Asset Locaton and Recovery in California

Asset Location and Recovery

Parrent Smith Investigations provides our corporate and individual clients with asset searches for a variety of purposes: when a client needs to know if a potential business partner, merger or acquisition target, customer or supplier is financially sound, when there is a suspicion of fraud inside a client's company, in family law investigations or when a client needs to collect on a judgment or recover stolen assets.

As many clients soon realize, in the civil justice system, securing a judgment against a defendant, whether it be an individual or a company, is only half of the battle. The second half is trying to find enough assets to satisfy the judgment. The art of locating assets is something that we at Parrent Smith Investigations have spent a professional lifetime cultivating and perfecting. With our collective 75 years of investigative experience, we have the ability to find bank accounts, stock accounts, real estate and vehicles or any other assets of value, ANYWHERE IN THEWORLD.

Asset searching often starts with certain searches on databases, but for the really in-depth work, there is no database. There are networks of national and worldwide "sources" that we have developed that include connections with professional investigators with whom we have worked for years. If you are using investigators who are relying solely on databases, you may be missing out on finding what you need to satisfy your or your client's judgments.

Not only do we find assets, we know how to assist clients in enforcing judgments, whether it is through a levy, attachment, or in the case of assets outside of the USA, in securing letters rogatory in whichever country the asset may be. (Letters rogatory are requests for judicial assistance from a court in one country to a court in another country. They can be used to request service of process, assistance in obtaining evidence, or enforcement of judgments.)

We once tracked down a judgment debtor who lived a fairly nomadic life, traveling from flea market to flea market selling gold jewelry. We arrived with a sheriff and a writ of attachment/seizure and confiscated his entire inventory.

We also have traveled half way around the world to find $7 million dollars that had been stolen from a client company's bank account. We located the funds in a small island country and acted as the client's legal agent, hiring a local law firm to handle the civil aspect of recovering the money and working with that country's law enforcement agency to make sure the crook went to jail. (See Insurance - Wire Fraud.)

Our asset investigations can provide any or all of the following:
Asset Location

Asset Tracing
Asset Recovery
General Financial Investigation
Bankruptcy Fraud Investigations
Money Laundering Investigations
Embezzlement Investigations

The next time you need to know "where's the money", please give us a call. There is no obligation ever, and we are confident you will be thoroughly satisfied with the results of our professional and comprehensive services.

All Asset Investigators are FCRA Certified.

For more information, please see our article:

Asset Searches : What Are They and What's Legal?

Bank Searches for Smaller Judgments

We are proud to announce a new bank search, the SUPER SAVER BANK SEARCH, which is geared towards helping those who have smaller judgments, such as small claims judgments that are generally under $10,000. The Super Saver Bank Search will provide the name and address of a bank with one active account in the subject’s name. The cost is $225 and the search takes 20-30 business days.

This differs from our standard STATE WIDE BANK SEARCH which locates ALL accounts, often in more than one institution, identified by the subject’s social security number or Federal Tax ID number. In this premium search, we also provide a description of the accounts in each institution with, in most cases, either most the recent balance or the average balance over the past thirty days, depending on the individual institutions reporting protocols. The cost for the Statewide Bank Search is $550, and it generally takes 7-10 business days.

To maintain GLBA compliance, account numbers are not provided with any bank search.