Mary’s attorney contacted and explained that she was in the midst of a contentious high-stakes divorce proceeding. Several million dollars of her company’s money was at stake.
When Mary met with the investigator, she held nothing back. She said Steve, her soon-to-be ex, had never been the kind of guy to break a sweat. He worked menial jobs for a while, quit, and vacationed until Mary threatened him with divorce. And then the cycle started all over again. She was tired of it.
For months, Steve had depleted joint bank accounts and had no explanation for what he did with the money. Mary surmised that he was hoarding as much cash as he could and he was hiding it because it was obvious – to both of them – that divorce was imminent.
Now, in the 50-50 state where they resided, Mary was in the fight of her life, to keep Steve from draining her of everything she had worked so hard to build.
When the phone calls started, they were mostly in the middle of the night. When Mary answered, the restricted caller hung up. Then the calls turned into threats whispered at Mary by an unrecognizable male voice.
She contacted the police but detectives explained that nothing could be done. They had no evidence of a crime. But when the locks on the back door of the house were broken, Mary filed a police report. She explained to our investigators that she had gone from feeling irritated to fearing that her ex might hire someone to hurt or kill her, simply to get access to all of her money.
Mary was scared and feeling vulnerable. Her emotions were preventing her from taking the steps she needed to protect herself. That’s not unusual when spouses part ways.
Sad to say, the details change, but the general divorce situation does not. knew exactly where to start, with a digital forensics investigation.
Cell phone hack detection is the first step to determine if a cell phone spy had been installed on her phone allowing someone to access her calls, location and other data in texts, emails and photos.
Likewise, a computer hacking forensic investigator conducted a complete computer forensics analysis including the use of spyware detectors – and as was needed, spyware removers.
By then it was too late to protect the data that had been compromised, but after discovery, Mary and her attorney knew what steps to take to protect her assets from that point.
Next, we prepared a subpoena records for the restricted caller and was able to track down the location of the caller, which was turned over to the attorney for use with authorities.
The last area was the skimming of money and emptying of accounts that was happening. An asset search investigator immediately began looking for the missing assets, uncovering not only hidden bank accounts, but it didn’t take long to find hidden assets that Mary knew nothing about – a boat in the Florida Keys, a cabin in Maine and two motorcycles stashed in – believe it or not – Utah.
Although it was a bad situation for Mary, she was confident that with the evidence and documentation provided to her attorney by , she was not vulnerable any longer.
-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations, All in Investigations
