What Private Investigators Can Do With Asset Location

You probably most often think of private investigators as people you need for when you run into personal situations such as trying to find a divorced spouse who has violated custody agreements, looking for a lost relative, or even trying to catch a cheating spouse. But many private investigators can locate missing financial assets if you suspect money is being stolen in a very subtle way. This service can come in handy for small business owners who may not be able to afford an internal auditor or who even more so might not trust an auditor. Private investigators can also look into someone’s financial history to see what kind of issues they’ve had in the past.

Finances can disappear quite easily in cases where the accounting book has been altered. Perhaps you’ve had clients you’ve billed yet somehow your accounts receivables receipts didn’t show up because someone tampered with, lapped or stole them. When money is flowing or is coming from many different angles it can be hard to detect, but eventually a discrepancy in funds available for your business account will show up. Private investigators who have financial and accounting forensics knowledge can review your books and detect where unusual activity has taken place without the suspect knowing.

What can make assets hard to track is that criminals and fraudsters have ways of hiding them either in liquid assets or personal property, or possibly even in offshore accounts or by sending gifts to their family members. But whether assets from accounts have been stolen and converted into cash or transferred into other electronic accounts, private investigators have the ability to find the trail and locate where the money has gone. Sometimes all it takes is digging up the right previous background information or even using digital forensics to figure out what the suspect may have done with your assets.