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Finding the Principals of a Business​

A common KYB and due diligence task is identifying the humans who own or control a business—the officers, owners, and registered agents named in official filings. This guide explains the data model behind that relationship and shows a complete query for surfacing it.

How Principals Are Modeled​

In the Enigma data model, LegalEntity can be thought of as an abstract super class. Every legal entity is always associated with one of these two entities:

  • Person — A natural person (individual human).
  • RegisteredEntity — A formally registered business organization (LLC, Corporation, etc.).

Very often the principals who control a business are found on the Registration that is filed with the Secretary of State. Registrations often name specific individuals. In our data model, the relationship between a Person and a Registration is represented by the Role entity — as owner, officer, registered agent, and so on. Each Role points back to a LegalEntity, and you can tell whether that entity is a person by checking whether legalEntityType is "Person".

The query path is:

Brand → legalEntities → registeredEntities → registrations → roles → legalEntities → names

The extra registeredEntities hop reflects the data model: LegalEntity is abstract. The concrete subtype RegisteredEntity is what the SoS filings (registrations) is connected to. A LegalEntity that is a natural person has no registeredEntity associated with it — that (plus the 'legalEntityType==Person') is how you know it is a Person rather than a RegisteredEntity (e.g. Corporation, LLC, etc.).

Tier Requirements​

StepFieldTier Required
Brand → Legal EntitieslegalEntitiesCore
Legal Entity → Registered EntitiesregisteredEntitiesPremium
Registered Entity → RegistrationsregistrationsPremium
Registration → RolesrolesPlus
Role → Legal Entities (persons)legalEntitiesCore

You need at minimum Plus + Premium tiers to traverse this full path.

Query: Find Principals of a Business​

The query below searches for a brand by name and location, then traverses to its domestic registrations to surface the roles and the persons named in them.

Request
query FindBusinessPrincipals {
  search(searchInput: {
    name: "Joe's Pizza"
    address: { city: "Brooklyn", state: "NY" }
    entityType: BRAND
    conditions: { limit: 1 }
  }) {
    ... on Brand {
      id
      names(first: 1) {
        edges {
          node {
            name
          }
        }
      }
      legalEntities(first: 5) {
        edges {
          node {
            names(first: 1) {
              edges {
                node {
                  name
                  legalEntityType
                }
              }
            }
            registeredEntities(first: 3) {
              edges {
                node {
                  registrations(
                    first: 5
                    conditions: {
                      filter: { EQ: ["jurisdictionType", "domestic"] }
                      orderBy: ["issueDate DESC"]
                    }
                  ) {
                    edges {
                      node {
                        registeredName
                        registrationState
                        status
                        subStatus
                        roles(first: 20) {
                          edges {
                            node {
                              jobTitle
                              jobFunction
                              legalEntities(first: 1) {
                                edges {
                                  node {
                                    names(first: 1) {
                                      edges {
                                        node {
                                          name
                                          legalEntityType
                                        }
                                      }
                                    }
                                  }
                                }
                              }
                            }
                          }
                        }
                      }
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Reading the Response​

Each role node in the response represents a person or entity named in an SoS filing. To identify the individual:

  • jobTitle — the role title as listed in the filing (e.g., "Registered Agent", "President", "Member")
  • jobFunction — a normalized job function (e.g., "Accounting", "Operations")
  • legalEntities[].names[].name — the name of the legal entity performing this role
  • legalEntities[].names[].legalEntityType — "Person" means this is a natural person; any other value (e.g., "LLC") means a business entity holds the role
Filtering to natural persons only

To limit results to natural persons, filter on legalEntityType:

roles(
  first: 20
  conditions: {
    filter: { EQ: ["legalEntities.names.legalEntityType", "Person"] }
  }
)