--- title: Eureka! Utility Bills Can Unlock Secrets description: During legal proceedings, such as a divorce or bankruptcy, it's often necessary to uncover money by conducting a financial investigation to expose fraud... image: https://blog.portebrown.com/hubfs/utility%20bill.png --- [![Porte Brown logo](https://blog.portebrown.com/hubfs/PB%20Logo%20-%20Web%20400dpi%20--%20LARGE-HighRes-01.svg "Porte Brown logo")](https://portebrown-6854056.hs-sites.com/) [![Porte Brown logo](https://blog.portebrown.com/hubfs/PB%20Logo%20-%20Web%20400dpi%20--%20LARGE-HighRes-01.svg "Porte Brown logo")](https://portebrown-6854056.hs-sites.com/) Search # Eureka! Utility Bills Can Unlock Secrets ![calendar-icon](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/2040891/Marketplace/WASABI/icons/icon-calendar.svg) * By [ Porte Brown ](https://blog.portebrown.com/author/porte-brown-llc) - November 14, 2024 * Eureka! Utility Bills Can Unlock Secrets 2:52 **During legal proceedings,** such as a divorce or bankruptcy, it's often necessary to uncover money by conducting a financial investigation to expose fraud, embezzlement or hidden assets. However, the paper trail of hidden assets isn't always clear and it takes a specialist to track it down. For example, a typical ploy is to pay personal bills using funds that don't belong to the perpetrator — money from a company or an employer. An initial approach to finding the trail is to use a technique called *horizontal analysis.* This approach can be done on an *absolute dollar* basis or a *common size* basis, where the dollar payments are converted to a percentage of some larger amount — say, total operating expenses or revenues.(See "How the Analysis Works," below.) ## Eye on Utilities Utility costs are a particularly fertile ground for uncovering hidden assets for two reasons: - ‍**Consistency:** Utility expenses are relatively constant. Variations occur for predictable reasons, such as altering plant size, adding energy-consuming machinery, changing unit costs and weather patterns from one period to another. For example, a local energy provider might note that a particular month was the coldest on record and that consumption jumped 17% from the previous year.**‍** - **Unusual consumption:** Given the general stability of energy costs, it's easy to spot any surplus spending. This evidence leads the investigator to identify *where *the energy was consumed. If it's just at the perpetrator's residence, nothing particularly exciting has been uncovered. However, tracing excess payments can lead to a bigger — and more exciting — discovery: unknown real estate assets. Taking this discovery a step further, these real estate assets may be held in a fictitious or corporate name that wasn't readily associated with the individual and could point to even larger sums that have been misappropriated or hidden. ## Seek Outside Expertise When your case involves fraud, defalcation, embezzlement, or hidden assets in a divorce, bankruptcy or other incident of financial wrongdoing, [be sure to turn to skilled and experienced financial investigators](https://www.portebrown.com/services/fraud-forensic-investigators). They know how to find the assets and show you the money. --- ### How the Analysis Works Assume that utility expenses for the year under examination are $7,000 (in absolute dollars) or 10% of total operating expenses (common size). During the financial probe, a *horizontal* approach compares a given expense for a particular time period (before the alleged wrongful activity) to the period of alleged wrongdoing. This lets investigators determine a pattern of variations that may pinpoint when the wrongdoing occurred. In many instances, a statistical analysis is also used to predict what the suspicious payments look like. [![Sales director presenting business plan to team](https://blog.portebrown.com/hubfs/Stock%20images/Sales%20director%20presenting%20business%20plan%20to%20team.jpeg "Sales director presenting business plan to team")](https://www.portebrown.com/services/accounting-services) #### SERVICE SPOTLIGHT ### Elevate365: Outsourced Accounting & Advisory Services We'll build a customized accounting package for your business based upon current needs and anticipated growth. We can do all of the work for you, or simply assist your in-house staff... 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