LEASING LAW By Robert S. Cohen Geo-Tag; You’re It Start Using Technology to Reduce the Risk of Fraud W AS YOUR EQUIPMENT “REALLY” DELIVERED? Does your collateral “really” exist? Is it “really” at the proper location? Geotagging should provide these answers! Geographical tagging, or geotagging, is a low-cost verifi cation tool that provides funding sources with additional confi dence and information about the delivery and existence of their equipment/collateral. photograph as metadata (hidden data about the photograph or digital fi le) and usually includes geographical information to accurately pinpoint where the photograph or digital fi le was taken. It is refreshing that there is no cost to access the coordinates of the fi les that are geotagged. Typically, in an equipment lease transaction, the lessee executes a delivery and acceptance certifi cate confi rming the delivery and acceptance of the equipment by the lessee. Al-though this certifi cate, in theory, confi rms delivery of equip-ment, oft entimes funding sources require additional verifi ca-tion that the equipment (i.e., their collateral) is in place, that the lease has commenced and that the equipment is an avail-able source of recovery. It is not unusual for funding sources to hire third-party inspection services to also provide this information. However, on smaller ticket transactions (and sometimes on larger transactions), the costs and/or delays associated with having a physical inspection of each item of equipment may be prohibitive or impractical. Welcome to geotagging—a relatively new, quick and eff ective use of technology to confi rm proper delivery of equipment. How Can Geotagging Help? Geotagging can be used in many ways. A common procedure is to request that the lessee send the funding source one or more pictures of the equipment (including serial numbers) upon its delivery to the lessee (and/or at the time the lessee executes the delivery and acceptance certifi cate). When the funding source receives the digital picture, it can access the geographical information automatically embedded within the photograph and “really” confi rm the existence, location and delivery of the equipment. What Is Geotagging? Geotagging refers to the process of adding geographical in-formation to digital photographs and other digital fi les (such as documents, emails, etc.). Th is information is stored in the How Are Photographs Geotagged? GPS-enabled smartphones and digital cameras can (and nor-mally do) geotag photos and videos automatically. Addition-44 MARCH/APRIL 2015 EQUIPMENT LEASING & FINANCE MAGAZINE ISTOCK