Asset searching has become a booming business in the private investigative field. And no wonder. Businessmen need verification of potential business partners' financial-worth claims; investors need to gauge the financial status of the people and companies they're thinking of dealing with; creditors need an accurate fix on the creditworthiness and financial stability of potential debtors. Even fiancés (or fiancées), not infrequently, are interested in looking into the net worth of potential husbands or wives. 

Can you find out what someone is worth? If so, can it be done via public records searches? 

Yes and no to both questions. 

Yes, you can do a little digging on your own, using BackgroundCheckGateway.com and probably develop a fairly accurate picture of just about anyone's financial worth. 

No, you generally can't find out someone's exact financial worth using public records. The reason this is a "yes and no" situation is that some types of assets are relatively easy to find in public records (especially tangible assets like real estate, vehicles, boats, aircraft), while other types are hard to find (especially financial assets, like personal bank and brokerage accounts).

Sometimes you can find out a lot about someone's financial assets through civil or criminal litigation records. For example, if he's been through a divorce, his complete financial history should be spelled out in the divorce files or if he's been sent away for tax evasion, his finances will have been relevant and will be found in the court records. 

Barring this, about the only legal way to discover how much someone owns in the way of financial assets is through the legal discovery process or via subpoena in connection with a legal action. You should be extremely wary of any private investigator or information broker who promises to get you this type of information. He may use illegal methods, like "pretexting" (misrepresenting himself to a financial institution in order to elicit information). Always ask, "What are your sources of information?" Using pretexting to gain access to someone's private financial information is now a federal crime. You don't need that kind of trouble. 

Following are some simple and legal sources of asset information.

Real Estate. Your information source for real estate records is the appropriate county clerk & recorder's office. Probably, you'll start with the office in the county where your subject currently resides, though you may wish to check counties where he/she has lived in the past, or where you discover other assets. 

Begin with the county assessor's office. The assessor, of course, is responsible for providing valuations of all property in the county for tax purposes; generally, these valuations are below current market value, however. You can probably do a name search for your subject in assessor records. But you should also check the county recorder's office. That's where you'll find the actual records detailing the purchase, sale, or transfer of the property in question, and it's where you'll also find records of any liens against the property, including tax liens. 

Motor Vehicles. Although accessibility varies, most states' DMVs will still run a name search for you while your wait on the telephone. Or, if you have the subject's license plate number, they'll run the tags for you and tell you who owns the vehicle. In some states, you may have to make a written request and send along a small fee plus a self-addressed-stamped envelope. In California, and a few other states, you'll need a written authorization from the subject to get this type of information. 

Boats. For boats up to 27 feet, check the vessel registration records of the Department of Motor Vehicles; for boats over 27 feet, check the U.S. Coast Guard Database. You can check the Coast Guard files either by subject's name or vessel registration number. 

Airplanes. The national repository for info on aircraft ownership is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in Washington DC (www.faa.gov). Another good source of information regarding aviation is the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). 

Stock in Public Companies. The basic information source for financial information about public companies is the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), most importantly, the SEC's EDGAR website (www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm). EDGAR stands for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval. Here you can find online all mandatory statements filed by all U.S. public companies. A good starting point in using this incredibly voluminous site is the "Quick Forms Lookup" button on the SEC's Home page. You may be most interested in Form 13-D, which identifies owners of more than 5% of a publicly held company; or Form 13-F, which provides a quarterly report of equity holdings by institutional managers holding equity assets of $100 million or more. Form 13-G, which declares sales by a stockholder of 5% or more of his shares, is not available on EDGAR. Contact us, Washington Research Associates, if you need this form for a given company. Incidentally, if you're planning on doing research on EDGAR, check out Free EDGAR, a great Internet resource offered by the Edgar Online Company, which provides free and timely access to SEC filings. 

Stock (and Other Assets) in Private Companies. Researching private companies is obviously far more difficult than researching public companies, since the former are not required to report to the SEC. Private company research is something of an art, often best left to professionals. But if you want to give it a whirl, a useful starting point is the appropriate Secretary of State's Office. Another helpful private company source is business news databases; try PR Newswire, Crains Business Publications, and the Internet version of Lexis-Nexis.

Personal Financial Accounts. As indicated, locating personal bank accounts is fraught with difficuly and potential illegality. (And once you find someone's account, whether it's a bank or brokerage account, or some other kind of financial account, finding out how much money is in the account is nearly impossible legally.) Some of the legal ways information brokers and PI's use to locate personal accounts are: (1) finding the subject's business account first; his personal account is probably with the same bank; (2) accessing the subject's credit report -- which can be done only given a "permissible purpose" under the FCRA -- then tracing his bank or banks through his loans and the inquiries that have been made to his report; (3) finding civil or criminal filings involving the subject which detail his financial holdings; bankruptcy and/or divorce filings are especially useful; (4) using Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filings to locate credit applications which contain banking and other financial information; (5) "dumpster diving," also known as "garbacology" -- searching the subject's garbage to find check stubs, brokerage account statements, etc. (believe it or not, this is legal, as long as the garbage has been put out at the curb in front of the subject's house); and a final trick: mailing a check for a few dollars to the subject, representing it as a "prize"; if the subject deposits it (and reportedly, this worked with Bill Gates!), the investigator receives back the cancelled check containing the subject's bank information on the back of the check (call your regional Federal Reserve Bank and have them look up the bank associated with the routing number stamped on the back of the check). 

Business Bank Accounts. Business bank accounts can be located in a variety of ways, such as through public business reference sources like Dun's Million Dollar Directory; to get D&B information online, try DNB.com  Business banking information can also sometimes be gleaned from the annual report of the company in question; perhaps the company's web site (which you can locate using AltaVista) contains its most recent annual report. 

Here's some "insider" info on this subject for those who want to know a little more. 

1. Collectible assets, such as art, antiques, stamps, coins, and jewlery are especially hard to find. Not infrequently, well-to-do husbands facing an impending divorce and debtors facing impending lawsuits hide assets in collectibles. Investigators search for these assets by looking for insurance policy addendums and riders. They're often found listed on homeowner's policies.
2. The number one method used by information brokers to locate bank accounts and to access other financial information on a subject is the subject's credit report (again, a permissible purpose is required for pulling someone's credit report). Using the credit report, the information broker has access, via the "Skip Trace Departments" and credit departments of lenders and merchants, to virtually every credit application the subject has ever filled out. These credit applications usually provide complete banking/financial information, including, often, even summaries of assets and insurance policies. (Since you probably can't use this method, not having a credit bureau account, you may need the assistance of an information professional if you require this sort of information.) 

Note: another common means of hiding assets is to prepay insurance policies (especially policies that pay interest). 
3. Finding a subject's real property is just a first step; you must also determine how much equity he or she has in the property. Is the property solely in the subject's name? A warranty deed, available at the county recorder's office, can help here. 
4. If your subject collects antique cars, it may not be possible to find them via a standard vehicle license search at DMV because they may not be currently licensed; you'll need to do a title search to find them. 
5. Off-shore Assets. Off-shore holdings are tough to uncover using public records, though indications may crop up in civil/criminal litigation. In legal proceedings lawyers often subpoena travel agency records, passports, telephone records, and hotel receipts in an effort to uncover evidence of overseas contacts or travel. Sometimes this can be discovered through airmail delivery receipts issued by package delivery services. 
6. In an effort to hide real estate assets, subjects sometimes purchase real estate in the names of relatives (the wife's maiden name is the favorite), as well as friends and associates. Investigators can sometimes uncover these assets by searching for real estate whose taxes are billed to the subject's home or mailing address. However, the subject may still have assets owned under aliases or not directly linked to him in any obvious way. If you suspect the subject is hiding assets, always search real estate records under the names of his known relatives, associates, and close friends. 
7. Probate records are often overlooked, even by seasoned private investigators. However, it's not uncommon to find that a subject has recently inherited substantial assets. Thus in cases involving major claims or other serious issues, always learn the names and addresses of the subject's parents (available through birth records), then search county probate records in the area where they live. Such records detail assets and liabilities left in an estate, and list the names and addresses of heirs. 
8. Tax liens and final judgments can also provide records of assets (and debts). This information can be gleaned from county courthouses or accessed by public records providers. 
9. To check for a past or ongoing business bankruptcy, visit bankruptcydata.com.