Where can you hide and grow substantial assets with very little, if any, chance they will be detected?
Typically, investigators and attorneys are going to search for corporations, LLCs, and partnerships associated with their judgment debtors. When found, these entities are then searched for bank accounts, other assets, and real estate. There’s really nothing new or exciting about this age-old standard operating procedure. Every rookie investigator or first-year associate attorney knows how to use this process to trace and recover assets. In fact, failing to do so may well be malpractice.
Few, if any, investigators or attorneys are going to even search for assets in the name of a corporation that has not been “active” or in “good standing” for 3, 5, 10, or 15 years. Such searches are seen as a waste of time and resources. No person in good mind would put assets in an entity with no asset protection. Actually, assets have been hidden in these noncompliant entities for years because—nobody looks there, except a few of us out-of-the-box thinkers, a.k.a. “rebels.”
In the last ten years, we have recovered from a few hundred thousand dollars up to over $2.5 million, from such non-compliant entities. In the latter case, one of my favorites, we recovered from a Wyoming noncompliant LLC that had a noncompliant Wyoming corporation as its managing member. We recovered a “homesteaded” ranch, along with cattle, oil and gas royalties, rental property, and cash in the bank. We were not chastised for coloring outside the lines. Never assume that the bad guys are playing by the rules—they often are not, and it’s your job to recover their ill-gotten gains.