Investigators get hired because you can’t look everywhere, and one of our main skills is figuring out where to look and how far back the searches should go. Most searches hit the same kinds of records, but an asset search is more interested in what a person has today. A background investigation to figure out […]
Sometimes it feels good to be right. We’ve been saying for years that if an investigator tells you he’s got “contacts” at the phone company that can “ping” someone’s cell phone to find out where they are and where they’ve been, run in the other direction. We were vindicated in 2018 when the Court decided […]
It sounds unlikely, but when you’re doing an asset search you have to embrace the truth that a sale is sometimes not a sale. It all comes down to one phrase: Beneficial Ownership. That means that you own something not personally, but through a different legal instrument that you control. I’ve long argued that if […]
I often tell new clients: “Google yourself. Even if you are very famous (and most of my clients are not), how much of what you know about yourself will be on the web? For most of us, the answer is, one or two percent of what we know of ourselves can be found on line. […]
Lots of the work in divorce asset detection involves looking at the names of companies a subject has, and then trying to figure out the names of new companies concealed from our client (the spouse). Sometimes, a tiny change is all it takes to divert money successfully. Looking at every last detail behind a company […]
I always like to ask professionals, no matter their industry: “What’s a good screening question to see whether someone in your profession may be competent?” In the case of someone who does investigations, I regularly advise that if someone tells you, “It’s all online,” then find another investigator. Same with “How will you introduce yourself […]
A favorite question of mine when I talk to other professionals is: “You’ve been doing this a long time, you see patterns. What do you most often say to your clients (or wish you could say) about how they could have helped themselves before coming to you?” A patent lawyer told me last week that […]
AI will tell you a lot, but if you ask it to unblock a drain or patch your roof you will be disappointed. All the how-to’s in the world won’t get the job done for you. I tried doing an asset search from the very beginning on Perplexity, one of the leading AI engines. I […]
I think we can all agree that the more languages you can speak, the better off you will be, all other things being equal. AI instant translation is a great invention, but who wouldn’t want to be able to read a case or a newspaper article in Polish in the course of investigating a Polish […]
It’s not even a close call. Sometimes I can find hundreds of thousands of dollars in a company or two that may eventually lead to a better settlement, sometimes a vacation home that was being tucked away or grossly undervalued. But for finding assets in the millions, there is nothing like securities filings relating to […]
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Charles Griffin Intelligence was founded in 2009 by Philip Segal, a New York attorney and expert on complex domestic and international business and finance. Based in the heart of New York City and working worldwide, Charles Griffin is dedicated to ethical fact-finding.
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