7 Places a Private Investigator Looks for Hidden Assets

By David Schassler, licensed New York private investigator. Updated October 2026

Headline Answer

A private investigator finds what a person owns through public records and field work, such as deeds, liens, lawsuits, companies, vehicles, aircraft, boats and unclaimed money. She can't lawfully get bank balances by lying to a bank. Her search tells your lawyer which banks to subpoena, and the court gets the records from there.

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We get asked about asset searches by people on two sides of the same problem. One is owed money and can't find it. The other is in a divorce and thinks the other spouse is moving it. Both want the same thing, a true picture of what someone owns. The pages below show you where an investigator looks, the one line she can't cross, and how the court fills in the rest.

Asset Search vs Bank Account Search

Most people who ask for an asset search picture a list of bank balances. That's not what a lawful search can hand you.

What a licensed investigator can build is a map of what a person owns on paper, and where the money most likely sits. The account numbers and balances come later, through a court. The two jobs fit together, and you need both.

Asset search vs bank account search
Question	Asset search by an investigator	Bank records through a court
What you get	Real estate, liens, lawsuits, companies, vehicles, aircraft, boats, public securities filings, unclaimed funds, and leads to banks	Statements, balances and account numbers
Who gets it	The investigator, from public records and field work	Your lawyer, by subpoena or discovery once a case is open⁵
When it helps most	Before you sue, early in a divorce, or after you win a judgment	Once you know which banks to ask
The legal line	No lying to a bank to get account facts. That is a federal crime.¹²	The court sets the scope and the deadlines

The search is what makes the subpoena work. A lawyer who knows the name of the bank on a mortgage or a loan filing asks for the right records the first time.

7 Places a Private Investigator Looks

Good asset work is slow, paper heavy and mostly public. These are the seven places a careful investigator checks, roughly in the order she checks them.

What can a private investigator find out about a person's assets?

A licensed investigator can usually find real estate, mortgages, liens, lawsuits and judgments, business ownership, vehicles, aircraft, boats, public securities filings and unclaimed money held by the state. She can also find leads to banks and brokers. She can't lawfully get bank balances by lying to a bank.

County recorder. Deeds, mortgages and deeds of trust are filed with the county. A mortgage names the lender, which is often the first bank lead in the file. Search every county the person has lived in, not just the current one.
Courts. Lawsuits, judgments, bankruptcies and divorce cases list property and money in sworn papers. Federal cases sit in PACER, which charges 10 cents a page, caps a document at $3, and waives the bill if you spend $30 or less in a quarter.¹²
Business filings and UCC liens. The secretary of state shows the companies a person runs, and the lien filings show who lent money against equipment or inventory. A company that owns the truck, the condo or the boat is a common place to park an asset.
Vehicles, aircraft and boats. The FAA's aircraft registry offers fourteen free searches, including one by owner name, and updates each federal workday.⁹ Planes and boats are often titled to a company, so run the company names too.
Securities filings. SEC EDGAR is free, and full text search covers more than 20 years of filings and can be filtered by person.¹⁰ It shows officers, directors and big holders of public companies.
Unclaimed property. Dormant accounts, uncashed checks and old stock go to the state. NAUPA says about 1 in 7 people have some, and searching is free.¹¹ A forgotten account in one state can point to a bank in another.
Lifestyle and field work. The boat in the photos, the new truck in the driveway, the lake house on a weekend. Watching and documenting how a person lives is lawful in public, and it's what proves a claim of being broke wrong. The guide to how surveillance works covers the limits.

Cover page of a 1983 abstract of Deed Book 1 from the Recorder's Office at the Madison County Court House in London, Ohio — Property records start at the county recorder. Abstract of Deed Book 1, Madison County, Ohio, by Rachel E. Dennison, 1983, State Library of Ohio via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

None of the seven gives you a bank balance. Together they tell your lawyer where to aim.

The Bank Account Rule

One federal law decides how far an investigator can go with money. It's the pretexting section of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act.

It bars anyone from getting a bank customer's information by making a false statement to the bank, a false statement to a customer, or by handing over a fake or stolen document. Asking someone else to do it for you is a violation too.¹ A knowing violation carries up to 5 years in prison. That rises to 10 years when it's part of a pattern of more than $100,000 in a year, or tied to another federal crime.²

Can a private investigator find hidden bank accounts?

Not by calling a bank and pretending to be the account holder. Federal law makes that a crime for the investigator and for the client who asks for it. What she can do is find bank leads in public records, such as a lender on a deed or a lien filing, so your lawyer can subpoena the right bank.

The FTC has been chasing this for a long time. In April 2001 its staff screened 1,000 websites and over 500 print ads and found about 200 firms offering to get and sell asset or bank account information.³ In 2002 it settled with brokers who sold bank balances for $100 to $600. In a sting, one broker called a bank posing as a customer and read back the balance. The FTC's consumer protection director warned that the buyers, often law firms and businesses, break the law too when they knowingly buy it.⁴

There is one narrow carve out. A state licensed investigator may get information needed to collect child support from a parent a court has found delinquent, but only with a court order or judgment that allows it.¹

If an agency quotes you a flat price for "all bank accounts and balances" with no court case open, walk away. That offer is the exact thing the FTC sued over.

How the Court Gets the Rest

The bank records themselves come through the case. Your lawyer has strong tools once there's a lawsuit, a judgment or a divorce on file.

After a Judgment

In federal court, a creditor who won a money judgment may take discovery from any person, including the debtor, to find what can be collected.⁵ California adds the debtor exam. The court must order the debtor to come in and answer questions about assets if the creditor hasn't examined them in the last 120 days. The order is served at least 30 days ahead and creates a one year lien on the debtor's personal property.⁶

In a Divorce

California makes each spouse list every asset and debt in a preliminary declaration of disclosure, signed under penalty of perjury, within 60 days of filing. Community or separate, it all goes on the form.⁷ The penalty for hiding something is steep. A court can award the other spouse 50 percent of an asset that wasn't disclosed, or 100 percent when the breach involves oppression, fraud or malice. The claim generally has to be filed within 3 years of learning about it, but that limit doesn't apply inside the divorce itself.⁸

How do you prove someone is hiding assets?

You compare what they swore to with what the records and their lifestyle show. An investigator documents property, companies, vehicles and spending that don't match the disclosure. Your lawyer then uses subpoenas, depositions and the court's disclosure rules to get the account records and put the gap in front of the judge.

Other states have their own versions of these rules. If your case is in California, the woman owned agencies listed in California work under the same code sections cited above.

What Gets Left Out

Most asset search pages online are sales pages. They promise hidden bank accounts, brokerage accounts and retirement funds, then stop. Three things go missing.

How the bank facts are found. A page that lists bank accounts as a deliverable and never mentions a subpoena is either vague or doing something you don't want your name near.⁴
Proof that holds up. A list of assets with no copies of the deeds, filings or photos behind it is a rumor. Ask for every finding with its record attached, so your lawyer can use it.
What wasn't searched. A clean result from one county means one county. Ask which counties, states and registries were checked, and for which years.

The best asset report reads like a road map for the lawyer. It says what was found, where, on what date, and which bank or broker to subpoena next.

Motor yachts tied up along a marina dock at sunset — Boats and planes are often titled to a company, not a person. Marina photo by Amr F. Nagy, Wikimedia Commons, public domain, cropped.

When an Asset Search Is Worth It

An asset search pays for itself when there's real money on the other side and someone is working to keep it from you.

Before you sue. Find out if the other side can pay before you spend on a lawsuit.
After you win. A judgment is paper until you find something to levy.
In a divorce with a business. Company owners have the most ways to move money out of sight.
In probate. Heirs and executors use it to find what the estate really held.

What does a private investigator asset search report include?

A good report lists each asset found, the record it came from, the date it was checked, and copies of the key filings. It also lists every place searched with no result, plus the bank and broker leads your lawyer can subpoena next.

Get the scope in writing before you pay. Our list of questions to ask before a retainer works for asset cases too. Add two more. Ask her to confirm in writing that she won't contact any bank under a false name. And ask if she has testified about her findings before.

On Shleuth, 35 of the 156 woman owned agencies we list name asset searches as a service, across 19 states. Many more do the work under fraud, litigation support or skip tracing.

Primary Sources

General information, not legal advice. State laws on debtor exams, divorce disclosure and investigator licensing differ.

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