Ties That Bind: Searching for Connections Between Parties

Welcome to the July 2018 edition of our newsletter!  In this issue, we’ll examine the importance of researching connections between a party to whom your client is adverse and others involved in an inquiry.

All About Who You Know: The Importance of Connections Between Parties

In every situation between parties, whether litigation or negotiation, there is often more involved than the persons sitting across the table from one another.  Each party brings their experience, which often includes a lifetime of accumulated contacts.  While these contacts may not be relevant at all times, if a deal goes sour or fraud is suspected, such linkages can be of great relevance.

Social media have become a valuable tool for identifying, and often in proving, ties between parties. Did your business partner go to college with the vendor suspected of inflating invoices?  Were they in the same fraternity?  By documenting such ties, especially after fraud is suspected, a network can be developed to conduct interviews and obtain records that can help bolster a fraud case, whether the connections are from the subject’s educational, business or personal background.

Hitting the Links: Examining Business and Social Ties

Determining if a subject has an undisclosed business relationship can be of vital importance as well.  Using various databases, a researcher can cross-reference relevant company data – such as P.O. boxes listed for new or suddenly popular vendors – with personal identifier information to determine if an employee, their spouse or another party in their network created a sham vendor.  Also of note in such instances are charitable organization memberships, as these can provide an innocuous seeming reason for two parties to meet and conduct other business.

If fraud is suspected, by developing a thorough profile of a subject’s personal, business and social or charitable ties, your client will be that much closer to identifying who that subject enlisted to help carry out the fraud, and that much closer to figuring out how they did it.