limited liability corporations (David Simon)

 
First thing is we need the names of all front companies limited partnerships, LLCs, and all that mess. 
 - LLCs?
 - Limited liability corporations.
Start with the night club which Barksdale owns.
Look up Orlando's, by address, you match it, and you see it's owned by who?
It's on Baltimore street, right?
Got it. D & B enterprises.
Hand it over to Prez, who's going to get off his ass and walk on over to the state office buildings on Preston street.
 - Preston street?
 - corporate charter office.
corporate who?
They have the paperwork on every corporation and LLC licensed to do business in the state.
You look up D & B enterprise on the computer.
You're going to get a little reel of microfilm.
Pull the corporate charter papers that way ...
write down every name you see:
corporate officers, shareholders, or more importantly 
the resident agent on the filing who is usually a lawyer.
While they use front names, you know, as corporate officers, they'll usually use the same lawyer to do the charter filing.
Find that agent's name, run it through the computer ...
find out what other corporations he's done the filing for ...
and that way we find other front companies.
While he's doing that, what do I do?
You're going to keep your head in this assessment book.
Look up any properties that you can connect to Barksdale.
How do you know it connects to Barksdale, right?
You work off of what Prez gets you from the corporate charter documents.
Whatever companies he links to Barksdale or people connected to Barksdale, you look for those companies in the city land records.
For examples:  McNulty said that he heard that Barksdale owned an apartment building up on Druid park lake.
You look up all the blocks on Reservior hill.
See if there's anything owned by D & B enterprises or any other company that Prez finds through corporate charter or anything similar.
If you find something that fits, you write down the folio number so that you can look it up later at the court house. 
You don't find anything ...
just take the names of all the corporate listings for the multi-units near the lake.
You call that list over to Prez, who pulls the charter papers and he'll look for connections. 
 - It's like a scavenger hunt. 
 - But what if Barksdale is careful?
I mean, what if we can't find his name on anything?
In this country somebody's name has got to be on a piece of paper. 
A cousins, a girlfriend, a grandmother, a lieutenant he can trust, somebody's name is on a piece of paper.
And here's the rub:  You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers.
But you start to follow the money and you don't know where the fuck it's going to take you.
While we're running around on this, what are you going to do?
 - You need something?
 - Yeah.
Let me get the campaign financial reports for the western districts and actually, any city wide race.
You want quarterly reports or individual donor lists?
 - Both, please.
 - It'll be a couple hundred pages. 
Really?  I'll take all of it.
   

source:
        The wire (2002-2004) (2006-2008)
        HBO (home box office)
        David Simon
        episode 9, game day          
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