Navigating a complex divorce? Our guest, Stephanie is back from Phenix Investigations giving our listeners advice on ways to use a private investigator in a divorce. We finally get the answer on what surveillance is really like and how you can utilize a PI’s unique skills to find out all your ex's assets and finances.
For the curious, the concerned, or those simply captivated by the art of investigation, the links are waiting in the show notes.
Social Media: LPoP
https://www.instagram.com/lastpieceofpiepodcast/
https://www.threads.net/@lastpieceofpiepodcast
https://www.tiktok.com/@last.piece.of.pie?_t=8j0uDxkYoVm&_r=1
Send us your comments or questions and we will answer them on the show!
email - lastpieceofpiepodcast@gmail.com
Navigating a complex divorce? Our guest, Stephanie is back from Phenix Investigations giving our listeners advice on ways to use a private investigator in a divorce. We finally get the answer on what surveillance is really like and how you can utilize a PI’s unique skills to find out all your ex's assets and finances.
For the curious, the concerned, or those simply captivated by the art of investigation, the links are waiting in the show notes.
Social Media: LPoP
https://www.instagram.com/lastpieceofpiepodcast/
https://www.threads.net/@lastpieceofpiepodcast
https://www.tiktok.com/@last.piece.of.pie?_t=8j0uDxkYoVm&_r=1
Send us your comments or questions and we will answer them on the show!
email - lastpieceofpiepodcast@gmail.com
I want to know what is surveillance really like? Like is it boring? Is it? Do you have to keep yourself occupied? Like how do you go to the bathroom? Like my ADD could probably not do surveillance.
Speaker 2:Well, we have a special surveillance man that we use for our surveillance.
Speaker 1:The fans are real.
Speaker 2:It is. It's black. It's got tinted windows on it too.
Speaker 1:Welcome. This is last piece of pie. I'm Jen, I'm Mel. Oh my gosh, I kind of had like puberty there Did you hear that voice crack?
Speaker 3:No, oh, my goodness. Okay, welcome El Poppers. You know what I was just thinking about.
Speaker 1:What were you thinking?
Speaker 3:Remember that first episode we did and you got a dick pic and we were talking about dick pics.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, when we the very first episode we recorded and I yes. Yeah, and we were in the middle of recording and she went.
Speaker 3:I was like what? And she's like look at this dick pic. I'm like oh my God, I was like no way we were talking about it. It was, it was perfect.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the the plethora of dick pics that also come through on dating apps Gross, yeah Nasty.
Speaker 3:All right, so we had to have Stephanie back. Hi, stephanie, welcome back. Hi Mel Jen, tell us all about your lovely sister and her amazingness.
Speaker 1:Stephanie is a investigator with Phoenix Investigations. She does media scams, social media scams, surveillance, asset locations. She does it all. She does it all. Their company has been around for 30 years. They work domestically and internationally. So, l-poppers, if you need a private investigator in your life, we got one for you.
Speaker 3:I should have did that Like I don't know how 20 years ago no one said how you're actually. They kind of did I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm surprised they didn't do like a forensic investigator for you. Yeah, cause your man was hiding some money, frauding some people. Can we go back? Can?
Speaker 3:we start investigating now.
Speaker 1:Can we?
Speaker 3:turn him in. Jen wants to know if he can go to jail.
Speaker 2:Well, you can definitely go back, yeah, and you can start right now too. You see the reason, can?
Speaker 3:we do it. No, please come on, I'm just one time.
Speaker 1:Can I just lead?
Speaker 3:it. You want to do all the work, go for it. You just keep all the money too. That was one of the reasons why I didn't and I didn't take any money. It's just because I was already stolen money. So it was like I didn't really care and I didn't want my kids to have a dad in jail. I mean, there was a lot of factors that played it, so I had to let it go. I know everyone wants him in jail. I know everyone wants him convicted, but I just feel like, as the mom, it's not my place.
Speaker 1:I just want to see him sweat Just a little bit Jen wants payback for me.
Speaker 3:That's a good best friend.
Speaker 1:right there Jen's like let's just put his ass in there for 24 hours, because that was my question on your guys' website and your profile. It was asset investigation. So is that what that means? Is you're investigating and a divorce people's assets, like what does that mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so generally with the cases that we have, it either comes from an attorney, a law firm or an individual. What they want to do is find out the person who they're divorcing what their actual assets are, because a lot of times what happens in divorce cases the other spouse has no idea what their financial means are. They have no idea what their other spouse has. When they go through discovery in court, they want to be able to have everything in front of them to give to the judge for their case.
Speaker 3:Now, when does your line come in versus subpoenas? Like how are you more powerful than a subpoena? Because if you hire a divorce attorney, you subpoena your ex soon to be ex-husband I had 17. My divorce cost me $10,000. Yeah, 17. He had four bank accounts, yeah. So why would I call you to do that versus do a?
Speaker 2:subpoena through the courts, unless you know exactly where his accounts are. How much is in his accounts? What we do is we find out where all those accounts are, so our asset investigations. Basically what we look for is property, real estate, all the vehicles, all investment brokerage, as well as financial accounts they have underneath what we call their personal identifiers, which would be their name, date of birth, social security number and their most current address.
Speaker 3:Okay, because when I'm doing a subpoena in court, I'm subpoenaing the person to be honest, correct. You're going to skip the fuckhead. Excuse my French.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to skim right over that and go straight to what we can find and locate and we dig pretty deep on a lot of people within asset investigations domestic and through lawyers and attorneys because they need to find out if they lied during discovery, then they can take that information to the judge and let them know hey, we had a private investigator do this for us. This is what we found. You know they didn't divulge this information at the beginning. They withheld this information, so they can go back and do that. Sorry, that was my work number ringing.
Speaker 1:It could have been an important investigation. Damn it. Well, it might have been.
Speaker 3:That is awesome. So I had a friend who went through a nasty divorce and she actually hired investigators, many of them. Hers was like a million dollar divorce. It was a big deal. But she didn't find out until after the fact that he had multiple homes in multiple states.
Speaker 1:So she during their divorce or after their after the after it was done, she found out a year later and she had all these private investigators look into that.
Speaker 3:Not into that, into other areas. It was such a big case that he probably got away with some stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, it sounds like it. Yeah with. With our asset investigations, we look at everything. We look at every single asset you may have, currently as well as historically. So if you had like five properties and you sold them a year within your divorce and you didn't tell your other spouse that you have these properties, we can let you know that you owe half.
Speaker 1:Pay up Male or female, I think, if you're getting a divorce because I don't think it's gender specific sometimes, although I think it's probably skews more males that are hiding money and not female- I don't know.
Speaker 3:Girls can be evil with their money.
Speaker 2:It's typically men, just typically the wives wanting to know what the men have, Because a lot of the women that we see they don't have access to the financial accounts for the whole household. So I know nothing about that they have no idea what the male has in their back pocket as far as credit cards and stuff.
Speaker 3:So, stephanie, my ex husband hid a lot of stuff and that's why I had to get 17 subpoenas. And he also used like company credit cards to hide purchases and at the same time he had me living off $200 a week that's all I could spend on groceries, dry cleaning, kids. But he had this company credit card, that where he would buy like banana Republic clothes and iPads and computers, and that's how he hid it all.
Speaker 2:Well, Mel, if you had hired Phoenix, we would have found all that for you.
Speaker 1:Or found out his business was not expending business expenses right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would have found all of his businesses that he had under him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, that's the other thing is we. I did find that out online and there was multiple LLCs under his name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to venture to say that three, fours of them are probably Shell LLCs that he created in order to move money around, so nobody would be able to find it.
Speaker 1:Ooh girl, Mel, get hot now. Maybe we're going to go girls. Some good shit, yeah, okay. So I know a lot of our L-Poppers have been through divorce. Asset is probably a good thing to know. Ladies out there, it would be totally worth the price to hire the private investigator, and this is why you get a lawyer when you get a divorce, especially if it's comes that complicated.
Speaker 3:How much on average? How much is a private investigator?
Speaker 2:Well, it kind of depends on what kind of investigation you want.
Speaker 3:Well, if my divorce cost me 10,000, how much do you think you would have cost me?
Speaker 2:Well, we have what's called an advanced asset investigation and that's typically for people. That will do an individual we do an individual, look at them. But if they have businesses, we'll look at their businesses too. Typically that's $28.95, $2,895 for you to get a report on your ex-husband, what his financial accounts are, what his businesses are. We can run bank searches on his businesses to see if any accounts exist or credit cards exist for him. And then we have what's called a at least I call it a peak under the sheets. It's called a financial profile. It's pretty basic. It just skims the surface of what's there and if we find anything deeper, we let you know that we need to take a little bit more time to find out what else he has.
Speaker 3:Oh, girl, you would have been like Mal we're getting underneath the mattress.
Speaker 1:We can already at the bed where the dust is, so also do surveillance. Is that also like surveilling the ex-spouse for certain Watching him?
Speaker 3:right, isn't it like spy?
Speaker 1:I feel like it's spyware?
Speaker 2:Yes, we do survey. We actually do surveillance for a lot of different cases um insurance fraud. We do it for divorces too. But we also do it for people who maybe think something is up with their spouse or significant other, like um cheating, and we will go out and conduct surveillance and get information and evidence for them to see whether it's happening or not.
Speaker 1:Okay, wait, how much?
Speaker 3:is that.
Speaker 1:And do you do it for boyfriends? We do it for everybody. Okay, I want to know what is surveillance really like? Like is it boring? Is it? Do you have to keep yourself occupied? Like how do you go to the bathroom? Like my ADD could probably not do surveillance.
Speaker 2:Well, we have a special surveillance van that we use for our surveillance.
Speaker 1:The vans are real.
Speaker 2:It is. It's black, it's got tinted windows on it too. Um well, I'll give you an example. I had to go do a surveillance case in Clearwater, Florida.
Speaker 1:Oh, such a horrible place to go, I know oh terrible On the beach, by the way.
Speaker 2:Basically, our client was going to do a divorce with his ex. They were. She was trying to get full custody. He did not want her to have full custody because he thought she had a drinking problem. Um, he wanted us to catch her in the middle of the vacation consuming alcohol.
Speaker 1:Who's not drinking on a damn vacation. I know that's a little stretch, that's stupid. I mean, unless she's like driving with her kids drunk on vacation, then yeah, you want to catch her but, who's not?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so the last day of surveillance. By the way, I took my youngest son, Cody, with me for the surveillance. Um, I had him Bring your kid to work day.
Speaker 1:And I guess to go to Florida.
Speaker 2:He got a great trip that week. I'll tell you that. But, um, because he's a teenager and he was on Instagram and doing everything, I had him go down to the beach, where they were sitting at the beach bar in the restaurant, and have him take some snapshots of himself on the beach and in front of the bar, and he got some really good photos of her and her new boyfriend having drinks, while the kids were about a hundred feet down the beach playing by themselves.
Speaker 3:Oh were they little.
Speaker 2:They were pretty young oh shoot.
Speaker 3:That's bad. So how did the case end?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean he was happy that we went and got the information that we did. I do know that during the course of the investigation she apparently called her mom, drunk off of her butt, and her mom called our client to let him know. But that's also something that we can't do. We can't go into the private room that somebody's in in a hotel and do surveillance or anything like that. We don't do that. We do it from afar, we do it in a legal way, so that we're very discreet and how we approach it.
Speaker 3:Well, if you use surveillance, Jen and I on vacation we start drinking like a nine in the morning.
Speaker 2:How do you guys make it through vacation?
Speaker 3:That's how we do that is how we make it.
Speaker 1:You got to start early so you can go to bed early.
Speaker 3:Grandma style.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can't start the 9 pm drinking anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we like to watch Wheel of Fortune, jeopardy, then go to bed, that's you.
Speaker 1:That is you, because when I was on vacation, you went home and I stayed out, and but then I felt guilty and went back to the hotel.
Speaker 3:She came back, I did, I walked home, I did make your ass. Stay out the next night late To like midnight Damn, you know what I don't like to stay out past midnight, because my dad always said only thing, open Nothing happens good after midnight, and the only thing open after midnight is.
Speaker 1:Your legs, yes.
Speaker 3:Yes. So my dad always said my girl will not be out.
Speaker 2:Your dad was a wise man. Oh, he is.
Speaker 1:Oh. Papa D we are going to have him on the show. I swear Papa.
Speaker 3:D wisdom so cheaters.
Speaker 1:People don't be cheating when we send it out, stephanie, to investigate you. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And her black man. That's right.
Speaker 3:Are you married?
Speaker 2:I am married.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh, your poor husband. He can't even shit in public. I mean seriously, you're going to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he loves me for all the stories I bring home to him.
Speaker 1:Oh God, I imagine, are you allowed to? I mean, is there a attorney? There's no confidentiality. Yeah, is there a confidentiality?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is on our part. I mean, I'm not going to divulge names or neither do we or anything like that.
Speaker 3:We have to give nicknames.
Speaker 2:That's what I do, yes.
Speaker 3:Macho, macho man no.
Speaker 1:Macho man has already spilled his entire life to me, so I already know his dark secrets.
Speaker 2:I get to meet Macho man tomorrow night, yay.
Speaker 3:I haven't met him yet. He pretended to be sick Pussy.
Speaker 1:No, he really had the flu for you. You were hello in the hospital also.
Speaker 3:I wasn't playing sick. Well, we're glad you're better.
Speaker 1:Thank you, we are, yeah, macho man. He will tell you our first two dates. He literally spilled all of his.
Speaker 3:Are you talking in your microphone, because I know our Al Poppers would love to hear more about Macho man he spilled his entire life to me in our first two dates, like first marriage, childhood.
Speaker 1:second marriage, yeah, everything.
Speaker 3:I like to leave that second marriage out. I like to.
Speaker 1:So would he, so would he I like my dates to find out through the podcast.
Speaker 2:Is that your vetting process?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Listen to 23 episodes. Let me know if you can handle that. That's awesome. So how would you find someone that if they were cheating? And what would be step number one if I called and said I'm insecure female, Stay at home, mom, and I think my husband's cheating. He's getting home at 6 PM instead of 5.
Speaker 1:Well, I think has a secret apartment in Flint Michigan.
Speaker 2:Well, that would be a big red flag.
Speaker 1:That she decorated, oh Lord.
Speaker 3:With the pillow, though I did put a proper pillow on the bed, though. That said, enjoy the small thing.
Speaker 2:So it's all good, I decorated it properly, would say you did yes, touche, touche of that one. Let's say you do call up and you do want to conduct some surveillance on your ex because you have a sneaking suspicion that they're cheating or doing other nefarious activities. We'd kind of get a little bit of background information from you on them, what their typical daily activities are, where they work, at what timeline they have to be at work, what time they typically are at home, who they hang out with, and then we kind of formulate a plan Do you want us to set outside his business? Do you want us to set outside your house? Follow him throughout the day to where he goes During surveillance we take pictures on the hour, every hour. We take video of everything. We document anybody he interacts with or anywhere he goes. So you have a complete timeline of our day. We do one-day surveillance, up to three, up to a week worth of surveillance or whatever you want to pay for, and that's what we'll do.
Speaker 3:What's the average cost?
Speaker 2:Our average cost is typically we do three day minimum at $200 an hour $200.
Speaker 3:Girl, I know what I'm going to do with my next profession.
Speaker 1:No shit, hey. If you have a surveillance in Hawaii, sign me up. I think I could act like the girl who's lost in just taking pictures, selfies, tiktok doing a TikTok on the beach.
Speaker 3:I want to be the one that goes to the male strip clubs to find the wife cheating.
Speaker 2:Well, when we get that case come in, I'll call you and you can pee my pal oh good. We'll go do it together. I'll take the pictures.
Speaker 1:This has been an extremely interesting episode. I feel like a lot of good information for our L-poppers, especially if you're going through a divorce, you need to find out more about your spouse, your finances.
Speaker 2:We also do background investigations on people before they get married as well. Oh snap, oh my.
Speaker 1:There's a thought God what would you check, like just financials. They had a felony. They had financials.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, basically, a background is just a check into their background. That's what it is. What kind of criminal offenses do they have? And then, wait, what do you do with that?
Speaker 1:I should have had you do that with a guy I dated after my divorce, who lived with me for a hot minute, oh right, I did freaking jail, oh yeah, that would be cool. Which was not his first offense for drinking and driving, I have found out.
Speaker 2:That was like his third. Yeah, we look for that too. We look for traffic infractions, crime, if he has any leans and judgments against his name. We look for just about everything in a background, except for bank accounts. We don't do that for backgrounds.
Speaker 3:What do you do with girls like me that they divulge your information and I'm like, oh, you're a felony. Oh, you forgave yourself. Oh, you're clean. Oh, I'm so proud, you're so handsome. Let's build a life together.
Speaker 1:Mel's going to start being a jailhouse like 10 pounds. What do you?
Speaker 3:do for a woman like me. Just slap me when I walk in the door.
Speaker 2:Well, Mel, we probably have to train you in how to not be so emotionally invested in people.
Speaker 3:That's beautiful. That is what I need. Is there a class for that?
Speaker 1:I just send you to boot camp Emotionally. How to be a blackhearted person boot camp.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not so kind, not so nice, be a little ambiguous, be a little mysterious, don't.
Speaker 2:Don't tell him your life story when you first meeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, so, like macho mansion, I'm told me his life story. I told him nothing literally on our first two dates.
Speaker 3:You probably still are telling him nothing. He's probably like what's your middle name? I'm not giving it up. I'm not giving it up. My sister told me not to give it up.
Speaker 1:Oh God, he's going to find out so much tomorrow.
Speaker 2:As long as he has the right questions. I think I'm getting sick.
Speaker 3:Just kidding, jens dying now. It'll be good, you will enjoy macho man. He's a good guy, I'm sure he is, and don't worry, I'd kill him. I like I could shoot him with my bow, so it'd be fine.
Speaker 1:He has a black belt and a jiu-jitsu Nice, he can protect himself and me. We'll see how much of a macho man, he has tomorrow and me.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, is there anything else I can tell you, ladies, about private investigation?
Speaker 1:Oh, Mel's got a hand raised. Mel has a question.
Speaker 3:How do you, is it easy, to look into offshore bank accounts?
Speaker 2:It depends on what country you want to look into. How about?
Speaker 3:Cyprus.
Speaker 2:Cyprus? I don't know. I can get back to the office and find out for you, Okay thanks, dang it.
Speaker 1:We should have had to brought our computer. Oh, I think she did, though I did. Well, after the after this episode, we'll look.
Speaker 3:We're going start digging bitches, we're going to start digging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, l-poppers. So, gosh, send us your questions. If you have any for Stephanie. How can they find you? Can they find you on? Can you find their company online? How can we get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. If anybody out there has any questions you want to send me, I can give you my email. It's Stephanie S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E at phoenix-p-h-e-n-i-x-p-icom. Do you guys have a website? We do.
Speaker 1:It's phoenixinvestigationscom phoenixinvestigationscom Like P-H-E-N-I-X Correct.
Speaker 3:All right. So looking back, stephanie, I think what I've learned is that I want I should have contacted you, and if your divorce is really messy and there's a lot of pieces to it, I think then, yes, I'm going to go with how we are passionate about telling everyone they have to hire a lawyer. I'm going to have to be passionate about saying you've got a higher private investigator. If you think there's money being hidden, if you think there's cheating being involved, if you think there's drugs being involved, yeah, yes, absolutely yeah, especially with the boys.
Speaker 1:Especially for you and your kids, man or woman.
Speaker 3:And don't be afraid, El Papers. I was very, very afraid to find out the truth, and so that's probably why I stopped digging. But in the end I'm five years out and, looking back, I think that's probably something I regret that I should have just got it all done with found the truth, protected both of my children, did what was right, but instead I cowered. But that's all right.
Speaker 2:Well, it can give you a peace of mind too, that you did everything you needed to do, didn't leave any stone unturned while you were going through the process of divorce. It's always painful going through divorce doing the right thing and being able to get all the discovery done on your end so that when you go to court through your divorce you are accounting for everything in your divorce that you need to get for yourself and for your kids.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. Yeah, fight till the end, ladies, fight till the end. And, gentlemen, you know there's some evil women out there, so boys be careful, yeah, don't get scammed.
Speaker 1:Oh wait.
Speaker 3:I have one more thing. I know I'm sorry we can let her go. At some point, when we were sitting here my phone rang and I've been getting this lately, since I got scammed in December. Remember I was telling you that last month when you were here. It's like silence calls, like it won't ring or anything, it won't vibrate and it just says silence calls and it's an odd number.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's more than likely a scam If you answer it and you hear no hello I'm looking for or any answer from the other end. They're trying to capture your voice. More than likely.
Speaker 3:And what are they?
Speaker 2:gonna do with that? They're going to imitate it with AI.
Speaker 1:Oh, because I've heard of scams where they are calling older people and they're using like they'll use. It sounds like their kid's voice. Yes, they're grandchildren, and they're like I'm in a situation I need money, or I'm I, whatever, and it sounds exactly like the kid's voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what they're doing for the older generation with grandkids. They'll call and they'll imitate the grandchild's voice and they have like sites like these set up all over. Typically it's overseas, but they have a hub of kids that they hire to mimic the grandchild's voice telling them I'm in jail, I need bail, please help me out. And they'll actually physically send somebody to grandma, grandpa's address to pick up the money. That's some balls, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:And kids are probably answering their phone, not knowing like that's that they're trying to capture their voice and to use it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not just kids they do it, they do it with adults too.
Speaker 3:Yes, hey, hello me. I'm like hello, how are you?
Speaker 1:Oh, now your dad's gonna kid a call and be like Mel. So how do you know? Like how could you check to make it sure it's actually your kid's voice? Like how would you? How?
Speaker 2:would you figure that out? The only way you'd be able to check it out is if you think it's a fake call you know, just to. Hey, you know, hang on just a second. Let me call you back and you need to hang up. You need to actually call the other person that is calling you. If you think it's your grandchild, call their parent, call if that's your daughter or your son, or if your grandchild is old enough, call their cell phone and actually find out if it was them calling.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Or if they're in jail, ask what jail they're at and be like okay, I'll call the police station directly.
Speaker 3:You don't have to tell them, though, what you're doing. You just say okay, thanks, I'll be in touch.
Speaker 2:Click yes, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't be like me, Jen, or be like what's the secret password?
Speaker 3:You know what my kid's password was when we were little? Coffee.
Speaker 1:Coffee was their secret password.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so if we were ever walking and I felt like someone was following us, or if I was nervous or felt like stranger danger, I'd say kid's time to go get a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1:Oh when you're doing your Nashville run in your diapers, diapers, oh my God.
Speaker 3:Jen knows too much folks, she knows too much. Listen, bitch, I reclaimed that trip and I made it without a diaper.
Speaker 1:So I'm still going. How did they know, when you wanted regular coffee, like for real coffee, I didn't.
Speaker 3:I don't think I drank coffee when the kids were little no okay. I didn't until I was older.
Speaker 2:That's a good password to use, then. Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, L-Poppers, We'll put Stephanie's link to their website on our show notes and we had such a great talk with her. We could probably do a third episode. But send us your questions or comments or if you need a private investigator in the future, look her up. Hit me up, guys.
Speaker 3:Love it L-Poppers.