How to find out who owns an LLC

To find out who owns an LLC, look it up in the registry of the state where it was formed, then read the documents it has filed there rather than the search result. Some states ask for an LLC's managers or members in its formation filing or a periodic report, while others, Delaware among them, record little beyond the registered agent. Where the registry stops, the names tend to appear in records an LLC creates as it does business: the signatures on its filings, deeds and mortgages, UCC financing statements, court cases, assumed-name filings, licences and, if it raises money, a Form D with the SEC. A signature shows who acts for the LLC, which is not always who owns it, so treat each name as a lead until a second, independent record agrees.

This piece covers who is who inside an LLC, what registries publish, where else the names turn up and how to follow an LLC owned by another, with a worked example. Our guide to verifying a vendor covers the payment side of a new supplier, and our guides to KYB verification and shell company red flags go further into company research.

The owners of an LLC are its members. The IRS puts it plainly: "Owners of an LLC are called members." Most states do not restrict who they can be, so members "may include individuals, corporations, other LLCs and foreign entities", and most states allow an LLC with a single member.

Several other roles appear on the public record, and each is easy to mistake for ownership.

• Managers run the LLC. California's articles of organization ask whether a new LLC will be managed by one manager, more than one manager or all of its members, and in a manager-managed LLC the people running it may own nothing.
• The organiser signs and files the formation document. Texas's instructions accept as organiser any adult or any company, with no residency requirement, so the name on that line may belong to someone paid to do the filing.
• The registered agent accepts legal papers for the LLC. California's filing instructions describe the agent as "responsible for accepting legal documents", such as lawsuits and subpoenas, on its behalf.
• The authorised person signs filings for the LLC. Delaware's certificate of formation asks for the signature of "an authorized person of the limited liability company", with that person's name typed or written under it.

In California the operating agreement is not on the public record either: the secretary of state says operating agreements "are maintained by the business entity and are not filed with the Secretary of State." So the public record more often shows the people who manage the LLC, sign for it or receive its papers than the members who own it.

Start with the registry of the state where the LLC was formed, usually the secretary of state. The National Association of Secretaries of State links to each state's business registration pages and name databases.

Delaware shows how little a registry may hold, and it is where 235,393 LLCs were formed in 2025, 70.4 percent of all new entities there, according to the Division of Corporations' 2025 annual report. Its free entity search returns "the entity name, file number, incorporation/formation date, registered agent name, address, phone number and residency", and more costs a fee. The certificate of formation asks for the LLC's name and its Delaware registered agent, and the Division's tax page says there is "no requirement to file an Annual Report." So a Delaware LLC's public record usually names no member or manager, and beyond the agent the likeliest name on it is the authorised person who signed the certificate, on a copy ordered from the Division.

Texas states the gap directly. Its secretary of state's FAQ says: "The secretary of state does not maintain any information on the ownership of a LLC." It holds the initial members of a member-managed LLC, the registered agent and the registered office.

A registry entry shows that the LLC was formed and who receives its legal papers, and the people behind it are often somewhere else. Open the formation document, every amendment and every periodic report, and note who signed each one and the title they gave.

Several do. California, Texas and Florida show the range.

• California. Every California LLC, and every out-of-state LLC registered there, files a Statement of Information within 90 days of registering and every two years after. It gives the name and business or residential address of each manager or, if there are no managers, of each member, and of any chief executive officer. Plain copies of filed documents are available online for free.
• Texas. The certificate of formation names each initial manager or, if there are none, each initial member, and each can be "an individual or an organization". Texas also collects a yearly Public Information Report with each LLC's franchise tax report, listing all its managers and, if it is member-managed, all its members. The secretary of state makes that information public, noting that it "is not necessarily current".
• Florida. The articles of organization ask for the name and address of each person authorised to manage and control the LLC, marked AMBR for an authorised member or MGR for a manager, an entry the form calls optional. The annual report asks for at least one manager or managing member, whose address may be a post office box.

A manager-managed LLC can list its managers without naming a single member, and a filing can name a company where you expected a person. Check every state where the LLC operates, too: an out-of-state LLC registered in California files the same Statement of Information as a local one, so a Delaware LLC can name its managers there.

An LLC that borrows, owns property, goes to court, trades under another name or holds a licence leaves names in other public records, each showing a different relationship to it.

Property records. County recorders index deeds and mortgages by the names of the parties. Cook County's recordings division says its land records "can be retrieved by searching for PIN, grantor, grantee, and by other indexed detail". Open the documents. A mortgage or deed of trust the LLC signed names the person who signed for it, and in California the notary's acknowledgement names the person who appeared and records that they signed in their "authorized capacity". California's notary handbook says the certificate "verifies only the identity of the individual who signed the document". County tax records add the address the bill goes to, and some, such as Tarrant County's in Texas, can be searched by "the owner's mailing address", which can link properties mailed to the same place.

UCC financing statements. A lender that takes an LLC's assets as security can file a financing statement with the secretary of state, giving the debtor's and the secured party's names and addresses, and a statement can name more than one debtor. In California, most financing statements lapse after five years, and the party names stay in the searchable index for a further year.

Court records. Federal cases are on PACER, where fees are waived for anyone who spends $30 or less in a quarter. State courts run their own searches. Read the filings for the people who acted for the LLC, such as whoever verified a complaint or gave evidence for it.

Assumed names. An LLC that trades under another name may have filed a fictitious business name statement, filed in California with the county of its principal place of business. Los Angeles County's filing rules ask for the owner's signature, which for a limited liability company means a "manager or officer". This is the record that ties a trading name on an invoice to the legal entity behind it.

Licensing boards. California's contractors board asks an LLC applying for a licence to list "Every person who is an officer, member, responsible manager, or director" as personnel of record, and its public licence pages link to a list of the personnel associated with the licence.

SEC filings. An LLC that has raised money from investors in certain private offerings may have filed a Form D, whose related persons section names each executive officer, director and person performing similar functions, "such as ... managing members of limited liability companies", and any promoters. EDGAR's full-text search covers every electronic filing since 2001, exhibits included, so it can also find an LLC named in another company's filings.

Your own vendor file. If you pay the LLC, you may already hold its W-9, and the form says whose name goes where. An LLC with a single owner is generally a "disregarded entity", which gives "the owner's name on line 1" and its own name on line 2, and if that owner is also disregarded, line 1 shows "the first owner that is not disregarded for federal tax purposes."

Its footprint. The LLC's website, domain record, press coverage and the profiles of people who say they run it show who presents themselves as behind it, and since when. Our guide to finding out who owns a website covers the domain side.

Treat the parent as a new search. Members can be other LLCs, so the member or manager in a filing may be a second company. Find the state where that company was formed, read its filings there and in the states where it operates, and run the same checks on its deeds, liens and assumed names. Record each link with its source, and keep going until the chain reaches a person or a record that names no one.

Some links are stronger than others.

• A person who signs for two layers, such as the manager of the parent who also signs the child's deed of trust, links them through documents each one signed.
• An address that repeats across layers, on a Statement of Information, a financing statement and a tax bill, is a second link, as long as it is not a registered agent's address shared with other clients.
• For a payer, the W-9 can skip ahead, because line 1 names the first owner that is not disregarded.

Even a person who signs for every layer should stay in the file as a signer until something shows ownership.

Because the address may be the registered agent's, or one chosen to keep a home off the record. California's form lets an LLC name either an individual in California or "a registered corporate agent qualified with the California Secretary of State", and adds that "Many times, a small LLC will designate a member or manager as the agent". Delaware publishes a list of registered agents, many of them businesses offering the service. An agent's address tells you who receives the LLC's legal papers and nothing about who owns it.

The same form reminds filers that the agent's name and street address are "a public record, open to all (as are all the addresses of the LLC provided in filings)", and it accepts a business address for each manager or member, so a manager listed at an office or a mailbox is ordinary.

The case is a composite. Quillmarsh Facility Services, Mossgarth Holdings, Mossgarth Cleaning and Marisela Delvarra are invented, the domain uses the .example name reserved for documentation, and the phone number comes from the 555-0100 to 555-0199 range reserved for fictional use.

A distribution company in California is asked to add Quillmarsh Facility Services LLC as a vendor, to clean and maintain two warehouses for about $11,500 a month, on the recommendation of a site operations manager. The vendor form gives an email address at quillmarsh.example and a phone number, +1 559 555 0143.

The W-9. Line 2 gives Quillmarsh's name and line 1 names Mossgarth Holdings LLC, which is where the form puts the owner of a single-owner LLC, or the first owner up the chain that is not disregarded. The classification box is marked LLC, P for partnership, which describes Mossgarth, and since the IRS treats a one-member LLC as disregarded or, by election, as a corporation, never as a partnership, Mossgarth has at least two members.

The registry. Delaware's free search shows Quillmarsh was formed there in March 2026, with a commercial registered agent in Wilmington, and nothing else. In California it registered as an out-of-state LLC in April 2026, and its Statement of Information names one manager, Mossgarth Holdings LLC, at an address in the Central Valley, and no chief executive officer.

The parent. Mossgarth Holdings is a California LLC formed in 2018. Its latest Statement of Information names one manager, Marisela Delvarra, at the same address, and, as a manager-managed LLC, no members.

The records. Three documents the accounts payable (AP) team found separately tie Mossgarth to that address and to her.

• At the county recorder, a 2022 deed of trust on an industrial unit Mossgarth bought that year is signed for the LLC by Marisela Delvarra as manager, and the notary's acknowledgement names her.
• A 2024 financing statement lists Mossgarth Holdings as debtor and an equipment lender as secured party, at the same address.
• A fictitious business name statement filed with the county in 2023 registers Mossgarth Cleaning to Mossgarth Holdings LLC, signed by Delvarra as manager.

The match. Searching the vendor master file for the address on Quillmarsh's Statement of Information turns up Mossgarth Cleaning, which has cleaned a third warehouse since 2024 for about $9,000 a month. Quillmarsh's website, on a domain registered in March 2026, gives the same phone number as Mossgarth Cleaning's.

Put together, Quillmarsh belongs, on its own W-9 and its California filing, to the company behind an existing vendor, and is managed through that company by Marisela Delvarra. A new LLC for new contracts is an ordinary choice. But each contract sits under the $15,000 a month above which the company's policy sends a supplier to procurement review, and together they do not. The AP team links the two vendor records, sends the pair to procurement and asks the site operations manager for the conflict-of-interest declaration the policy requires when an employee recommends a vendor. He declares no interest, and says Delvarra told him a new company would take the new contracts.

One question stays open, and the file says so: who Mossgarth's other members are. No public record the team found names them, so it asks Delvarra for a list and records her answer as the vendor's own statement.

Two records count as two only if neither was copied from the other.

• Formation in a state whose record names only the agent, at every layer. A Delaware LLC owned by another Delaware LLC leaves a search very little to follow, and a chain that stops there has to be recorded as a dead end.
• A stand-in's name on the filing. In a case the Justice Department announced in August 2026, a former assistant treasurer at Bridgestone Americas pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud over invoices from a fictitious vendor he created, Paymt-Tech, LLC. According to the release, he "registered the company in Nevada under the name of an acquaintance", and Bridgestone paid $14,923,978.57 into its accounts over nearly four years.
• Professional names. Organisers, authorised persons and agents can be paid filing agents or advisers, whose names are real and show only who did the paperwork, and a California notary's certificate verifies identity alone.
• Stale filings. California's Statement of Information is renewed every two years, and in between only if the LLC files an update. Texas notes that its management records are "not necessarily current". A name can be right on the date of filing and wrong today.
• A foreign member. When a layer is a foreign company, the chain moves to a registry abroad, and that registry decides how far it goes.

Most LLCs with thin records belong to ordinary businesses, so a fair review checks the ordinary explanation first.

• A manager listed at an office or a post office box may simply be keeping a home address off a public filing, which the forms allow.
• A commercial registered agent is normal, and so is an agent's address on file.
• An LLC owned by another LLC may simply be part of a group with a holding company at the top.
• A manager may own nothing, and an owner may manage nothing. Read the title on each filing.
• Names collide. A match between a filing and a person needs two independent details, such as a name and an address at the same date.
• Filings lag. A recent change of manager may not show until the next report.

Keep three levels apart. A thin record means look further. A contradiction, such as a new vendor that turns out to share an owner with an existing one, calls for a question. Two independent records that agree, or the LLC's own written disclosure, settle what they cover, and the file records what they leave open.

Following an LLC through registries, property and lien records and its web footprint is slow by hand, and the hard part is keeping each link tied to its source. Sixtyfour's agent starts from what you already have, such as a company name, a person's name or a website, researches public sources such as registry filings, public records and the web footprint, links what it finds to the right company and people, and returns every finding with its source. Anything it could not establish is reported as open, and a person on your team decides. There is more on how financial crime teams use it on our financial institutions page.

Find the LLC in the registry of the state where it was formed and in every state where it is registered to do business, and read its filings for the managers, members and signers they name. Then follow those names into the records the LLC creates as it does business, from deeds and liens to assumed names, licences and SEC filings, trace any parent company the same way, and treat each name as a lead until a second, independent record agrees.