How to investigate assets: lessons from The Wire

I’m rewatching The Wire. It’s a great series anyhow, but for researchers, episode 9 of the first season (2002) is especially interesting. It features detective Lester Freamon instructing detectives Roland Pryzbylewski and Leander Sydnor how to investigate the assets of drug kingpin Avon Barksdale.

They use microfilm instead of the Internet. They don’t have databases like Orbis, Companyinfo or OpenCorporates, and they don’t seem to calculate social network metrics. Yet the general principles behind Freamon’s methodology still make perfect sense today:

Start with the nightclub that Barksdale owns. Look up Orlando’s, by address, you match it, and you see it’s owned by - who?

Turns out it’s owned by D & B Enterprises. Freamon tells Prez to take that information to the state office buildings on Preston Street.

Preston Street?

Corporate charter office.

Corporate who?

They have the paperwork on every corporation and LLC licensed to do business in the state. You look up D & B Enterprises on the computer. You’re going to get a little reel of microfilm. Pull the corporate charter papers that way. Write down every name you see. Corporate officers, shareholders or, more importantly, the resident agent on the filing who is usually a lawyer. While they use front names as corporate officers, they usually use the same lawyer to do the charter filing. Find that agent’s name, run it through the computer, find out what other corporations he’s done the filing for, and that way we find other front companies.

This is pretty much the same approach you’d take when investigating shady temp agencies: trace connections via (former) shareholders, board members, company addresses and related party transactions. And, of course, try to figure out where the profits go.

On that aspect, Freamon also has some wisdom to share:

And here’s the rub. You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.