Private Investigator Leverkusen | Private Detective Leverkusen –

Kurtz Detective Agency Germany*

Third-Best Detective Agency in Germany in the Service Provider Ranking of Wirtschaftswoche

Kurtz Detective Agency is available throughout the Rhineland with IHK-certified specialist detectives for private and corporate investigations: +49 221 4558 0377. Although we are based in Cologne, for surveillance operations in Leverkusen we only charge half an hour per outward and return journey as well as 20 kilometres – figures that can easily also arise from assignments starting directly within the city area. As a matter of principle, we pursue a fair fee policy, about which you are welcome to inform yourself here. Not yet convinced? Take a look at our references.

 

Below is a case example from Leverkusen that deals with a very complex investigation in the field of corporate fraud:

Case Example: Multi-Million Fraud via Shell Companies | Commercial Fraud Network

A court-enforced debt title in the six-figure range and total losses amounting to several million euros – these were the circumstances under which our detective agency in Leverkusen was contacted by a local company. This company had entered into various seemingly legitimate goods delivery transactions with a Mr Loope, who presented an apparently successful track record and numerous well-performing companies. The client paid the majority of the invoice amount in advance, yet no goods were ever delivered, as Mr Loope’s company had allegedly become insolvent; a corresponding insolvency application did in fact exist.

 

The injured company clearly regarded itself as the victim of a perfidious deception fraud, also known as inducement fraud. This form of fraud occurs when goods or services are ordered even though the purchaser knows from the outset that they cannot or do not intend to pay for them, or when payments are accepted for services or goods that are known from the beginning to be impossible to provide or deliver. As a service provider, our private detective agency in Leverkusen also occasionally has to deal with such fraudsters in the course of collecting its own claims – so this is by no means an isolated case. However, the commercial scale and the associated criminal energy evident in this example are extraordinary:

Commercial Insolvency Fraud via a Thicket of Shell Companies

The objective of our detectives’ investigations in Leverkusen was to locate Mr Loope, whose liability had been judicially established in absentia, as he could not be traced either by the client or by the authorities, with all available data leading nowhere. The research proved lengthy and complex, as our corporate investigators had to fight their way through a network of shell companies. The difficulties began with the name alone, as various different spellings of both first and last name appeared online, in police records and even in the commercial register for what was clearly the same individual, along with differing dates and places of birth and a multitude of alleged residential addresses.

 

Our detective team in Leverkusen created a graphic illustrating the various companies, addresses and other individuals linked to Mr Loope. Over the course of the investigation, this graphic expanded continuously until it eventually covered an area of approximately eleven square metres and resembled a spider’s web, as cross-connections emerged everywhere and were marked accordingly. In total, the overview comprised 78 companies in which the target person was currently or previously registered as managing director or authorised signatory, 134 company addresses associated with these entities, 69 insolvency applications, 8 individuals who repeatedly appeared together with Mr Loope and were evidently firmly integrated into the activities, six different spellings of the target person’s name, and 27 alleged current or former residential addresses. This investigation was a mammoth task – firstly compiling all of this information, secondly analysing it and establishing the interconnections, and thirdly verifying the details.

Physical Verification of the Information Identified

Further measures taken by our corporate detective agency in Leverkusen included:

 

• On-site verification of all researched residential addresses associated with the target person: Mr Loope had never been seen at a single one; at almost all of them, various people had already asked about him on numerous occasions. However, these physical checks did enable the identification or establishment of additional corporate links.
• On-site verification of 36 of the company addresses (a higher number was not feasible for budgetary reasons), preferably those with a high degree of overlap between various companies and individuals recorded in the network (33 in Germany, 2 in Switzerland (a further three in the letterbox-company canton of Zug could safely be disregarded), 1 in Austria): At none of these addresses were there any employees; most were purely letterbox addresses, occasionally there was a basement room serving as an office, and at seven of the addresses there were no indications whatsoever of the company allegedly based there.
• Verification of 24 addresses of individuals linked within the network (connections via shareholdings, authorised signatories, activities as liquidators, domain ownerships and others, sometimes also involving relatives): At none of these addresses were the individuals sought personally known, although enquiries, as in the case of Mr Loope, had already been made many times.

Further noteworthy: Despite the already obvious criminal characteristics of this corporate construct at that stage of the investigation, several of the individuals involved appeared in respectable positions: chairpersons of cultural associations, supporters of sports clubs, lawyers and a local politician.

Methodology of This Commercial Corporate Fraud

The business model behind these massively inflated fraudulent activities apparently relied on the following factors, Variant 1:

• Establishment of new companies for the purported execution of lucrative projects
• Recruitment of investors or customers to obtain financial resources
• Silent refusal to perform the agreed services and transfer of the invested sums to accounts of other companies within the network
• Opening of insolvency proceedings | dissolution or deletion of the subsequently over-indebted companies or takeover by the same recurring liquidators

 

Variant 2:

• Establishment of new companies for the actual execution of projects by investors
• Implementation of the projects by third-party companies
• Non-payment of the third-party companies, resulting in claims by those companies against the project companies
• Opening of insolvency proceedings | dissolution or deletion of the subsequently over-indebted project companies or takeover by the same recurring liquidators

 

Variant 3:

• Establishment of new trading companies

• Recruitment of customers to obtain financial resources

• Deliberate over-indebtedness through non-delivery of paid goods

• Opening of insolvency proceedings | dissolution or deletion of over-indebted companies or takeover by the same recurring liquidators

 

Through the corporate connections between the individual persons and companies, the founders and or investors are able to obscure their financial gains from the insolvency assets.

Legend-Based Meeting with the Sought-After Corporate Fraudster

After uncovering all of these backgrounds, our private detectives in Leverkusen ultimately succeeded in identifying a project company of Mr Loope that was actively seeking investors and provided contact details with genuine reachability. Using the legend of business initiation or an investment project, a meeting with the target person was arranged in a medium-sized town in Rhineland-Palatinate, followed by several hours of surveillance by the investigators in order to determine where Mr Loope lived. Unfortunately, he did not lead us to his home, but to a hotel – evidently the said town was not his place of residence.

 

Given the scale of the criminal network and the amount of the debt title against the target person, our corporate detectives in Leverkusen strongly advised the commissioning company to continue the surveillance of Mr Loope without interruption, even though this would of course have incurred high detective costs. Unfortunately, the clients showed no patience, contacted the authorities and had the fraudster provisionally detained. The result: Not only was the target person allowed to leave the police station a few hours later after providing a false address of residence, but he also claimed to possess no assets subject to seizure and thus to be unable to satisfy the debt title. Mr Loope was allegedly insolvent and had long since opened the relevant proceedings. It is conceivable that continued surveillance might sooner or later have led our Leverkusen detectives to attachable assets such as a villa, vehicles or other physical property that could then have been seized, provided that ownership had not once again been obscured through transfers or other concealment tactics.

What If …

Ultimately, our detective agency in Leverkusen did fulfil the assignment objective of locating the debtor. Nevertheless, the overall result was of course unsatisfactory, as he once again evaded access by authorities and the client immediately after the investigation, meaning that neither seizure nor voluntary payment took place.

 

In all honesty, it must be said that even with continued knowledge of the place of residence, the successful enforcement of the adjudicated claim would have remained questionable, firstly because further concealment tactics were to be expected and secondly because many bailiffs (by no means all) unfortunately work in a more than sloppy manner. Although they are legally equipped with extensive powers and may even forcibly open residential premises in order to enforce legal claims, these public servants also suffer from the infamous civil service malaise known as laziness. The greater the effort, the more strenuous and uncomfortable the day. Consequently, it sometimes suffices for a debtor, if they encounter such black sheep of the profession, simply to claim that they have nothing, as such assertions are not verified by these bailiffs. When one, like us at Kurtz Detective Agency for Leverkusen, experiences such events and has conversations with absurdly unmotivated public officials, one may legitimately ask whether choosing to solve crime instead of committing it is really the more sensible option – economically speaking, certainly not.

Notice

In order to safeguard discretion and the personal rights of clients and target persons, all names and locations in this case report have been altered beyond recognition.

Examples of Areas of Operation for Our Detectives in the Leverkusen Region:

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• Detective Agency for Bergisch Gladbach (Rheinisch-Bergischer District)
• Detective Agency for Burscheid (Rheinisch-Bergischer District)
• Detective Agency for Dormagen (Rhein-Kreis Neuss)
• Detective Agency for Langenfeld (Mettmann District)
• Detective Agency for Leichlingen (Rheinisch-Bergischer District)
• Detective Agency for Monheim (Mettmann District)
• Detective Agency for Odenthal (Rheinisch-Bergischer District)
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