From Spear's Magazine, October 6:
The world of private investigations has moved beyond the classic Hollywood image – slick firms are crunching data and tracking down crypto assets for HNW and corporate clients.
Once upon a time, a divorcing multimillionaire minded to hide his wealth might have slipped funds quietly into the bank account of an obliging relative or created a Panama front company in order to buy his own superyacht. Today the same kind of evasion might involve a simpler yet potentially more elusive asset, one that doesn’t require a crew or gallons of fuel: cryptocurrencies.
Private investigators are racing to become specialists in tracing crypto assets, often for law firms acting in divorce cases. Marlon Pinto, director of investigations at Another Day, a boutique London investigations firm, says enquiries started in May 2020. ‘Nobody was really jumping on it back then,’ he says.
Until 2018, Pinto had pursued more tangible assets as a detective in the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad. His cases included the notorious Hatton Garden safe heist of 2015. Now requests for crypto investigations reach his desk almost weekly. The work is complex but typically involves using forensic software to find links between anonymised crypto wallets and real-world entities such as bank accounts and IP addresses. Pinto and his growing team package the results for clients and the courts. ‘A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at the Family Court in London and there were nearly 50 judges trying to understand how we do this, because there’s such massive growth,’ he says.
The sudden need for such work is just one way the landscape is shifting for a rapidly evolving industry that is often maligned yet in greater demand than ever. Investigators report that HNWs and family offices are reaching for their phone numbers as readily as those of Michelin-starred restaurants and private jet brokers.
‘A lot of the big players are heavy on due diligence for corporates,’ says Lily Kennett, who runs the intelligence and investigations department at law firm Schillings. ‘But I think there’s a real need for investigative work for individuals, which has been a real growth area.’...
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