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CONFESSIONS OF A
MONEY LAUNDERER by Kenneth Rijock
MONEY LAUNDERER by Kenneth Rijock
Financial Crime Consultant, for World-Check
Confessions of a Money Launderer - Part 66
26 May 2008
When the Internet became a commercial reality around 1994, I realised that I needed to add this valuable tool to my lectures, for the resources that were coming online gave law enforcement investigators and financial institution compliance staff the ability to access the information without regular and time-consuming trips to the urban university & law school libraries, courthouse file rooms, public records microfilm storage facilities, newspaper archives, and other information locations that they had been required to visit to conduct thorough investigations or proper due diligence enquiries. I created a class specifically to address the relevant websites that were beginning to come online, who they were, where they could be located, their value, and efficient search methods.
My approach was to give the attendees the actual URLs (Internet addresses) of the important websites, as well as the locations of sites where individuals had assembled lists of sites, with direct hyperlinks to these resources, to aid the attendees in finding them. I even created my own website, which I called a database collection, with a dozen pages, listing what I considered to be the most important Internet resources available at the time. As time went on, and more websites became available, whether they had free access or were available for a fee, I exposed my attendees to their existence. Since I no longer present that class, perhaps the topics I covered might be of interest. The categories were:
These are just a few of the topics I discussed. Hope you are using each and every one of your local equivalent sites in your due diligence searches.
Nest week: More Internet Resources.
- State, local and federal court records: Traveling to the local courthouses, to search both civil and criminal indexes, was always cumbersome, and you were restricted to your immediate area, plus wherever you could conveniently travel to, meaning that potential resources in other cities, or overseas, were unavailable to you. The widespread availability of court records online has closed that critical information gap. Criminal cases speak for themselves, but civil cases often reveal white-collar criminal activities, such as fraud, and are also valuable as due diligence resources. My favourite court resource is PACER, an acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/ PACER allows one to access Federal cases, and pleadings and documents are actually scanned in for retrieval.
- Public records databases: real estate, recorded final judgments, IRS Liens, mortgages, and a wide variety of documents, which are required to be placed in public records, provide a treasure trove of information on targets you are looking at. Negative information not otherwise publicly available can often be found there, and many of these databases go back for decades, allowing researchers to track an individual or company for an extended period of time. Miami's is http://www.miami-dadeclerk.com/
- Reported appellate decisions of the courts of the world: Before the Internet, lawyers and other professionals seeking to determine whether a subject had ever been involved in major litigation had to visit a decent law library, and tediously go through several indexes, including the pocket supplements, which were never quite as up-to-date as you liked. Later still, some decisions were bundled into CD-ROMs, but became stale after a relatively short period of time. With reported decisions now available online, through the major lawbook publishing houses, one can access them from the confort of one's own cubicle at work, and Shepardising (updating) the decision for subsequent history or citing case law, is easy and painless.
- The use of Search Engines: Whereas before, one could not conduct a general search of multiple resources in an examination of a target, the new search engines available would often uncover material on the subject that you might not ordinarily find in library research. I monitored the arrival of new search engines, and exposed my students to all the good ones I found. Today, one can find that material at Search Engine Watch http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ which also review the major search engines,and at Search Engine Colossus http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/ which also features regional search engines.
- Newspapers of the world: The emergence of online versions of major print media has revolutionised due diligence searching, especially when one can access newspaper archives for historical information. Back in the 1980s, the Miami Herald pioneered an online edition, with a pilot programme that gave selected readers a personal computer, when such items were rare in the home, due to the $2000 cost. You can find their website at http://www.herald.com/ The short URL indicates a website created before the Internet's commercial birth.
These are just a few of the topics I discussed. Hope you are using each and every one of your local equivalent sites in your due diligence searches.
Nest week: More Internet Resources.
The facts and opinions stated in this article are those of the author and not those of World-Check. World-Check does not warrant the accuracy of any facts and opinions stated in this article, does not endorse them, and accepts no responsibility for them.
Read more in this exciting series
4 October 2008
28 September 2008
20 September 2008
15 September 2008
15 June 2008
8 June 2008
1 June 2008
26 May 2008
19 May 2008
12 May 2008
4 May 2008
27 April 2008
20 April 2008
13 April 2008
31 March 2008
18 March 2008
4 March 2008
25 February 2008
16 February 2008
10 February 2008
3 February 2008
27 January 2008
20 January 2008
14 January 2008
6 January 2008
16 December 2007
9 December 2007
1 December 2007
25 November 2007
18 November 2007
11 November 2007
3 November 2007
27 October 2007
21 October 2007
14 October 2007
7 October 2007
1 October 2007
23 September 2007
16 September 2007
3 June 2007
27 May 2007
21 May 2007
6 May 2007
30 April 2007
22 April 2007
15 April 2007
8 April 2007
2 April 2007
24 March 2007
19 March 2007
12 March 2007
5 March 2007
25 February 2007
19 February 2007
12 February 2007
4 February 2007
28 January 2007
22 January 2007
15 January 2007
7 January 2007
2 January 2007
16 December 2006
10 December 2006
3 December 2006
27 November 2006
19 November 2006
11 November 2006
5 November 2006
29 October 2006
22 October 2006
16 October 2006
9 October 2006
2 October 2006
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