I know a person on facebook who i dont talk to much. He basically added me a while back. But all he does do is seem to post messages such as how great his live is etc and he loves to talk about big things. I dont know the guy that well but i feel like this guy is saying this to make himself look good.
Is there a way to find out if this guy owns property or stuff like that? Obviously if they do, then they have a good amount of money. But i have a feeling he doesn’t.
Or of course you hear about a person who talks about how great of a job he has etc and all of that. Obviously you can’t find this out unless you see this person go to work or etc.
Only thing i know about him is his name and what city he is from. Don’t know much. Is there a way to find out this?
Generally the ownership details of real estate is a matter of public record.
Many counties have a searchable system available over the internet. Just Google “property ownership public records <insert county and state name here>”
Iggy is right - details are usually public record - some states suck more than other on depth and breadth of info.
That being said - it is very easy to show that 123 elm street is owned by John Smith - it is much harder to prove that John Smith doesn’t own any properties.
Cause if John Smith is like many con artists - they keep their assets under shell corporations and such. I mean that if you were to challenge your Facebook friend with the thorough search you did showing he owned no properties in such and such a state - he can simply state “What - you searched under my name - of course you didn’t find anything under my real name!”
“Smart guys like me use LLCs, S Corps, Partnerships, and C Corps to reduce our tax exposure and potential liabilities. Hell - I need extra accountants to keep it all straight - and that is without even talking about my offshore corporations. Every since that stuff with the Swiss - I’ve kept a low profile. Belize, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica - you wouldn’t believe all the stuff I get to do - luckily I have some good hedge funds paying 20%”
You can’t prove he is lying - unless he gives enough detail as to how they are structured.
Some states - like mine - you can see peoples mortgages even. You could easily in my state, Maryland, check out who his mortgage was with, how much it was for, the rate he got (probably) - and it could give you a clue to his real level of sophistication. But seems like a lot of trouble, but I’ve spent time doing worse…
Yeah, detail is your ally. If he posts pictures of or from his house and you know the rough area, you might be able to narrow down the street etc. (There’s a whole in-depth discussion I saw once on the location of Sheldon’s apartment in Big Bang Theory, based on the view out his window).
If the guy is a compulsive liar, rather than a conniving con-man, then over time you can pick holes in his stories, and they will begin to contradict each other. For example, odds are details of his car or his job will change as he can’t remember exactly what he said last month. Other stupid stuff will surface - what are the odds a small high-tech company owner can afford to take a month and a half off to go trekking in Nepal?
A con-man will have the detailed cover story already constructed and rule number one, give as little detail as possible. If he’s trying to get you to invest, he will have a decent amount of detail about only the important stuff for his project.
Well the only thing is i know what state he is at. I have no clue where in the state he is but the only thing i know about him is his age/name and his city. Would that be good enough? Of course i have zero clue what his job is b/c he never mentions what it is but just says how great of a job he has and how he can go vacation a lot etc.
Maybe you should just unfriend him. Do you really want to spend your time trying to learn more this guy you barely know just so you can hopefully catch him in a lie?
If I had the money to start up the vat lobster company, I could go wandering off all I liked because I would have to hire management that were able to run the company, techies with the bio degrees and techies with the engineering degrees and other people with other skills to make it all work.
Just because someone owns a high tech company, does not mean that they themselves have to be a boffin - just have the money and connections and ability to put the company together.
I don’t know about that. Depending on management and engineers to run your company while you wander around Nepal for six weeks sounds like a good way to be the guy who used to own a company. I’m not an owner, but a lot of them work for me, and pretty much every owner I know is available, if not 24/7, at least on 24 hours notice. You’ve gotta pay the cost to be the boss.
Can you tell us the city/state? It’s hard to come up with a specific answer.
You should try your local property tax assessor. The property value and amount of property taxes paid are public records. Often, these are on the internet, but you should be able to at least go into the office and look them up.
Short answer: you are unlikely to come up with conclusive, or even useful, results.
As others have noted, a lack of property in his name doesn’t really prove anything, as it could be owned by proxies or corporations.
Similarly, property in his name doesn’t prove much. That million dollar house he owns could be fully paid off, or he could owe more than a million on it and be six months behind on his mortgage.
He could be talking big to make himself seem more important than he is, or he could be trying to hide (maybe even from himself) that things aren’t as good as they used to be.
It’s kind of like those “how can I tell if my boyfriend is cheating” questions people send into Dear Abby, in that the real issue has nothing to do with the question. You don’t trust your boyfriend. If he deserves that, he is the problem, but if he doesn’t you are, and either way this is unlikely to be a fixable relationship.
The real issue here is you have the feeling your Facebook acquaintance is lying to you. And the real question is do you want to keep him as a “friend”.
You suspect he’s a liar.
If you are interested in a quixotic quest to try to help fix his life, go for it. Tell him you don’t care if he has money, or vacations in exotic places. Tell him you get the impression he talks about those things because he’s insecure and wants you to like him, and you like him anyway.
Or cut him loose.
If he’s a liar, pretending you believe him isn’t helping him. If he isn’t a liar, he sounds like a jerk.
I suppose, if you have an interest in having a friend who only boasts about the expensive stuff he does, …
But short answer: No, you are unlikely to get satisfactory proof one way or the other about whether the stuff he brags about on Facebook is at all real.
Unless the guy is willing to leak hints over time about his job, neighbourhood, house value, type of car, etc. etc. - you are not going to find him. After all, if he’s that cagey, what are the odds he’s using his real name?
Anyone running a company smaller than about 30 to 50 people probably is putting 16 hours a day, 6 days a week into it. The company has to be doing really really well before you can afford the surplus cash to (a) be hands off and (b) hire reliable good management at a price they will accept. The guy who makes it rich is either a very hi-tech guru (or expert in whatever the business is) or a very good salesman who can also manage.
The guy who makes it rich in the lobster business started out managing all those vats with a few hired hands… and his wife does the accounting and payroll and order-taking. How big does the business have to get before you can afford the office staff and a manager you can trust to run the place for weeks on end? That level of commitment and capability probably would pay over $100,000 which means a lot of profit over and above the vat workers…
Oh, and if the guy actually* owns *a business, hat has been successful and is raking in the bucks, he is outstanding in his field and likely to pop up on LinkedIn, Google, etc. The rich world is a small place.
The only occupation I can think of where someone would be rich and be able to take extended time off, would be a term contract super-techie… But again, he’d be in LinkedIn and his résumé would be online.
Hey, folks, there are lots of moderately rich entrepreneurs out there who can take some time off.
Take this anacdote:
A family visited our area and saw the place for an upscale mexican restaurant. The father put up the money and put his 20 year old son in charge.
In 10 years, that son had grown that business into 5 locations and a thriving nightclub. He owned a million-dollar house, a Bentley and Ferrari were among his 8 cars, and he was starting a family. Because he couldn’t be in five places at once, each store had to be fairly self-running, where the Manager ran the place and he worked overseeing them. His work week was fairly light and he could afford the occasional multiweek vacation.
Sure, when it was new he was spending every waking moment in the restaurant, but a lot can change in 10 years.
Speaking of a lot changing in 10 years, it is now about 20 years since they first opened. The restaurants are closed, his cars and house (and condo) repossessed, and his ankle bracelet stopped transmitting on October 6, shortly after he placed a call to Delta Airlines using a borrowed phone. The IRS says he owes them a million dollars and is only one of the creditors he owes at least hundreds of thousands to.
But in the middle there, he made being a small business owner look good. 
But of course, if you googled this guy I presume you’d find googles of data - not just his court case(s), but publicity shots and news releases (“Owner of Wacko Taco Donates to United Appeal”) etc. etc. It’s hard to be prominent in business and not pop up in the news and be found on Google, unless your name is John Smith or Robert MacDonald or Carlos Rodruiguez or some such name; but even then, google that name with a more precise item like city name and you will likely find something.