With advances in technology and the growing complexity of global banking and business, numerous new avenues of deceit are created daily for swindlers to mask illegal and fraudulent activity. The money movement between companies, governments, and individuals has become easier in this digital age. Yet harder to follow for those responsible for the financial accountability of their corporations and businesses. Technological advances and monetary systems are now digital, and the application development for complex financial investigations has not kept up until now. Our proprietary software technology, DIO (short for Diogenes), is announcing a litigation support component integrated with the power of DIO.
Sage Investigations, LLC offers the legal profession, fraud examiners, and financial investigators DIO-aided tools for building a searchable “Document Index.” This document index contains all searchable text from word processors, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs and keeps the data organized and at your fingertips. The tools reduce manual input, minimize human error, and create a timeline. The contents of the discovery documents are managed by computer efficiency and using Bates numbering and evidence-based reporting.
Sage’s proprietary software decreases the time on cases from importing data to report writing while increasing data accuracy and access for better results where following the flow of money is paramount. DIO cases include financial frauds: Ponzi schemes, embezzlement, vendor fraud, divorce asset tracing, crypto-currency, and other white-collar fraud.
Case Study: Investigations by Sage generally involve boxes of records, including bank, brokerage, and credit card statements, emails, text, instant messages, WhatsApp, and records of assets and liabilities and other related financial documents, which are digitized, organized, bates numbered and categorized into actionable information for use by DIO.
Recently, Sage was retained to help develop evidence to defend a client whose assets, in excess of $2,000,000, were seized for Civil Forfeiture by US Government agencies. Sage found that using digital tools such as standard spreadsheets was insufficient, so DIO was implemented to create a financial case database and timeline from the financial documents and related records of several people and entities. DIO’s techniques and tools expedited the data entry into digital financial data objects. These data objects were exported into the DIO application to create a financial database that appended the images of financial documents for over 25 bank and brokerage accounts. The financial data was available in a searchable format, and reporting was in the form of a Sources and Uses Statement and other IRS CI- court case approved indirect methods of proof. Result: Using Sage as a partner in the defense decreased the initial tedious workload of the lawyers and afforded the client a more reasonable cost for compiling the data in a workable format. It also afforded the client the expertise of forensic accountants and Certified Fraud Examiners.
DIO Features:
- All documents are converted from the natural state to PDF, Optical Character Recognized (OCRed), and Bates Numbered for inclusion with financial transactions.
- Computer-aided tools for building a searchable Document Index for the entire content of documents, keywords, and bates numbers.
- Interfaces for manual data entry and organization
- Ability to follow the money movement between accounts, create a timeline for related activities, add notes, and link transactions into groups.
- Intuitive recommendations for data organization.
- Advanced search tools, including fuzzy searching features.
- Backup and Restore features for case management
If you are faced with a complex financial investigation or income tax defense, contact Retired IRS Special Agent Edmond J. Martin, Chief Investigator at Sage Investigations, LLC, email edmartin@sageinvestigations.com or call 512-659-3179. DIO is waiting to help you process the case data and help defend your client. DIO can help you follow the money and advance the development of your case. Click to read about the Sage Team and their CVs.