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When his partner Nathan Ingram is killed with a bomb, Harold Finch decides to fake his own dead to protect him (and his fiancée). Despite he is presumed dead as well, he still owns a fortune and several companies.

How did he manage that?

Update: My theorie is that when Harold decides to fake his own death, he gains some time before anyone notices that he's "dead" due to the chaos of the explosion. In this time he could have setup some front companies and manages that these inherit his fortune (he's a genius hacker after all ;-)). Is there any evidence for this?

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    Harold Finch was an insignificant techie, invisible to anyone but Nathan and Grace. I assume that the fortune belongs to one of his many aliases. I don't think that the series ever goes deeper into details of his incomes (making him a bit like Bruce Wayne: always enough money, but don't ask how, where from, or how does no one notice his spending).
    – Vedran Šego
    Commented May 6, 2014 at 23:23
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    With his fiancée he used the alias Harold Martin. And it was Harold Martin who died in 2010. - When Finch enrolled at MIT he used the alias Harold Wren. It was Harold Wren who, together with Nathan Ingram, founded the tech company IFT, which made Ingram a rich man (so maybe that's also how Finch got rich). Harold Wren is an alias that he still uses. - I wouldn't be surprised if Harold spread his wealth over several aliases.
    – Oliver_C
    Commented May 7, 2014 at 8:36

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As Vedran Šego and Oliver_C mentioned in the comments, a lot of his assets are held by aliases. For example:

Throughout the show, it's heavily hinted that Harold Finch is also an alias, and it's not the name of the man who died, that was Harold Martin. Harold Finch is very much alive and the owner of IFT, a software company. It's not really mentioned how big the company is, but as they get government contracts (the machine) and have a huge New York City headquarters, it's presumably worth a lot too, though it's hinted in the pilot:

Finch: You see, Mr. Reese, until that day [9/11/01], I had spent the better part of my life making myself very rich. Suddenly all that money didn't seem to amount to much.

In episode 6- The Fix, as Harold Partridge (Investor), he invests in Virtanen Pharmaceuticals while investigating them, and at the end of the episode, Shorts the company just before they assist in having the owner arrested, which makes him a considerable amount of money:

Finch: I know you don't care who you hurt to get what you want. I know the only thing you do care about is money. So that's what I'm going to take from you. Your money. All of it. Your were right Mr Keller. I never will have to invest in another company

Beginning in episode 12, Legacy, we see Harold Wren who is an insurance underwriter for Universal Heritage Insurance, this is a well established identity tied to the name he graduated MIT with. The job title combined with his very fancy office seems to indicate this is a wealthy alias.

Additionally, his aliases have given him inside knowledge into locations which are abandoned indefinitely, such as The Library as he mentions in the pilot:

Finch: This building was sold to a bank that I control, which promptly declared bankruptcy so the property's in a kind of limbo, it doesn't exist

Not having to pay for property saves a lot of money in the long run.

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    And Harold is, after all, a superhero-level hacker who has lived all his adult life in disguise. He has exactly the right capabilities to spread his wealth around and retain access to it even before he is "killed". He was already doing everything he needed to before the "death" to keep access to his wealth across multiple secret identities.
    – matt_black
    Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 16:15

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