Long time ago I hired detectives to investigate my ex-wife's background and her associates in Russia. I used Russian-Detective.com I requested that there would be no contact with her immediate family, mother, father or brother. Ex-husbands were fair game. There were three investigations. The first investigation was OK-ed by my divorce attorney. What was important was that the investigation not be made known to my then wife at the time. Mainly it was to gather information on some real estate I was supposedly funding. That was an apartment (Krushkev style) for my mother-in-law.
The info I got was that no such apartment existed and that the story my ex-wife (present wife then) was telling me was all lies. The house she claimed was hers and was sold was really her mother's, aunt's and 4 other people's. In fact the house had two addresses and my ex used this anomaly to tell me one address was of her house and the other address was of her mother's apartment. According to her story mom sold both the apartment and small house but needed an extra 100,000 rubles to buy the Krushkev apartment in the inner city. That's were I came in.
The house that I did see when I was there wasn't much. A real dump with no running hot water. I tried to get a hot water heater installed but my wife said the money would be better used elsewhere than for her house. Anyway I got all the documents from the Russian city hall on who owned what and used them in the divorce negotiations. Besides not having to pay out anything in the divorce I got some satisfaction in letting her know I knew of her lies (there were many besides this).
The second investigation took place about 6 months after I filed for the divorce. I had the detective Mr Matushin who works with Elena Garrett of R-D actually go to the city and conduct the investigation himself. at that time the divorce was still on going and I wanted further information on my wife's criminal/psychological background. Nothing showed up except the assessments of her former ex-husbands. I like husband number two's the best, "I almost forgot about her and I don't like being reminded of her". Husband number one was more kindly. He said he had met her on the street one day and they talked for a while. His assessment was she was disappointed in her lack of achieving her goal and that was being well off. He said that was her issue with him, that he didn't know how to "live well enough" (Her second husband was a well off businessman). Anyway I knew what I was being told was true as I had heard from my ex-wife another version of this encounter of meeting her husband while she was walking on the street. I never told the detectives of this trivial matter. My ex-wife's version was that she showed up her first husband as she had a child by her third husband and it was his infertility and not hers that caused the breakup of the marriage.
When the PI contacted the third husband that is when the sh!t hit the fan. The third husband's mother was in contact with her former daughter-in-law and let her know a detective had contacted her son about her son. The background on that was that my ex-wife had lied to me about getting her ex-husband's permission for their son to emigrate. I was told she had gotten this right before she came over here. But several months later she told me when we were together that her ex-husband was down at the city hall (whatever is the Russian equivalent) trying to find out where he was. I found out from the PI that he had filed reports with the police, Interpol and the FSB. The PI told him that he was in America and doing well. I sent some pictures of the son in Manhattan climbing on some sculpture across from the Statue of Liberty. I had the detective tell him if he wanted to get his son back I would pay for an attorney who would file a petition with the Hague Convention. He said he would do this providing I pay him to do so. I had told the detective that if this came up (it had been hinted by the father before this meeting) I would have nothing to do with this. Bottom line when he seen there was to be no money in it for him he declined the offer. He said "A son is better with his mother" and "If she comes back she will only come running back to me". The latter comment affirmed what I suspected. That my wife and him had a on going relationship while we were married (we had gotten married in Russia). I had found pictures she brought to America of them together with her wearing clothes and jewelry I had boughten her in Russia. It was hard to be certain but it looked like they were holding hands.
The other part of this investigation involved the agency there. The owner had "partners", low level types according to the FSB. Yep the FSB found out about the investigation and wanted any information we uncovered. You see private detectives come from retired police and the KGB/FSB. They keep in touch, have parties retirement and so on, tell each other things ect. The "Mail-order-bride" thing is a pretty low level racket for the FSB to involve themselves with. For a Russian man to maintain dignity with such a business he has to run it as a scam on us gullable Westerners. This I have been told. The interest the FSB agent had was surprising to my detective. When he got back to his home city he had conversation with a FSB agent he knew there. The agent told him that every large city has someone who has someone assigned to set up a network of MOBs as support in foreign countries. Frankly I doubt that this is a high priority mission of their's. When I first heard of the Russian spy network recently uncovered I thought this might be a case of this.
Also what happened when my PI had this contact he was offered the services of someone who could help me make offers that can't be refused :evil: It would cost me quite a bit though. I passed for a number of reasons one of which was that I might be violating some law and I might be getting a visit by our version of these men... Besides evil should not be paid back with evil. Let God handle that.
Anyway I got lots of info, photos, documents etc that gave me a pretty good idea of the total fraud I was involved with with my ex-wife. Only a little bit of it was useful in a practical way. The rest of it settled in my mind what was really going on with my marriage.
* I suspect but have no way of confirming it that the 100,000 rubles was the exit price paid to the agency owner and his partners.
