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If you’ve recently opened a checking account and you haven’t had any trouble, you probably haven’t heard of Chexsystems yet. However, if you should try to open a bank account at some point and your bank won’t let you, it might be because of Chexsystems.

The parent company of Chexsystems is eFunds - created in 1999 to serve the financial lending services sector. Its specific mission is to detect fraudulent activity and help financial institutions in their risk management analysis, particularly for their individual customers.

Basically, it keeps track of and then reports on your banking activities similar to what your credit report and score does for you in terms of measuring how you are as a credit risk and in paying bills on time. Chexsystems keeps a sharp eye out for suspicious banking activity, overdrafts, insufficient funds check cashing, or an inability to meet minimum balance account requirements.

In this way, Chexsystems provides two services. It verifies your checking activity and functions as a consumer credit reporting agency similar to TransUnion or Equifax. Just as you can ask for one credit report every year, you can also ask for a Chexsystems report once a year, also free of charge. This is because, like the credit reporting agencies, it is also covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

This means that consumers can question any information contained in the report, dispute entries in it and can request evidence for reported activity. Majority of banks and credit unions in the US use Chexsystems and if there is anything negative regarding a prospective applicant, that applicant could have difficulties opening a checking account. Chexsystems: is it fair? Critics have voiced their objections about Chexsystems’ reporting practices claiming that the system is characterized by unfair reporting. Unlike credit bureaus that issue reports containing both positive and negative information, critics insist that Chexsystems only reports on the negative, hence jeopardising the credit reputation of individuals who are otherwise qualified to open checking accounts.

Because of this increase in criticism, in 2000, several banks got together and agreed to reconsider policies that affected checking account applications based on reports by Chexsystems. Some reforms were put through, including ignoring entries that are more than three years old, where those entries don’t contain fraudulent activity. The reforms also disregard entries that are greater than one year old, as long as the consumer has settled the debt in question.

Chexsystems Report: what information is provided? We looked at a sample report and our first impression was “you can’t get more thorough than that.” The consumer’s name and address are at the top of the report. An ID number is provided along with the individual’s social security number. When writing Chexsystems, they request that you always refer to your SSS and ID numbers.

The first thing you read on the document is that Chexsystems will look into any information or entry that you believe is incorrect or inaccurate. You can send your inquiry to fax number 602-659-2197.

The next box is “reported information.” This reported information originates from mostly financial institutions and is kept by Chexsystems for a period of five years. If there is more than one reported information or transaction, these are individually itemized. It lists the source of the reported information, the individual being reported on (including his social security number and driver’s licence), and the type of report (e.g. non-sufficient funds).

Following this is another box that reads, “Inquiries initiated by Consumer Action.” This means transactions that you initiate yourself. It shows your applications for a credit card or applications you made it a financial institution or bank. This information is kept on the report for up to three years.

The next section is entitled, “Inquiries not Initiated by Consumer Action.” This is where it’s recorded if other people have asked for information on you, including pre-approval or present creditors, potential investors trying to determine what your risk level is, and so on.

The next box says, “Retail Information,” and this includes checks you have written to stores and other retailers that have been returned for nonsufficient funds. When a store gets a check that it can’t cash because of nonsufficient funds, a company called “Shared Check Authorization Network” receives it and keeps a database of your fraudulent activity and checks that have been returned. In order to participate, including obtaining information for check authorization and verification, retailers must be SCAN members. Chexsystems uses SCAN, but it does not get involved in collecting returned checks.

If you’ve ordered any checks, your Chexsystems report also provides this information. It also details the history of your check orders. The next two boxes after this are validation activities for your driver’s license and your Social Security number. Your driver’s license is processed both with validation and then verification. Chexsystems validates your driver’s license by matching your license format with your state’s approved format. It also verifies your name and place of birth.

Before you write out your next check, then, think of Chexsystems and be sure that there’s enough money in the bank to cover your check and that it truly is yours and not someone else’s. On the other hand, you can always pay for merchandise with a credit card or with cash.

Most serious companies will ask you to pay a fee to do a reverse cell phone search for you. However if you use your imagination and the tools available on the internet for free, there are plenty of tricks and methods you can stumble upon to look for a location or find a name just with a cell phone number. If your research is not up to your expectations, the best paid tools are the mobile phone look up directories that can perform a very comprehensive research for you after a one-time payment.

Let’s list some methods you can use to do a reverse cell phone search for free:

1. Do you by any chance have anyone working in the police department or in any government subdivisions? Well they should inevitably be the first people to ask should you need to unearth any public data, as they have free access to a plethora of information. They can give you a name, an address as well as the phone company.

2. You can use the main public tools millions of users already use: the most popular search engines such as Yahoo, Google, MSN and Altavista. People who post their numbers on the internet are people who want to be found by friends or acquaintances so they could have given out their number to a wide variety of public services.

3. Use the forums on the internet to get information. Select forums by location if you want to narrow down you research to a particular area and post regularly at least once a month several posts to have results.

4. Call the cell phone number from a public phone and pretend you’re looking for someone. If a person answers and says it’s the wrong number, find a way to get their name without directly asking for it. Use this information to continue your research using some of the methods mentioned above.

5. Be smart! If you REALLY need to find that particular phone number you can always ask someone who already has a membership at one of the paid sites and see if they can quite simply do you a favour. Once again anything is possible on the internet!

6. Use Google Answers and Yahoo answers to ask people to do the cell phone research for you. You may have to pay for the information but you can specify an amount you’re comfortable with.

If your research does not have the expected results, your final option is to choose a membership site that is going to offer you a wide variety of information on worldwide numbers provided a small one-time fee. It’s definitely an option you should investigate should you want to carry out your research a bit further.

In Panama, a foundation is very important for offshore asset protection, and when a foundation owns a corporation this is the ultimate in offshore protection strategies.

At the inception of the foundation a “secret letter of wishes” is created to manage the funds even past an owners life time. A foundation is an offshore asset protection tool that can be used in the form of a trust. In this way an offshore bankers beneficiary can avoid estate taxes.

Some people wonder why a simple foundation isn’t effective enough for anonymity and security. A foundation can hold all your assets and have a bank account, but a foundation can not conduct business.

This is why the foundation/corporation structure is the ideal choice. A foundation can own a corporation, and the corporation can conduct all the business.

So if you have your offshore corporation within a foundation, you can conduct your business through the offshore account and plan your income taxes accordingly.

If you are interested in offshore asset protection, chances are you’re interested in privacy protection.

When a foundation owns a corporation, which owns a bank account, this is the only powerful privacy protection offshore structure you will ever need. If you are interested in offshore asset protection, chances are you’re interested in privacy protection.

At the inception of the foundation a “secret letter of wishes” is created to manage the funds even past an owners life time. A foundation is an offshore asset protection tool that can be used in the form of a trust.

If you’re going to go out now to get your offshore asset protection started, consider the best offshore banking structure: The foundation/corporation. It will not limit you to asset holdings, it will not tax you, and it will layer your anonymity protection to ensure your privacy.