Legal Commentary

An out-of-the-box way to find someone?s hidden bank accounts

By A.J. Levy

Do you remember that Sherlock Holmes solved a crime because of a dog that didn’t bark?

Well, in one case reported by CaseMap, an investigator entered all of a husband’s checks into CaseMap’s case preparatiion program. Here’s how, in that out-of-the-box way, the payments that didn’t show up led to the investigator’is discovery of the husband’is hidden bank account:

[Bill Branscum, the owner of an investigative agency based in Naples, Florida] recalls how . . . he investigated a subject’s finances after the individual in question had supposedly turned all of his financial records over to the court. CaseMap allowed Branscum to quickly pull out all of the man’is alimony payments, which enabled Branscum to detect something odd: Some monthly payments were just missing, and not made up later. On a hunch, Branscum used CaseMap to pull up the man’is car payments, and he found the same pattern: some payments simply were not made. Branscum’is conclusion: the man had a hidden bank account from which he occasionally paid his alimony and his car loan. The hunch was right and the missing finances were revealed.

Of course, some of the same results can be accomplished with spreadsheet programs.  However, CaseMap might allow you to use its bells and whistles and its related programs like TimeMap that ordinary spreadsheets won’t have.

Full post as published by Out of the Box Lawyering on February 02, 2008 (boomark / email).