Understanding Asset Diversion and Hidden Trust Issues
When there is an issue of assets being diverted improperly, one of the questions that comes up very frequently is can we look for hidden trust? Many times assets have been put into a trust or have been transferred through a trust and other people that may have not received the assets were concealed from the existence of that trust agreement. For example, if you have a person in your family who is deceased or maybe even before they’re deceased, they put assets into a trust for your benefit.

The Problem of Undistributed Trust Assets
If the people who are handling the assets never distribute the assets the way they’re supposed to through that trust, you may never know unless you have a copy of it. And many times these trusts are hidden. They’re concealed. They’re not given to the rightful party.

Trust Creation and Management Process
Well, a trust agreement when it’s created is normally created in a law firm or in an office and the grantor will sign it. There’s usually a trustee that’s established or named and sometimes the trustee gets a copy then sometimes it’s held in escrow by the law firm and initiated with that executive at some trigger date. Now, remember, we’re not attorneys. We’re not giving legal advice. We’re talking about asset searching.

The Challenge of Locating Private Trust Documents
So, if you’re concerned that assets have not been properly distributed per the terms of a trust agreement that you think is existent, but maybe you don’t know where it is, the method of locating a trust is very very specific. A trust is not something that normally has to be filed in public records. It’s usually a private document maintained by the law firm, maintained by the grantor of the trust and sometimes the executive and unless one of those three parties reveals it to you, then you wouldn’t know about it.

OSINT: The Key to Trust Discovery
But what you can do to search for it, and this is how we do it, is we use what’s called OSINT or open-source intelligence. Remember, a trust really has no value. It’s not usable unless it is deployed for other purposes. For example, if you create a bank account, if you purchase real estate, if you put a vehicle in the trust, if you buy insurance.

Creating Digital Footprints Through Trust Activities
All of these activities now create a mirror image, a shadow image of that trust agreement outside of the ecosystem where it’s being kept private. If only the attorney and the trustee has it, then nobody else sees it. But once you start using it for something or registering it or filing it, that’s when now it exists outside of that bubble and you can find it.

Comprehensive Record Search Methodology
So you have to search for all of these obscure records. Sometimes the records could come from the DMV for vehicle titles. They can come from Secretary of State for corporation records. Sometimes they’re just found simply in other types of filings, public records. We’ve even found them in social media. So you have to do a very deep dive into open source intelligence, sometimes the dark web, sometimes looking at digital forensics of other documents referencing the trust.

The Commitment Required for Trust Discovery
But if you are firmly believing that there is a trust existing somewhere and you’re dedicated and committed to finding it, that is the process. You have to go through this open-source intelligence research, usually looking at thousands of documents, sometimes tens of thousands of documents to find references to that trust. If it’s been used anywhere, that’s how you’re going to find it. You’re not going to magically find it in some online Google search where you type in a name and it pops up. You have to go through this process.

Leveraging Technology for Efficient Research
Now, there’s things you can do to make it easier. There are some automation tools, some AI tools that can take that process of reviewing, retrieving, and analyzing thousands of documents and distilling it down to a shorter period of time. Obviously, one or two or five people looking at 10,000 documents might take months. But if you use things like AI and automation and some of the other tools that we use, forensics tools, you can maybe boil it down to a few days.

Making the Process Cost-Effective
So that’s really the key is to making it an efficient process so you’re not spending weeks and weeks of time or money to find these hidden trust agreements. So if you think you should be benefiting from a trust or somebody you know should but you’re not exactly sure what the details are, that is the process for finding a hidden trust.