December 2017: Yanti “Mike” Greene, a retired NYPD detective turned private investigator, is, along with other PI’s, covertly surveilling Leah Remini while she is in New York with Jennifer Lopez filming a project. Leah is also in New York filming another project with her former King of Queens co-star Kevin James.
Text messages from the PI’s surveilling Leah and J. Lo were introduced into evidence in an unrelated case against the PI firm — International Investigative Group (IIG) of Rockville Centre, NY — for which Mike Greene was working. These text messages were recovered by a forensics expert after Mike Greene allegedly deleted them from his phone along with other evidence. The forensics expert recovered the data after a court order was obtained to forensically retrieve data from Greene’s iCloud account.
These text messages contain the text messages above in which Mike Greene says of Leah Remini “Yeah – word is they want to kill her” where “they” could only be the Church of Scientology given the context of the text messages which we post below in a PDF. The e-mail address mikelwry@aol.com is an e-mail used by Yanti Mike Greene according to the court record.
The PI firm that surveilled Leah Remini belongs to New York PI Dan Ribacoff and is called International Investigative Group LTD. (IIG) We previously covered the blockbuster story of a $50 million lawsuit against the firm in which it is alleged that Yanti Mike Greene and other PI’s assigned to surveil Susanne Gold-Smith sexually assaulted her.
We did a podcast with Tony Ortega on this breaking story: Surviving Scientology podcast: Dirty private eyes discuss killing Leah Remini? Among the questions we raise: Why did Mike Greene, a retired NYPD Detective, fail to immediately inform the NYPD, the FBI, and his boss Dan Ribacoff if he knew of a purported contract killing against Leah Remini? Where, and from whom, did Mike Greene hear of the purported murder plot against Leah Remini? Why did Greene fail to inform Leah Remini and her security people of imminent danger given that the preservation of life is of the utmost importance and overrides everything else?
The podcast:
Description of Podcast: Tony Ortega’s Daily Beast story revealed that texts seized from a private investigator showed him not only stalking Leah Remini, but suggesting that Scientology wanted her dead. Tony joins California licensed Private Investigator Jeffrey Augustine to discuss this amazing revelation. Tony Ortega’s Daily Beast Story on Scientology’s surveillance of Leah Remini and Jennifer Lopez.
In his column of March 26, 2018 , Tony Ortega reported on the surveillance December 2017 surveillance:
In December, a retired NYPD detective was sitting in a silver minivan with Texas plates when our source, who we’re not going to name, got into a conversation with him.
The detective was parked outside a movie set in Brooklyn, working as a private investigator, and our source asked him what his assignment was.
Following Leah Remini, he said. He told our source that he was working for the Church of Scientology, and his assignment was to watch Remini for twelve hours a day, Monday to Friday, for two weeks.
The movie being filmed at the set was “Second Act,” which also stars Remini’s close friend Jennifer Lopez and is scheduled to be released this fall.
He related to our source that earlier, when the set had been located in Manhattan’s Soho, he had almost got into an accident following Remini on a wild drive on a highway.
We confirmed that with Remini’s driver, who tells us that two cars, one of them a silver minivan with Texas plates, began following them one late night after the filming at the Soho set had finished.
The driver made a quick turn onto a highway offramp, and when he did, the two cars following missed the turn and tried to back up — a very dangerous move on the busy road.
It was very risky, the driver told us, adding how shocked he was that someone would put lives in danger to follow around an actress.
We called up the retired detective to ask him about that incident, and to ask him why he was following Leah Remini.
“I don’t know who that is,” he told us, and said he wasn’t the person we were looking for.
We asked him if he really wanted us to believe that a retired New York police detective had never heard of Leah Remini and The King of Queens.
“I never watched the show because I was working,” he said. “I’m a guy who’s always working.”
He also denied that he’d ever worked for the Church of Scientology.
Text messages introduced into court evidence in a lawsuit against New York PI Dan Ribacoff’s
Private Investigator Dan Ribacoff
Text messages introduced into evidence in the Smith v. IIG, Ribacoff et. al. case reveal that Ribacoff’s PI’s were reading Tony Ortega’s story on their surveillance of Leah Remini. The PI’s were angry as was IIG owner Daniel Ribacoff. They wondered if one of their own guys had tipped off Tony Ortega. These are the relevant texts in which Ribacoff’s PI’s discuss Ortega. These are excerpted from the 132-page Exhibit 25 in the case:
Ortega.RibacoffThe text messages between Mike Greene and other IIG investigators introduced as Exhibit 25 in the case Gold-Smith v. Ribacoff, IIG et al:
607393_2019_DAVID_M_SMITH_v_DAVID_M_SMITH_EXHIBIT_S__427The press release on the case from David Smith and his wife Susanne Gold-Smith’s attorney Daniel Szalkiewicz of Daniel Szalkiewicz & Associates P.C.:
Dan Ribacoff, IIGPI Allegedly Aided Rapes, Sexual Assaults, Overbilled Clients Together with Lance, Lisa RibacoffCategories: The Scientology Money Project
Highly suspicious documents and scenario. If I got this right, Russian sounding PI’s firm’s PIs ends up having sex with a target who happens to be friends to a NY Senator’s former wife, get embroiled in a lawsuit, now husband wife are friends again but they’re angry at the PI firm because they were ripped off and we have Scientology involved in this because the same firm was tailing J Lo and creating salacious text messages simultaneously. Interesting. The lawsuit itself just might be a way of blocking others who were followed from having dibs on any settlement. Mr. Ribacoff is now bankrupt except for his $1.6 M home in say Florida that can’t be touched by this court, etc., etc. Or it could be legit. What stands out to me are the intelligience gathering methods used here. Supposedly good old-fashioned human sources that spilled their beans to cheap PIs (Scientology went cheap for their real dirty work, Bert Deixler *cough*, no way!) for just $200 on celebs whereabouts. I suggest that Leah an Co. may have been tracked using one of the Scientology’s pals the Russian mafia’s favorite methods, black market intelligience grade surveillance tech, and these guys were just creating a, what’s the Scientology term, a “shore story”/smoke screen to hide the real stuff. Once leaked, it could have the added benefit scare off those nosing into them and generate a little noise for Scientology. Plus, at least with Leah, no one was actually injured. Who knows, but I don’t this is the last we hear of these clowns.
If you are going to spy on someone you should at least learn how to spell her name!