How to Find Out Where Someone Banks

Look at what you already have

Before anything else, go back through the file. A canceled check, a returned check, an ACH authorization, a wire confirmation, a settlement payment, a rent payment — any of them carries a routing number, and the routing number names the bank.

A returned or bounced check is better than a good one. It proves the account existed and it often prints the reason, which tells you whether the account was closed or merely short.

If your client is a creditor, ask for every payment the debtor ever made them. People forget they have this.

Read the court file

Pull the docket in every case your debtor has been party to, not just yours.

• Financial affidavits in divorce and family matters list accounts by institution.
• Post-judgment discovery from an earlier creditor may already be in a public file. Someone else may have done this work for you.
• Attachments and garnishments filed by other creditors name the bank in the caption of the trustee process.
• Probate inventories where your debtor was an executor or beneficiary.

An earlier garnishment that failed still tells you where the debtor banked at that time, and people change banks far less often than they change addresses.

Search UCC filings and tax liens

A UCC-1 financing statement names the debtor, the collateral and the secured party. If your debtor financed a vehicle, equipment, or inventory, the lender is named on a public filing.

People overwhelmingly borrow where they bank. A UCC filing showing a local savings bank as secured party is a strong indication of the depository relationship, not just the loan.

Search the Secretary of State in every state the debtor has operated in, and check the county clerk as well where the state splits filings.

Open the bankruptcy schedules

If the debtor has ever filed bankruptcy, Schedule A/B requires them to list every financial account with the name of the institution. Under oath.

It’s the single most complete disclosure of banking relationships that exists in the public record, and it stays public forever. A filing from eight years ago still names banks the person may well still use.

The Statement of Financial Affairs adds closed accounts and transfers in the year before filing.

Work the employer

If you know where the debtor works, you know a great deal. Direct deposit means the employer’s payroll originates to the debtor’s bank, and many smaller employers bank locally themselves and encourage staff to do the same.

In a garnishment state, the employer is a target in its own right — wages are often easier to reach than a deposit account.

Use public and social sources

People photograph things they shouldn’t. Bank cards on a table, a branch in the background, a cheque held up, a business page listing a payment link. Business pages are worse: a small business will often name its bank in a supplier reference or on an invoice posted publicly.

See Google operators every investigator should know for searching a domain or a name for documents that leak this.

Call the bank — the right way

This is the step people get wrong and it’s the one with real legal exposure.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. § 6821, makes it unlawful to obtain customer information from a financial institution by false or fraudulent statement, or by impersonating the customer. Pretending to be the debtor, or pretending to be from another bank, is a federal offense. It isn’t a grey area.

What’s lawful is asking a question that does not require you to misrepresent who you are or to obtain protected information. A bank confirming that it will or will not accept a payment on an account, or confirming information you already lawfully hold, is a different transaction from a bank disclosing a customer’s balance to a stranger.

The distinction matters and it’s worth learning properly rather than improvising. That’s what the course below covers.