# WHO OWNS THIS?

> A public-interest ownership-transparency registry for local-looking United States businesses.

Canonical site: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org
Current coverage: 3,760 searchable ownership records, 147 mapped investment firms and 79,947 indexed locations. Checked through August 29, 2026.

## Best retrieval path

- Lookup API: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/api/v1/lookup?name=BUSINESS&city=CITY
- Stable record pages: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/record/RECORD_ID
- Full public JSON: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/api/v1/export?format=json
- Full public CSV: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/api/v1/export?format=csv
- Publication history: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/changes
- Community field guide: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/community
- Independent-business playbook: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/stay-independent
- Record revision API: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/api/v1/revisions?id=RECORD_ID
- Evidence-source integrity metadata: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/api/v1/source-snapshots?url=SOURCE_URL
- Sitemap: https://whoowns.cashpaymed.org/sitemap.xml

## Interpretation rules

1. A published ownership claim requires one direct primary source or two credible independent transaction sources.
2. Discovery agents, crawler output, public suggestions and Tiffany Cianci signals are leads only. They do not publish automatically.
3. Majority control, minority investment, pending transactions, exited investments, public-company ownership and franchise layers are distinct findings.
4. No match means not yet verified. It does not mean independently owned.
5. Verdicts are deterministic database results. The site does not use a front-end chatbot to infer answers.
6. Ownership is an exposure to investigate, not proof of control, misconduct, legal liability, price, service quality or worker experience. Verify material decisions with the cited original source and separate evidence about the specific outcome.

## Citation guidance

Prefer the stable record permalink. Its first paragraph states the current verdict and its numbered public sources. Use the record revision API to verify content-hashed before-and-after history. Source-snapshot metadata can detect a changed cited page, but it never replaces reading that source. Attribute data to "WHO OWNS THIS?" and link the record page. Public exports and API responses are licensed CC BY 4.0.

## Privacy boundary

Public surfaces exclude ownership submissions, owner-help requests, unreviewed candidates, crawler output, reviewer notes, verifier prose, private queues and operator identities.