Hi, this is Lee Philips.
I want to talk about anonymity for a minute.
All the real estate investors and everybody
are running around saying, man, I've got to be anonymous.
If I can make it so that I set all of the property up
in a trust, a land trust or some other trust
and then name it a funny name, then nobody
will know that it's me.
And I won't get sued because they
can't look me up in the records and see who actually owns this.
Well, there's a little bit of truth to that.
But not much truth to that, OK?
The fact is when you set up the trust, any property that you
buy in the trust, any bank account that you open,
any piece of real estate that you take title to,
your name has to be on there as the trustee.
Now they say, oh, we're going to have
somebody else be the trustee.
Yeah, I don't want somebody else being my trustee,
take care of my property.
I want to be able to do that.
If you're willing to do that, OK, your name
is not on the title.
But you signed the mortgage.
I'll guarantee you signed the mortgage
and we can find that mortgage just like that.
No problem.
So are you really anonymous when it comes
to that piece of property?
I don't think so.
If there's a mortgage, there's no way you're anonymous.
Additionally, if you have the insurance.
We can find that.
We can find all sorts of things about this piece of property
that you are supposedly anonymous on.
I'm not a big fan of anonymity.
I'm more fan of asset protection.
Let's use the limited partnerships, and the LLCs,
and the corporations, and these different entities,
to give you some asset protection
and not just try and hide.
Is there any harm in it?
No, not really.
Go ahead.
Do it.
That's fine.
Just understand that your anonymity really
isn't there, one, and two, it gives you no asset protection.
Now that's not to say that it might not deter something,
but it's a teeny, tiny hurdle that we're trying to jump.
And do people trip over door thresholds?
Yeah.
But if I've got a bigger hurdle of an entity or something,
my chance of tripping up the guy who's coming after me
is a lot bigger.
So anonymity?
I don't really think so.
Pretty low hurdle.
But, doesn't hurt, and you can go ahead and do it.
As far as I'm concerned, you're kind of wasting your efforts.
One guy, we were trying to help him
and he kept saying, no, I can't do this.
I'm anonymous.
Can't do this.
I'm anonymous.
Can't do this.
I'm anonymous.
Well, I'll give it to you.
We have databases that most people
don't have as lawyers and within a half hour,
give us an address.
I don't want a name, don't want anything, just give an address.
Give me an address that your land trust is on,
your LLC owns, I don't care.
Just give us an address.
And we came back within 30 minutes.
We had about five pages of printouts.
We had every company he's ever been in,
we had every mortgage he's ever had,
we had every credit card he ever had,
we had every piece of property he ever had.
We had it whether it was owned by the LLC,
whether it was owned by the land trust,
whether it was owned by the lawyer who wrote the trust.
We had ever piece of property.
No questions asked.
We faxed this to the guy and he says,
well, anonymity doesn't work.
Now what do we do?
So just know that that's what's going to happen,
if push comes to shove, and somebody really
wants to figure out what's going on, they can do it.
Actually no problem.
They can do it.
Anonymity?
Ehh.
I don't think so.
Let's do real asset protection.