Field Notes: Following the Yachts

When the U.S. rolled out sanctions on Russian oligarchs, I ended up on a task force in New York with an assignment I never thought I would get. We were supposed to track their yachts.

The Assignment

I remember laughing when I first heard it. Yachts? These things were the size of cruise ships, worth hundreds of millions. Owned by billionaires who had entire teams of lawyers, accountants, and shell companies to keep their names off the paperwork. But that was the point. Yachts are not like offshore accounts. They are too big to just disappear. They need fuel, they need insurance, they need crews. Follow those things and eventually you get to the truth.

Every one of us on the task force was assigned an asset. Some got private aircraft, others sprawling real estate portfolios. Mine was a 464-foot superyacht.

Finding the Trail

So we started digging. Registries, corporate filings, bank records, spreadsheets that went on forever. A lot of the boats were flagged under different countries. Some were technically “owned” by companies that were little more than mailboxes. It was a mess, but that was intentional.

Most of the time it felt like swimming through clutter. But every now and then, the trail lit up. A payment that did not fit. An address that popped up in two different places. And sometimes it was almost comical. A crew member would post a photo of a harbor sunrise on Instagram, and suddenly we knew exactly where the “missing” yacht had been hiding.

I tracked mine from Western Europe to the Indian Ocean. We had a shot at seizing it, if only the paperwork and government cooperation had come together faster. But while we were still grinding through the red tape, she fueled up and sprinted across 6,000 miles of open ocean to Vladivostok, where we could not touch her. Out of reach.

What Stuck With Me

The bigger lesson was that no matter how powerful someone is, or how much effort they put into hiding, the trail is still there. It might be buried under shell companies and international bureaucracy, but it exists. Following that trail taught me patience, and it taught me how to keep going when time, politics, or even luck are working against you.

And sometimes the breaks were almost funny. Years later I was watching an episode of Below Deck and there she was again, anchored in the Seychelles, floating across my TV screen like she had never left.

That translates directly to what I do now. Maybe I am not tracking yachts anymore, but I am still chasing threads. A corporate executive moving money through side accounts. A spouse living a double life while the clock is ticking on a court case. The details change, but the skills are the same. You sift through the clutter, stay persistent, and eventually you get the clarity you need.

Closing Thought

It was not glamorous. I was not boarding yachts or sipping champagne. I was in an office, racing a clock I had no control over, chasing down paperwork, and waiting on calls that took too long to come. But when the lines finally connected, it reminded me why I love this work. Big or small, international or right here in Florida, the story is always in the trail. And the job is to find it before time runs out.