Follow the public dollar until it hits a shell.

Most due-diligence tools start from a known bad actor and look for their assets. This tool reverses that: it starts from taxpayer money and looks for bad actors. That is the question inspectors general, auditors and journalists actually have: did public money end up somewhere it shouldn't have?

Risk leads, not accusations. Every output is a lead for human review, never a finding of wrongdoing. Each claim links to the primary record behind it, missing data is shown as missing, and no text is generated by a language model.

How it works

Five stages, from an award to an evidence packet

1Ingest the moneyPull award, grant and loan recipients from USAspending.gov and SAM.gov.
2Resolve the entityMatch each recipient to a corporate record, with an A–D grade for how sure the match is.
3Expand the networkTrace owners, officers, subawardees and trade counterparties out to 1–3 links.
4Score every entityApply shell-company signals, each with visible evidence and a source link.
5Surface pathsRank routes from the public dollar to flagged parties, and export an evidence packet (the Lead Dossier).

Data tools

How Sayari, Tradeverifyd and Tavily divide the work

SayariOwnership and risk backboneCompany profiles, shareholders, directors and officers, sanctions and PEP flags, and trade counts across 250+ jurisdictions. Every entity on the graph links to its Sayari record, and every link quotes Sayari's own relationship text.
TradeverifydTrade exposure layerEntity matching, risk score and annotations (sanctions programmes, SAM.gov exclusions), and trade relationships. Shown on the entity panel where a record was retrieved.
TavilyReality check and primary sourcesFinds the government record behind each flag (Treasury, DOJ, CBP, DHS press releases and lists) and checks whether a company has a real-world footprint.
USAspending, SAM.govPublic-money inputThe layer none of the three tools hold natively: contract, grant and loan recipients, registrations and exclusions.

Risk typologies

One validated case per typology

Each case starts from a network that a government agency has already acted on, to show the tool would have flagged it. Palantir is the clean control.

Russia Sanctions EvasionSerniya Engineering (Russian military procurement)Score 65 · Grade B · 12 entities, 12 links · Sayari, Tavily, USAspending
Sudan / UAE Arms & GoldAZ Gold and the RSF trading network (UAE)Score 88 · Grade A · 21 entities, 29 links · Sayari, Tradeverifyd, Tavily
Pandemic Loan FraudFeeding Our Future (Minnesota child-nutrition fraud)Score 82 · Grade A · 11 entities, 9 links · Sayari, Tavily
GoldMeroe Gold (Wagner gold mining in Sudan)Score 92 · Grade A · 14 entities, 14 links · Sayari, Tavily
Fentanyl PrecursorsHubei Amarvel Biotech (fentanyl precursors)Score 78 · Grade B · 9 entities, 8 links · Sayari, Tavily
Humanitarian FrontSamidoun and Addameer (sham charities for the PFLP)Score 90 · Grade A · 15 entities, 14 links · Sayari, Tavily
Xinjiang & Critical MineralsHoshine Silicon (Xinjiang forced labour, critical minerals)Score 85 · Grade A · 17 entities, 16 links · Sayari, Tavily
Control (no material risk)Palantir Technologies (clean control)Score 8 · Grade A · 2 entities, 1 links · Sayari, Tradeverifyd, USAspending

Signal framework

The shell-company signals we score

A composite score with every contributing signal shown, its evidence and its source. Proximity and trade mismatch weigh most because they are the hardest to explain innocently.

Public money: Registration-to-award gap, award size vs. company profile, pass-through to subawardees, non-competitive awards, shared principals across bidders, mission mismatch.
Structure: Ownership that dead-ends at a company instead of a person, layered or circular ownership, nominee directors, secrecy jurisdictions.
Lifecycle: Recent incorporation followed by sudden activity; short lifespan and phoenix companies.
Location: Mass-registration addresses and virtual offices.
Trade: Goods that don't fit the stated business, transshipment routing, partner churn, Common High Priority List items.
Presence: No website, staff or press; look-alike names; adverse media.
Proximity: A sanctioned party within 1–3 links, and the OFAC 50% rule that makes ownership proximity legally meaningful.

Who it's for

Built for the people who follow public money

Inspectors general and auditors
“Did this award recipient pass money to risky parties?”
Investigative journalists
“Where is the story in this contract data?”
Prime contractors and grantmakers
“Are my subcontractors or grantees safe?”
Banks and compliance teams
“Is this government-funded client a front?”

Team

Corporate Transparency Hackathon

Maria Ashby
Technical lead: schema, fixtures, scoring engine
India Clarke
Domain and evidence: primary-source research, citations, Lead Dossier copy, traceability
Lola C
Specs, control cases and risk typologies