Finding Hidden Assets – Behind The Numbers

IAG Founding Partner Laurie Dyke discusses Finding Hidden Assets during a forensic investigation.

Hello I’m Laurie Dyke the founding partner of IAG Forensics & Valuation, which is a CPA firm that specializes in forensic accounting fraud investigation and business valuations.

Welcome to today’s segment of behind the numbers. Today I’m going to talk about finding hidden assets. That is one of the things that we are asked to do a lot in our cases whether they’re a state and trust divorce fraud investigations and sometimes even commercial litigation,  people expect us to be able to put in a social security number or a business name and go out into the google world and find assets that may have not been disclosed. We really can’t do that,  and personally I’m kind of happy about that because I don’t want people to do a google search on Laurie Dyke and find out where my bank accounts are.

So we apply our education and experience to finding hidden assets. There are two main ways that people tend to try to hide assets one is by diverting revenue off the top sometimes expense  reimbursements for an employee. Sometimes business revenue that comes into the business but doesn’t make it into the accounting records.  In those cases again we apply our education  experience and our knowledge of the case to figure out what the source documents are. If a restaurant it might be a point of sale system. A doctor’s office might be a billing system. There are lots of different ways that we can go back behind the numbers and try and find the revenue that’s being diverted.

The second main way that people hide assets or try to is by taking money out of accounts that we know exists and buying assets or putting that money into accounts that they have not disclosed that’s a little easier and for those cases we start with what we know the bank accounts and trace them through identify potential receiving accounts or assets and then use the power and the
tools available in litigation to get third party requests or subpoenas to follow the trail as it were to those assets.

Thanks for listening today this is another segment of Behind The Numbers.