Digging up Nuggets

As an innate detective and now a student of professional investigation, it is amazing the amount of information I was able to dig up on my ex simply by using the World Wide Web. Today I will share with you some of the sites I found that provided nuggets of information about my ex and uncovered some of the lies he told.

The first lie from Bob came even before we met in person. We met through an online dating site and emailed each other for a couple weeks before finally meeting. One of the first emails he sent said that he now lived in an apartment, but that he had previously owned a home which he sold to move closer to his job. He said that he had chosen to live in an apartment because he didn't want to deal with the maintenance required in owning a home. A public record search of deeds showed that he did own a home but he didn't sell it, it went to foreclosure. The reason he was living in an apartment was not so he could avoid home maintenance, it was because he had filed for bankruptcy and wouldn't be able to get a loan on a home. Check out www.masslandrecords.com for online searching.

A few days later he "remembered" he did own a home! He had forgotten when he wrote the last email! The reason he didn't remember was because he had just bought the house and it was income property. Wrong again. He did buy the house but a search of the deeds showed that he bought it from a close friend. Later, he admitted that even though the house was in his name, he didn't collect the rent on the property, pay the mortgage or the taxes, or do any of the maintenance. The friend took care of everything. A search on the friend at www.pipl.com turned up a government article stating that the friend, an attorney, had misappropriated funds for one of his clients, a child, and had lost his license to practice for three years. My guess is the friend was hiding assets but that I'll never know.

Another interesting piece to the puzzle turned up at www.archive.org. Bob said he had 50% ownership in a company he worked for. I was suspicious because the partner really put himself out there as the true owner. This website allows you to look at historical data on a website. That means that I can access their company website from previous years even though that site is no longer available on the web. I was able to see that as of December 2006, both men were listed on their website as "principals" with both photos side by side. But in January 2007 the site changed. The partner became President and CEO and Bob became Vice President of Sales. I put on my detective hat and surmise that they once were 50-50 partners but that must have changed in January 2007.

And one last site for now. You can also check out corporate ownership (and officers) through your state government site. Corporate filings are available, in the state of Massachusetts, at www.sec.state.ma.us. Just one more nugget to support my theory.