Practice Makes Perfect
Practice Makes Perfect |
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Some recent assignments include:
A large well-known bank in the City hired us to trace the whereabouts of an individual who, after working with the bank for several years, and obtaining substantial trust, stole over £100,000 in cash and completely disappeared.
Several months later we were instructed by the client to locate the individual and the present location of the money or what it had been turned into. After three weeks we located the target's exact whereabouts in a small village in Portugal.
The money had been spent to buy the house the target was living in. What happened after that is history (for the target that is).
A city law firm had been asked by their client to consider heavy litigation against a very well known (multi-million pound) company in the leisure industry. The question was, were the opposition in financial difficulty and could they withstand the heavy expenses of litigation?
Our discreet checks into the target company's bank accounts revealed money was not a problem for them. Our contacts confirmed that the opposition's bank manager had made official notes on the target company's file that their account was "very well maintained". Reference to the target company's previous bank statements supported this as these statements were very healthy.
Our client therefore avoided a very expensive legal battle.
An international
bank in the city asked us to investigate the business structure
of an individual who owed them over £3 million and claimed he
hadn't a bean to his name.
Diligent investigations showed the individual to have an interest in over 17 mainland companies, 3 offshore companies registered in Guernsey and a £50,000 house which we traced him to in an exclusive part of West London. It was here that he was paying off a very small mortgage, although the house was in his wife's name.
(In other words we proved that he
owned the house in reality as it was his money that was going
into the house - not hers). Substantial equity was left in the
house for our client to obtain a court charging order.
A large
recruitment company was considering employing an executive in a
crucial management role in their organisation, but needed to know
if his CV had been "exaggerated" to help him obtain
this position.
No Hiding Place Ltd were assigned to investigate. After thorough but very discreet checks we discovered discrepancies in the description of his last employment duties, his salary and the dates of his employment.
The client was spared a
considerable amount of embarrassment and trouble at relatively
minor expense.
A
well-known case of an Australian "businessman" who fled
Australian creditors and the police and arrived in the UK for a
repeat performance. (This case was also featured on Radio 4).
The subject had deceived a large part of London's Restaurants and Mini Cab firms into entering into a highly appealing business venture but one that was doomed to failure. While this was in progress, the subject was running up excessively large bills at his rented offices, with no intention of paying them. When the pressures became too intense, the subject then disappeared without trace.
No one had been given his correct home address. All official documents had false addresses on them.
Several other investigation agencies, of varying calibres, had been hired by a variety of creditors to locate him but all failed, including the police who wanted him for fraud.
Even the subject's own lawyers, who had completed £25,000 of work for him had not been paid. They, of all creditors, naturally wanted to know where he lived and where his (or their) money was.
No Hiding Place Ltd were brought In.
Our investigation took three weeks
to complete but successfully ended in locating the target's
current home address (nothing connected with the address we
traced him to was in his name) several bank accounts, where his
funding came from, all his credit card details, and a flat and
business he had invested his creditors money in, in Tenerrife.
A bogus business advertising in a national newspaper, made enticing propositions offering what appeared to be a guaranteed income to anyone who made certain investments in vending machine equipment. The equipment was supposedly guaranteed for six months.
When the equipment went wrong (and the other promises failed) our client tried to contact the supplier at the phone number he had been given only to find that the target had "vanished".
Our assignment was to locate the whereabouts of the supplier and report on his financial circumstances as fast as possible. We discovered that he was using five different names and was hiding behind a commercial answering bureau.
Before the target knew what had happened, we discovered his real name, home address, both his home X-Directory numbers, unpublished Portable telephone number and main bank account (which was held in another name).
The look of shock on the subject's face when our client turned up at the subject's home address (with a high court writ in the subject's real name), is an event that immediately compensated him both financially and mentally. The game was up and the supplier didn't want any other aggrieved customers finding out who he really was and where he lived.