Sellers who play this game are sure you'll miss it and overpay for their business. Everything looked fine. That’s how these stories always begin. We were looking at a marketing company. Clean QuickBooks. Bank statements matched. Taxes filed. All good. Then we opened the balance sheet… Capital expenditures were growing year over year. Strange for a marketing company that wasn't buying equipment or property. So we pulled the general ledger. What we found: The seller had been quietly moving regular business expenses—lights, phones, computers, travel, even cost of goods sold—off the income statement and burying them in CapEx on the balance sheet. The result: $400,000 in hidden expenses and EBITDA inflated by 200%. The buyer thought they were acquiring a business with $600K SDE. The real number? $200K. Watch the full breakdown here → redacted