Litigation, Forensic & Valuation Services

Overview

The consultants in Anchin’s Litigation, Forensic and Valuation Services Group possess the experience and credentials recognized by attorneys, businesspeople, and the courts to act as experts to help them make informed decisions. The group’s depth, extensive intellectual capital base and state-of-the-art technology are strategically utilized to create effective and efficient solutions to dispute resolution matters.

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Litigation Support Services

In litigation, your positions are only as strong as your ability to support and present them. As experts, we are thoroughly prepared to support your position with knowledgeable, credible and objective analysis. We are able to present complex data in ways that our clients, judges, jurors, arbitrators and mediators can comprehend. The result? Helping you build and prove stronger cases.

Services include:

• Contract disputes
• Disputed construction and contractor claims
• Document management
• Expert witness
• Lost profit and damage calculations
• Lost value
• Matrimonial matters and disputes
• Surety claims

Forensic Accounting Services

It’s all in the detail. As forensic accountants, our professionals utilize all of their accounting, auditing, computer, and investigative skills when conducting forensic analysis or an investigation. Equally critical is our ability to immediately understand complex transactions and to communicate financial information clearly and concisely. Our professionals are dedicated to dig deeper and deeper into the detail, knowing that’s where the answers lie.

Services include:

• Accounting and auditing malpractice
• Bank fraud
• Bankruptcy and insolvency
• Business failures
• Criminal investigations
• Defalcations
• Forensic insolvency and bankruptcy
• Fraudulent transfer of funds
• Internal investigations
• Tax fraud and non-filing taxpayers
• Tracing assets
• Trusts and estates

Computer Forensics

We employ the use of state-of-the-art technologies and best practice analytical and investigative techniques to identify, collect, examine and preserve evidence/information which is magnetically stored or encoded.

Services include:

• Secure the subject system (from tampering during the operation)
• Acquire a copy of hard drive (if applicable)
• Identify and recover all files (including those deleted)
• Access/copy hidden, protected and temporary files
• Study ‘special’ areas on the drive (eg: residue from previously deleted files)
• Investigate data/settings from installed applications/programs
• Assess the system as a whole, including its structure
• Consider general factors relating to the users activity
• Create detailed report

Business Valuation Services

Valuation services are critical to those who must rely on the value of a business to make informed decisions. Valuation services become even more critical when there is no active market that provides a quoted market price for a business or investment. Anchin’s valuations are an excellent management tool that can be used to maximize shareholders’ value and generate benefits.

Anchin professionals use a variety of tools in determining valuations, including the use of databases, extensive research, and financial theory. In addition, our forensic backgrounds are invaluable when scrutinizing the underlying numbers and assumptions. This can have a significant effect on valuations. Our valuations are prepared by experienced, credentialed valuation professionals to avoid the inaccurate conclusions of applying generic industry “rules of thumb.” An objective and credible valuation will always reduce questions and ambiguity and help minimize exposure to litigation and dispute resolution.

Services include:

• Dispute resolution
• Dissolution and solvency matters
• Employee stock option plans
• Exit strategies
• Insurance-related matters
• Internal management analysis
• Matrimonial matters and disputes
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Shareholder buy-sell agreements and disputes
• Trusts and estates

Anchin Results

Anchin’s forensic accounting and financial investigative specialists work to convey complicated issues in a manner that others can easily understand. Our specialists have worked with various entities, including banks, insurance companies, private entities and governmental entities such as the Attorney General of New York, New York City Corporate Counsel’s Office, Department of Investigations (DOI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). A sample of Anchin’s litigation and forensic experience includes the following:

• Retained by major insurance companies to trace hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent insurance claims through layers of corporate ownership.
• Retained by beneficiaries and executors of estates and trust to determine the appropriateness and validity of expenditures made by administrators, other executors and attorneys.
• Retained by trustee of a litigation trust to review the legal fees from attorneys.
• Retained in numerous matrimonial matters to trace funds, analyze cash flow, and perform valuations.
• Retained by a special master to investigate organized crime involvement in a bankruptcy proceeding of heating oil distributor.
• Retained by an international bank to audit the books and records of various real estate customers in default of loans to identify inappropriate and prohibited transactions made for the benefit of the principals. Amounts uncovered were used to create pressure to create settlements on each of the engagements retained.
• Retained by sureties to evaluate the costs to complete incurred in connection with performance bonds.
• Retained by an international bank to review controls and identify prohibited transactions of a Bank Officer suspected of fraud.
• Successfully found all prohibited transactions leading to criminal referral.
• Approval by the New York City Department of Investigations to monitor Bovis’ clean-up costs of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
• Monitored the breakup of the Gambino family’s trucking enterprise in the apparel industry after they were forced to sell off their trucking routes. Monitored the selection process of the successor businesses and their accounting records for a period subsequent to the breakup.
• Investigated wrongdoings, improper spending and conflicts of interest and defalcations in the housing department of a major university and other for-profit organizations.
• Retained by one of the world’s largest international banks to be part of a team that took over and investigated customers that had defaulted on their loan obligations. Worked to create an investigative plan to uncover irregularities and work their implementation. Irregularities involved domestic and foreign operations of major film production and distribution companies. Strategies involved establishing extensive databases and using them to trace and analyze irregularities. Some of these engagements lead to the appointment of Trustees.
• Retained by a major international trading company to investigate its investments in Turkish Mining Companies and the subsequent sale of the businesses to determine if there was fraud in the financial reporting obtained in each of the transactions. Findings lead to a successful settlement of the litigation.
• Handled the audit of companies being investigated by taxing authorities for the purpose of determining the extent of any misstatements in tax returns filed.
• Tracing of hundreds of millions of dollars in a kiting scheme in a mortgage company designed to defraud major New York banks and Fannie Mae.
• Retained by the New York State Department of Education to review and analyze the audit workpapers of the Roslyn School District auditors for audit deficiencies who were subject to a disciplinary proceeding.
• Retained by the Attorney General of New York to help recover funds in a fraud perpetrated on a not for profit organization.
• Retained by manufacturing and retailing companies to calculate lost profits and lost value in litigations.
• Retained in litigation involving the break-up of a major real estate organization to defend against claims of wrongdoing: self-dealing on the part of certain partners.

The Anchin Touch

Anchin’s consultants are recognized as experts in federal, New York State, and many other state courts for a number of reasons:

• We have already been recognized by these courts to testify.
• We possess all the credentials that you would expect from a well seasoned consulting team. Members of our team hold these certifications and/or degrees: CPA, ABV, CVA, CFE, JD, MBA, CIRA (Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor) , and PhD.
• We come prepared to state our case and to provide the documentation to support it in a very credible manner.
• We use state-of-the-art techniques recognized by the courts to uncover detail that is relevant to our clients, including statistical methodologies, computer forensics, e-discovery, and data mining. We leave no stone unturned on behalf of our clients.
• Our team includes a broad range of consultants with abilities that can meet the needs of most engagements. In addition to our full-time consulting staff, we maintain an active network of outside professionals to draw upon when their very particular expertise is required.