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We’ve all been there. You get an email from someone who says they have a portfolio of notes to sell, they send you a tape that looks great at first glance and you get all excited. Maybe this is the great “off the grid” source you’ve been looking for? But then it turns out you’ve seen these assets before and already own one of them. This has happened to me a lot lately. But its not always obvious at first glance whether you are dealing with a direct seller, a reputable broker, or a joker broker. Here are some tips for identifying joker brokers when its not so obvious.

Always Save Your Tapes
I have a folder structure in Dropbox where I keep all the tapes I have received. When I get a tape from a new source I can then open Windows Explorer and search the directory where I have my old tapes to see if any of the addresses match. This is the quickest way to find out if you have received an old or recycled tape.

Look at the Spreadsheet Properties
Some joker brokers are wise to this and will copy the data to a new spreadsheet, but many aren’t. In Excel click ‘File’ in the upper left and then ‘properties’. This will usually give you the name of who created the spreadsheet and sometimes other information. It can be a quick way to figure out where the tape originated from.Look up the Property Information
If you are dealing with CFD’s, you can see who really owns it (or at least did the last recording) by going to the tax assessor’s website and looking up the property information.

Look Them Up on LinkedIn
If they are a real note seller, they and their company should have profiles on LinkedIn. Look for their company website as well. If you can’t find any trace of them its a bad sign.

Ask Your Network 
If someone has sent you a tape, they have most likely sent tapes to a lot of other note investors as well and someone you know has run into them. Don’t worry that you might be giving away some new awesome secret source. If the person sending you the tape initiated contact, then they are going to be in contact with other note investors anyway.

Running into joker brokers is just a part of being in the notes business. They aren’t going away any time soon, but hopefully these tips will help keep you from wasting too much time dealing with them.