Checking passports (and travel agents) for evidence of visits to "high profile" destinations such as: Switzerland, Cayman Islands, The Bahamas, Isle of Man, Netherlands Antilles, and other known banking and tax havens. Travel to these type of areas will surely throw up a red flag, giving investigators a place to start looking for your assets.

Countermeasures: Obtain a second passport, either from your own country or from a different one. The OPC Passport Report, which is available to our Offshore & Privacy Club members, shows you how.

Examining telephone (home, business and hotel), fax and mobile (cellular) phone records to identify undisclosed business connections and contacts.

Countermeasures: Use a calling card, use pay phones, use anonymous cellular phones that cannot be associated with you. We can arrange anonymous GSM cards (cellular phone cards) from two different countries for members of our Offshore & Privacy Club.

Reviewing credit card statements to determine who you do business with, where you travel (domestic & foreign), and what products and services you use. These records leave a paper trail a mile long. 

Countermeasures: Use offshore credit cards only, and retrieve your statements exclusively over the Internet. If you bank insists on issuing paper statements, have them hold them and pick them up in person twice a year.

Garbage is often sifted through for information such as statements, invoices, correspondence, and other relevant material useful in tracking your affairs. It sounds drastic, but what you throw away says a lot about you, and many leads can be found there.

Countermeasures: Use a high quality paper shredder, discard your garbage at another location, or burn and crush it.

Compiling a list of parties that you have a relationship with (business or otherwise) by recording the return addresses on your incoming mail. This technique can disclose friends, associates and partners.

Countermeasures: Get an offshore maildrop address and a private mailbox address where the offshore maildrop forwards your mail to. If you must receive important mail at your residence or business address, be sure to ask your correspondents to stop using a return address.

Looking into banking transactions. All withdrawals of $3,000 or more must be reported by your bank to the federal government, whether made by cash, check or electronic transfer.

Countermeasures: Keep your transactions under $3,000. Alternatively, open a number of offshore bank accounts in a corporate name that cannot be associated with you.

Checking private couriers' logs (UPS, DHL, Federal Express, Airborne Express etc.) for delivery of special or important letters and packages.

Countermeasures: Stay away from FedEx and DHL in the first place, they are infiltrated by government agents - and packages to and from known offshore locations that are sent by FedEx and DHL are routinely opened and confiscated. Use UPS, or better still regular airmail.

Monitoring your company's and your personal email accounts.

Countermeasures: Get anonymous email accounts and use encryption.

Index

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