The Los Angeles Times quoted Tax & Business Services Partner Paul Graney in a story about the use of limited liability corporations to obscure ownership identity.

Excerpt:

Delaware and Nevada aren’t the only states where it’s possible to set up a company without saying who owns it. In California, too, owners can set up a limited liability company, or LLC, without telling state officials who’s behind the curtain.

Some LLCs do list their owners, but those owners are sometimes other LLCs or other types of corporate entities. Paul Graney, a partner at accounting firm Marcum, said that’s another reason it can be difficult to figure out who really owns a company.

“You could set up a string of five, six, seven LLCs in different states,” Graney said. “It’s going to be hard to trace all the way through. Where does the shell game finally stop?”

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