Learn how to effectively leverage court records, types of information you can extract from legal documents and how to integrate this information with other OSINT sources to build comprehensive intelligence reports.

Court records and legal documents have become essential tools for online investigators, as they offer valuable insights into individuals and businesses. These documents provide authenticated information about personal backgrounds, business relationships and financial situations that might be difficult to obtain through other open-source intelligence (OSINT) sources. While accessing some court records requires physical visits to courthouses, today's digital landscape has made these documents readily available through various online platforms and databases.

The importance of court documents in online investigations

Court records provide a wealth of information for online investigators, including personal, business and legal information. Here are some practical examples of the kind of information online investigators can get from court records:

Identifying individuals and their personal and business connections

Court records often contain a full legal name, a father and mother's name, a date of birth and mailing addresses. This allows us to identify individuals along with their current or past resident addresses.

On the other hand, family relationships such as spouses, children, parents and siblings can be revealed by checking divorce records, custody disputes and probate records. In contrast, business affiliations can be revealed by checking lawsuits involving businesses, such as company owners, business partners and employees, which provide valuable insights into a target’s professional relationships.

Revealing background information

We can get quite a lot of background information by inspecting someone's court records. For example, by inspecting criminal court records, we can get someone's criminal history, including arrests, conviction and sentencing. Civil litigation records reveal information about personal injury cases, contract disputes and property disputes. This information can reveal the target’s character, financial situation and past behavior.

Bankruptcy filings, property records and tax liens can provide insights into the target's financial history and current status. Records from professional licensing boards can reveal whether an individual holds a license in a particular field and if they have been subject to any disciplinary actions.

Verifying information

Court records enable a method for verifying information, such as addresses, dates of birth and employment history, acquired from other sources like social media platforms and government databases.

Court records can also help us discover new leads in our investigations. For instance, court records may mention witnesses, associates or other individuals involved in a case, which provides new avenues for investigation.

Take a deep dive into navigating public records requests, searching legal databases and tips on how OSINT and legal investigation tactics can benefit one another in our podcast episode, Legal and OSINT: hunting down the bullsh*t >>>

Tools and resources to start your search

We can begin our search for court records using the following resources:

  • PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) - provides online access to over a billion documents filed in all U.S. federal courts. A browser extension called RECAP can be installed to make searching this vast database easier
  • UniCour - Provides access to ligation data from 3,000+ state and federal courts across 40+ states, comprising over 1 billion dockets and documents
  • CourtListener - Search millions of legal decisions by case name, topic, or citation in 469 Jurisdictions across the US
  • Justia - Provides access to legal resources and case law
  • Judyrecords - A completely free, nationwide search platform that allows you to instantly access and search through hundreds of millions of U.S. court cases and lawsuits
  • Integrated Database (IDB) - Provides comprehensive data on civil case filings, criminal defendant records, and case terminations across U.S. district courts, in addition to bankruptcy court and appellate court case information from 1970 to the present
  • Violation Tracker - A comprehensive database documenting corporate misconduct, featuring resolved lawsuits against companies across various sectors. It includes cases related to banking violations, consumer protection, false claims, environmental issues, wage and hour disputes, workplace safety, discrimination, price-fixing and more. The database covers cases resolved by federal regulatory agencies and all divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice since the year 2000 (see Figure 1)
     
Violation Tracker 
Figure 1 - Violation Tracker tracks companies' offenses and unfair practices

Tracking bankruptcy filings

Bankruptcy filings serve as a crucial intelligence source for investigators, revealing critical financial insights about individuals and businesses. Here is why they matter and what information we can get out of them:

  • Financial status: Bankruptcy filings point to significant financial problems, which can be connected to other issues in various investigations
  • Asset identification: These documents list specific assets, including real estate holdings, vehicles, investments and intellectual property, which can be helpful when tracing assets or conducting due diligence
  • Reveal liability information: Filings detail creditors, debt amounts and payment histories; this provides insight into target individual or company financial obligations
  • Reveal relationships: Bankruptcy documents name key stakeholders, business partners, affiliated companies and major creditors, helping map out business networks and potential conspirators, which help reveal relationships with other parties
  • Fraud indicators: Bankruptcy files highlight suspicious patterns like asset transfers before filing, undisclosed income sources, or mismatched lifestyle indicators (comparing declared income against social media activity showing luxury purchases, high-end travel or expensive property acquisitions), which signal potential fraud schemes. Cross-referencing bankruptcy claims against social media footprints helps detect financial misrepresentation and hidden assets

There are different types of information investigators can get from bankruptcy documents such as:

  • Personal information - Full name, aliases, mailing address, phone number, email address and date of birth
  • Financial information - Declared assets (Real estate, vehicles, bank accounts, investments), liabilities (Debts to creditors, loans, mortgages, unpaid taxes) and income and expenses (such as details of income sources and monthly expenses)
  • Business information - If the case involves a business, the following information can be acquired:
    • Business ownership (business owners, partners and shareholders)
    • Business assets
    • Business financial statements
  • Legal information - Bankruptcy type (chapter 7, 9 or 13), case details, attorney and creditors information

Here are some resources for investigating bankruptcy cases:

  • Bkdata - Access bankruptcy records online for free across the USA
  • ICGC - Bankruptcy and insolvency records search in Canada
  • United States Courts - U.S. bankruptcy filings
  • Inforuptcy - Bankruptcy monitoring and alerts for any newly bankrupt business
  • Opencorporates - While not listing bankruptcy-related information, however, it should be used to cross-reference bankruptcy data with corporate records

To learn more about uncovering individual backgrounds in financial crime investigations with OSINT, check out this blog >>>

Cross-referencing court records with other OSINT sources

Cross-referencing information acquired from court records with other OSINT sources is important for the following reasons:

  • To verify and validate collected information: Court documents are generally reliable but may contain missing or inaccurate information. Cross-referencing this information with other sources, such as vital records and posts on social media platforms, helps verify their authenticity
  • Provide comprehensive context: Court records deal with a specific case in a specific context, while other OSINT sources give broader context, such as investigating the general lifestyle of a person from their social media posts
  • May reveal new leads: Combining information from court records with other sources may reveal new leads, such as personal relationships with other people or business relationships with other companies

For example, when a criminal record shows a previous conviction for theft, while the person's Facebook and Instagram profiles display luxury purchases and a lavish lifestyle, this raises red flags about their income sources. On the other hand, when bankruptcy court records show a company claimed financial hardship, but their LinkedIn posts advertise new office locations and hiring new employees, while their procurement records show continued high-value contracts, these contradictions warrant deeper investigation into potential financial misrepresentation.

Court records serve as valuable investigative tools, providing investigators with important personal, business and legal information. These records reveal individuals' identities, personal connections, and business affiliations through various documents like divorce records, custody disputes, and business lawsuits. Criminal and civil litigation records offer insights into someone's background, while bankruptcy filings expose financial status, assets and potential fraud indicators. Multiple online resources facilitate court record searches, including PACER, UniCourt, and CourtListener. Cross-referencing court records with other OSINT sources helps verify information accuracy, provides comprehensive context, and reveals new investigative leads. For instance, comparing bankruptcy claims against social media activity can expose financial misrepresentation, while tracking company statements on platforms like LinkedIn against court filings may indicate fraudulent practices.

Securely store documents for collaboration and analysis

Often, investigators have multiple documents on multiple platforms to analyze, store and share their findings, creating a disorganized and disjointed workflow, if using dirty machines. This DIY system leaves room for error in compliance and no audit trail. The Silo digital investigation platform helps investigators manage their caseload effectively with built-in features, including capture and annotation, to simplify the data collection and analysis process. Silo’s secure, shared storage enables investigators to collaborate and share their findings from their analysis with peers without ever having to leave the platform while adhering to policy. Learn more on how to streamline and simplify your investigation with Silo.

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