Investigating & Recovering Hidden Money & Other Assets
The following occurred over a four month period during 2002, and has been supplied by an investigator I have worked with. Some of it has been changed / sanitized for privacy reasons:
As part of his tax fraud, “Mr. Wallace” contacted a Cayman Island bank by mail in order to open…
In the recent past, bearer shares especially allowed for anonymous corporate ownership. A corporation that issued bearer shares had no central registry of the bearer share ownership. As a glossary from the The Financial Action Task Force explains, “[b]earer shares refers to negotiable instruments that accord ownership in a legal person to the person…
The information supplied by foreign financial investigators indicated the divorcing husband had hidden marital assets offshore. Evidence gathered during the divorce also suggested that the husband might have committed a tax fraud in hiding the marital assets.
To try to detect any additional assets hidden by the husband, I contacted Brian. Brian was a former…
As my post “Divorce, Child Support & Reporting Tax Fraud” mentioned, divorcing spouses sometimes tip the IRS about a suspected tax fraud. Mrs. Benjamin for example, tipped the IRS because she thought that her divorcing husband had underreported revenue from his commercial maintenance and landscaping business. She specifically provided the IRS with the…
According to a press release, Mr. Walter Anderson’s tax fraud resulted in the “largest personal income tax evasion case brought by the Department of Justice”. Pursuant to his September 8, 2006 plea agreement, telecommunications entrepreneur Walter Anderson pleaded guilty to violating two counts of 26 U.S.C. § 7201 (Attempt to evade or defeat…
With more than 90 national chapters / chapters-in-formation since its founding in 1993, Transparency International is a lead group in the fight against the global white-collar crime of public corruption. Transparency International publishes an annual "Corruption Perception Index" which ranks countries on a scale of "1" to "10" based on the perceptions of businessman and…
An investigation of a high-risk geographical location can sometimes uncover assets which have been hidden through: nominees; shell companies; cash couriers; wire transfers; credit cards; informal banking systems, etc. For example, one way the IRS focuses on high-risk locations like tax havens, is to compare the banking information it receives from the Financial Crimes…
Beneficial owners can try to use a nominee, (i.e. intermediary/straw owner), to hide money with complete anonymity in a bank account. Through websites like Offshore-Protection.com beneficial owners may purchase a shell company and retain a nominee director for the shell company. The beneficial owner may then title a bank account in…
When the divorcing husband admitted in his affidavit that he had not paid taxes, the judge in Hashimoto v. De La Rosa, 2004 slip op. 51081(Sup. Ct. N.Y. County, June 23, 2004) reported him to the I.R.S. In Beth M. v. Joseph M., 2006 slip op. 51490 (Sup. Ct. Nassau County, July 25,…
Money laundering circuits sometimes operate in the U.S. through domestic bank accounts used as “laundering links”. It is also true that money laundering circuits washing vast sums of money, will typically do so through offshore bank accounts located in tax havens like Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, etc. Such was the case of one divorcing…