgages. Was there a mortgage recently paid off? Because if there was, that might indicate assets being used to benefit and enrich that person.

The next asset class is vehicles. And these are titled vehicles. Now, those are evidenced by a title. A vehicle title is a legal document. It's a government form issued by, in most states, an organization or government agency called the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Department of Transportation. Every state has a different name for that agency, but a vehicle title is a government document. You can't print one from the internet; you can't buy one from a company. It's a government record of who owns a vehicle. So you want to look to see what vehicles are owned by that person according to the government records. And you can do an inquiry called the DPPA inquiry to get lists of vehicles that are owned or maybe even formerly owned by that person or co-owned. So that way, you'll know: are they trying to do any funny business by taking an expensive car and putting it in their cousin's name? That's a hidden asset.

The next asset class, which is number three, is the one that most people want to gravitate to instantly: it's called bank accounts. You want to search for people's bank accounts to see how much money they have in the bank. Now, unlike real estate and vehicles, bank account records are considered to be private records. You can't just pull up someone's bank account, just like you wouldn't want somebody pulling up your bank account. But there are methods where bank account records are searched legally. There's a federal law called the Graham-Lee Act (GLB) that prohibits using illegal methods of obtaining bank account records. And that's a very serious law.