Do you enter into business relationships, acquisitions, property
investments, partnerships, or enter into a transaction without
first verifying a companies identity, associates and affiliations?
Most people do and your not alone. However most entrepreneurs
still enter into business relationships with curiosity and
unanswered questions they may have regarding a company or
associate of a particular company. Wouldn't it be beneficial
to you and or your company to limit liability and risk by
conducting due diligence before entering into business relationships?
By limiting your risk and liability your business will have
a far greater chance to succeed. By conducting simple due
diligence and developing your own profile on any person or
business you will have a much better understanding of a particular
business and its associates which is vital to your business
decisions. 90% of the information you need to know can be
found on-line. You just have to know where to look for it,
and how to look for it. I will show you how you can develop
your own profile on anyone or any business on-line for free.
Example on a property investment acquisition. I contacted
an individual who had placed a classified add through an on-line
newspaper under real estate finance/services for hard money
lending, private money lenders. I was really just trying to
get a feel for the market in that specific area of the country.
I do this by contacting various types of real estate professionals
such Agents, brokers, title companies/escrow, private/hard
money lenders, bird dogs, wholesalers, etc. When I call I
get their personal name and the company name they work for
(if
any). If it's a company its usually an LLC which is very common
in the real estate industry or another type of corporate entity.
A lot of times people talk fast or not very clear on the phone.
So I always have them spell out their name and company name
and have them provide me any additional contact numbers that
they can provide should I need to speak with them at another
time.
When the subject I'm speaking to on the phone tells me the
name of the company he or she represents and it is a corporate
entitysuch as an LLC, S-Corp, partnership, etc. I know right
away I can get the corporate members names within a few minutes.
I will first go to the states web site in which the individual
claims to conduct business in and lookup the entity online
by the name of the company.
Just about all the states in the U.S have free online searches
at their web sites where you can lookup information about
a corporation by company name or agent names. Just go to your
favorite search engine like Google or MSN and type in the
name of the state and corporations. Example "Arizona
Corporations", "Texas Corporations", "Nevada
Corporations". The search engines will typically return
the results your looking for within the first two organic
search result listings. Once you get to the states web site
you will need to find where on the web site you can lookup
a Corporation. Usually it will just read "Look up Corporations".
Type in the name of the company and you can find out all corporate
members, addresses, resident agents, corporate status- good
standing- dissolved, revoked, etc. What I typically do is
find out if the name the subject provided to me on the phone
is indeed an actual member of the corporation, and then I
run his or her name through the states database and see if
he or she is involved in any other types of corporations.
I find that is quite common to have members involved in several
corporations.
Sometimes you will not find a companies name in the specific
states database. There could be a few reasons for this. The
company may be a sole proprietor, or the company is registered
in another state but has not filed as a foreign entity in
the state they are doing business in. Sometimes companies
operate this way. In this case it would be wise to search
the Nevada and Delaware corporation web sites to determine
if the company or agents are registered in either of those
two states. There are a great number of corporations that
register in Nevada and Delaware simply because of the asset
protection. It's difficult to pierce the corporate veil under
the laws of those two states and that alone drives many, many
companies to register in those particular states.
I then run the companies name and agents name through online
courthouse records in the specific county where they are residing
in or conducting business in. Again like with the states,
most counties have some type of information that is accessible
online. Civil, family law and criminal filings are what you
would most be interested in. You can go to the National Association
of Counties by going to- http://www.naco.org
and look up the county of your interest and you will go to
their web site and see what kind of records that are accessible
on-line for you to search. If you don't know the name of the
county, you can locate a County by just knowing the City and
State by going to the U.S Census Bureau and searching their
database located here: http://quickfacts.census.gov/cgi-bin/qfd/lookup?state=01000
As soon as you locate the counties web site that you want
to search just run the subjects name and company name through
the various online databases. It can be very interesting to
what you might find through courthouse records.
You should also run the subjects name, company name, phone
number, any addresses separately through Google- Using each
category- Main Google, Google Groups, Google News. I typically
run the above search criteria through Google to see what I
can find and where it links to. You can also verify if any
address is a mail drop (like Mail boxes Etc.) or if it is
actually a street location by using a free database search
located here: http://www.finaid.com/scholarships/maildropsearch.phtml
Let me give you a recent example of how my typical investigation
starts.
The individual that I recently contacted in regards to private
money lending had provided me his name and company name when
I asked, which is typical with any dealings on the phone.
I already had his contact number from the add that he had
placed on-line in the classifieds under "real estate
finance/services".
I first ran the phone number to see if it was a cell number
or a landline number. I do that by going to http://fonefinder.net
I then ran his telephone number through Google to see if it
appears online anywhere. I enter phone numbers in Google like
this:- area code-prefix-phone number. Example- "111-555-1212".
Running this search gives me a good idea if the phone number
he provided me has been used anywhere online. Sometimes I
find a different name of the company other than what they
provided, or I may find a web site where the phone number
was used as a contact number, I may even find a personal add
placed where the subject was trying to sell a classic car
and the contact number matched that of which I already had.
Or I can find out which forums the subject hangs out at, he
may have used the phone number there. If I find a website
where the contact number I entered into Google shows up, I
find out who owns the web site by searching the whois directory
located here-http://www.betterwhois.com
I may find another name or indeed find out my subject owns
this particular web site.
I start developing my profile of the business and the subject
themselves by initially starting with a simple phone number.
I can find all kinds of interesting things by simply running
a search through Google with the subjects contact telephone
number.
I then ran the company name that the subject had provided
me by going online at the specific states website where I
can look up and find out information about corporations. This
will allow me to verify or reveal agents names. Sure enough
he was a member of the corporation. However the last name
he provided to me was spelled and pronounced much differently
than what was revealed with the corporation search. It was
way off.
I then went to the respective county web site to search online
for civil and criminal records on the subject. I knew which
county to search based on the subjects phone number and also
the zip code that was returned for the subjects address revealed
in the corporation search through the states website.
I found numerous civil filings on the subject regarding business
dealings including an Exparte filed for a wire tap on the
subjects phone number as well as family law cases involving
domestic violence. I also found a criminal case-. Possession
of marijuana
Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make up ones mind
if they would like to enter into a business relationship with
this subject. There is a greater possibility that I might
have issues with this individual and things may not work out
so well in the future.
There are many scenarios of why you would need to conduct
due diligence on a individual or company. But remember you
should always verify or reveal information on an individual
or company prior to entering into a business relationship.
Frank Bruno has been a Private Investigator for 8 years
and is an expert in on-line Investigations. He has been the
manager of USATrace.com since 1997. http://www.USATrace.com
