Who Lied?

Consider the following sequence of events.

On 1/24/05, I spoke with the owner of a private investigation (p.i.) agency in Boerne, Texas, whom I’ll call P.I. #1, about hiring him to help me deal with a fraudulent trust document my name had been forged on and also to collect evidence that my children and I were being stalked and harassed. P.I. #1 told me he was a former DEA agent with many years of law enforcement experience who believed he could help me. We agreed to meet about this in Boerne, after he returned from a business trip to Washington, D.C.

On 1/31/05, I met with P.I. #1 at a restaurant in Boerne. P.I. #1 was accompanied at this meeting by a second man and his wife. This second man, whom I’ll call P.I. #2, was introduced to me as a retired FBI agent who had specialized in fraud cases and now worked as a p.i. with a specialty in that area. P.I. #1 said he wanted P.I. #2 to consult on my case if I hired him and that he would pay P.I. #2 himself out of what I paid him if I hired them.

Both of these men said they were licensed as private investigators by the State of Texas, and they told me how to go to the DPS/PSB website to verify this (which I later did). P.I. #1 carried a large black leather briefcase with an official-looking seal on it that he said was from his days with the DEA. He had asked me to bring along a cashier’s check for his retainer if I decided to hire him, which I did decide to do (Doc. A). As I left this meeting, P.I. #2 pulled out a business card, wrote his cell phone number on it while I watched, and handed it to me (Doc. B, top).

On 2/2/05, P.I. #2 personally escorted me to the office of an attorney in Boerne that both p.i.s insisted I hire to help me deal with the fraudulent trust. I did hire this lawyer at that time.

On 2/4/05, P.I. #2 asked me to meet with him at his home, which was located in Fair Oaks Ranch, an affluent suburb between Boerne and San Antonio. He gave me directions to his house over the phone, and I jotted them down along the edge of my kitchen calendar. I drove to his house, where I met with him and his wife, who they said helped with his business. While I was there, the couple showed me a large glass case containing a handgun, a badge, and other items I was told were related to the man’s years as an FBI agent. I was also shown briefly into a room with a computer in it that was being used as an office. This room had a wooden shelf attached to the wall than ran all along one side. There were some small items on the shelf, but my attention was drawn to a large framed art print that was propped up against the wall on the shelf, midway down the room. This print was a still-life of various items related to FBI service (gun, badge with “FBI” clearly written on it, etc.). It was in the style of a well-known Kentucky artist named Don Ensor, and it was very similar or possibly identical to a print I recalled seeing a few years earlier at the home of my father’s next-door neighbor, an FBI agent, in Kentucky.

I only met with P.I. #2 at his home this one time. After this, both p.i.s insisted on meeting with me in an assortment of other unusual locations instead. P.I. #1 always insisted on being paid in cash only. When I demanded a receipt, he finally hand-wrote me one (Doc. C).

All three of these men (the two p.i.s and the lawyer they took me to) charged me large amounts of money for work they claimed to be doing as part of my case, but when I began asking to see actual results of their work and requesting written reports of what they’d done, they began stalling. I confronted all three of them at a meeting in the lawyer’s office on 8/15/05 that I can only describe as very frightening and threatening. Desperate to defuse the situation, I told the three men I needed to spend the next few weeks getting two of my children off to college in other states and then would re-evaluate things. As I was leaving this meeting, I spotted my former father-in-law’s vehicle nearby and realized he’d been listening in on the meeting, probably from an adjacent office. At that point, I realized I’d been conned.

On 8/21/05, I mailed a formal complaint in the form of a box of documents plus a cover letter against the persons involved in the fraudulent trust, P.I. #1, P.I. #2, and the Boerne lawyer to the FBI office in San Antonio (Doc. D). However, I was followed into the post office by two men who flashed badges at postal employees and were immediately admitted into the “Employees Only” part of the building. Because I was concerned about this, I went in person to the FBI office a few days later to follow up on my complaint. The Special Agent I met with there (who never told me his name) said their office hadn’t received my complaint. I explained that one of the p.i.s who’d defrauded me was a former FBI agent. The current agent took down P.I. #2’s information and said he’d do some checking.

Beginning on 9/4/05, I started noticing P.I. #1 and P.I. #2 following me and stalking me. I recorded these incidents in a logbook.

I officially fired P.I. #1, P.I. #2, and their lawyer-friend on 9/9/05. I had deliberately waited to do this until after I was sure there were written records of the crimes committed against me on file with the FBI because of how frightening the confrontation with the two former federal agents in particular had been.

On 9/13/05, I received a letter from the FBI that was dated 9/1/05 in which they refused to do anything (Doc. E). This letter was printed on cheap, flimsy paper and arrived with its envelope hanging wide open. It referred to a strange unknown letter I was supposed to have sent them on 8/24/05, rather than the supposedly missing box of documents with its very clear cover letter that I’d actually sent on 8/22/05 as shown above.

On 10/21/05, I filed formal complaints with the DPS/PSB (Texas p.i. licensing board) against P.I. #1 and P.I. #2 (Doc. F).

When I got no response from the DPS/PSB, I began complaining to the Texas OAG and other agencies. I also sent a letter to the DPS/PSB on 11/10/05 asking about the lack of response to my complaints (Doc. G). On 11/13/05, I emailed the DPS/PSB about my fear of P.I. #2 because he was frightening me by stalking me and driving by our house repeatedly (Doc. H).

On 11/15/05, a DPS investigator in San Antonio called and asked me to meet him at a public location that was between my house and his office later that day to give him copies of all the documents related to the complaints I’d filed. During this conversation, he hinted that P.I. #2 might not have actually been an FBI agent.

About 20 or 30 minutes after this call ended, the DPS investigator called me back to cancel our meeting in San Antonio. He said he’d just learned that a senior DPS investigator in Dallas had already been assigned to my case. He instead asked me to fax him a few of the most important documents from my complaints, and he gave me his fax number. Then he told me straight out that he hadn’t been able to find any indications of P.I. #2’s ever having worked for the FBI. I told the investigator I was shocked to hear this. He told me to just fax what he’d asked for, and he said someone would get back in touch with me soon.

I immediately gathered up what the investigator had asked for. I started faxing the documents to the number I’d been given but quickly discovered that the fax number didn’t work. I thought I must have jotted the number down incorrectly, so I called the investigator back to check on this. A different investigator answered the phone, said the person I’d just talked to had left the office, and told me the fax machine I’d been trying to send to was out of order. He gave me the number of a different machine he said was located down the same hallway, and he promised me he’d personally make sure that my documents got to the correct investigator. I then faxed my documents to the second number without any problems.

As it happened, P.I. #1 and P.I. #2 had provided me with simple equipment for recording phone calls, and I still had this equipment attached to my telephone. As a result, I had a cassette tape recording of my phone conversations with the San Antonio DPS investigator. (The third call about the broken fax machine was made from a different phone and was not recorded.)

That evening, I suddenly remembered the business card P.I. #2 had given me (Doc. B, top). I got it out, looked at it again, and saw that it contained both a statement implying he’d been an FBI agent and a sample of his handwriting proving he’d given it to me. Based on what the DPS investigator had told me on the phone, I now believed the card might be proof that P.I. #2 had impersonated an FBI agent. The next morning, 11/16/05, I sent a letter (Doc. I) and a copy of the card to the DPS investigator in San Antonio.

On 2/6/06, I was sent a letter from the San Antonio DPS investigator giving me the contact information for the Dallas investigator who was handling my case (Doc. J).

The Dallas investigator, the DPS, and the Texas OAG all later refused to take any action whatsoever against P.I. #1 or P.I. #2. Because I was upset about law enforcement’s refusal to do anything at all about investigating or prosecuting these p.i.s and was seriously concerned about them defrauding someone else because they still held valid Texas p.i. licenses, I began sending copies of the business card from P.I. #2 to various agencies and the media. Meanwhile, I continued to log various stalking incidents directed against me by both of these p.i.s.

On 6/26/07, I went back down to the San Antonio FBI office on another matter and met with a different agent there who did identify himself (Doc. B, bottom). I was surprised to discover very quickly that this agent was more interested in P.I. #2 than he was in the matter I’d come there about. The agent began this discussion by asking me if I wasn’t afraid of being sued by P.I. #2 for accusing him of impersonating a federal agent by sending around copies of his business card. I told him no, and I explained about how the DPS investigator had told me there was no record of P.I. #2 ever having worked for the FBI. I was stunned when the agent told me P.I. #2 actually had worked for the FBI as a fraud investigator. I asked him why the DPS investigator had lied to me. He said he didn’t know, and he implied that I was not being truthful about having been told this.

At that point, I became very upset. I immediately told the agent that I just happened to have a cassette tape recording of the phone conversation in which the DPS investigator had made the statements in question, and I got out the tape and handed it to him. At this, the agent became agitated, grabbed the tape from me, and ran out of the room.

He returned a few minutes later with a small tape recorder that he turned on. My tape was in the recorder, and it started playing right at the spot during my first call with the investigator where he implied that P.I. #2 hadn’t worked for the FBI but didn’t actually state this. This made me wonder how the agent had managed to locate that spot on the tape so quickly, since he hadn’t been out of the room very long. I knew the part of the tape he needed to hear was in the second phone call, but when I told him this, he moved the tape ahead (again to just the right spot!) and showed me there was only one phone call on my tape, even though I knew there had been two. I tried to tell him the other call had somehow disappeared from the tape, but he made it clear he didn’t believe me. I told him that, regardless of his FBI status, P.I. #2 had defrauded me and had been stalking me ever since and that I was afraid of him. We discussed a particular incident in which P.I. #2 had been tailgating me too closely and might have tapped my bumper with his vehicle at a stop sign, before moving on to the matter I’d actually come to discuss.

I was extremely upset about my cassette tape, which I knew had to have been tampered with at some point. As soon as I got home, I got out a copy of the tape I’d made and played it. To my astonishment, someone had also removed the second phone call from the copy as well!

I was positive both tapes had been tampered with. The matter I’d gone to the FBI office about involved, among other things, another lawyer who’d recently defrauded me. I remembered that a few months before, she had asked me to make her copies of all the tape recordings related to my case, which I’d kept hidden because of repeated break-ins at our house. I’d also gone to the FBI to ask their help in locating illegal surveillance devices we knew were installed in our house and on our property that were being used to facilitate the stalking (which they refused to do), and I realized that the illegal surveillance might have revealed where I kept the tapes so they could be doctored during one of the break-ins, using the copy I’d provided the lawyer with to determine what on the tape needed to be altered. I’m told a very high-quality doctored master could have been prepared in advance using a tool called “Audacity” and stored as an .aup file on a laptop; this could at some point be recorded onto my tapes directly in a very short amount of time. I’m also told it’s possible to bookmark specific spots on a tape.

Regarding the question of whether P.I. #2 really had or had not been an FBI agent as he’d claimed, I remained puzzled. I knew what I’ve related here was correct and accurate, because I’d personally experienced all of it. That meant that two different persons in law enforcement had given me completely conflicting information. There was no escaping the fact that one of them might have lied to me. Since I was unsure of who was being truthful and who wasn’t, I of course immediately contacted as many of the people and agencies I could remember having sent copies of P.I. #2’s business card to and explained the situation to them.

I wondered if I’d ever be able to get to the truth of the matter. Recently, the subject came up again in a most unexpected way. I was put in touch with another victim of organized stalking in San Antonio, and when I mentioned the name of P.I. #2, this victim recognized it instantly. The other victim had discovered P.I. #2 actually runs a major regional organized stalking gang that employs numerous members of both his and his wife’s extended families. I was provided with information on persons and vehicles known to be involved in this stalking gang, and I recognized many of them. This other victim says he has personally filed serious complaints with various law enforcement agencies against P.I. #2, and he knows of at least three other victims who’ve done this as well.

It now appears likely that, although I did not meet P.I. #2 until 2005, he had actually been stalking me from the very beginning, which was probably in 1999.

As to the question of whether P.I. #2 really is a former FBI agent or not, the San Antonio victim says he checked the man out thoroughly and was told by someone he trusted at the FBI that P.I. #2 definitely had worked for the FBI. (In that case, I would very much like to know what he did there and why he left!) As of 3/25/11, P.I. #2 still holds a valid Texas p.i. license, according to the DPS/PSB website. (P.I. #1 appears to have retired.)

As to the question of why someone in law enforcement might have lied to me, there are a couple of other possibilities. For example, the DPS investigator might have checked someone else with a similar name. Or perhaps the DPS investigator checked directly with Quantico, who didn’t know P.I. #1 had been employed by the local FBI office as a private contractor, paid informant, or in some other capacity rather than as an agent. The problem with those sorts of explanations is why I wasn’t simply given them at some point.

I’ve now come to realize that the important question isn’t who lied to me or even whether they lied to me or not; it’s why no one in law enforcement has been straight with me about P.I. #2, why he still has his license after there’ve been so many serious complaints filed against him, and why he’s never been prosecuted for anything as far as I know.