Snapshot · The Hidden Third
Mark, a Belgian citizen referred to as 'Mr. Belgium,' lost close to $1 million to Alex Georges Janous, the fraudster posing as a Dubai prince, which brought both Mariana and Michelle onto the case.
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At 2:08 · chapter starts 0:32
The episode opens with Michelle Gomez's own voice, describing in meticulous detail how she knows everything about a target before she shows up — their favorite color, their pet's name, their nickname, their daily habits [1] — Michelle Gomez "Michelle Gomez doesn't improvise — she arrives knowing her target's favorite color, dog's name, and daily routine. Total pre-operation inte…" 00:32 . Mariana then formally introduces Michelle as a skip tracer and private investigator whom Wired magazine has called 'the world's best bounty hunter,' with over two decades of taking on cases that law enforcement, collection agencies, and other investigators have given up on. The two quickly reveal the case that connected them: a Belgian man referred to as 'Mr. Belgium' who contacted Mariana after losing close to $1 million to a fraudster posing as the 'Prince of Dubai,' who had relocated to San Antonio, Texas, and was swindling people across Miami and beyond. Michelle was already at the center of that investigation, which is how the two women found each other.
Michelle Gomez doesn't improvise — she arrives knowing her target's favorite color, dog's name, and daily routine. Total pre-operation intelligence is what separates elite skip tracers from everyone else.
Wired magazine named Michelle Gomez 'the world's best bounty hunter' after journalist Randall Sullivan wrote about her work tracking down Ryan Eugene Mullen.
Michelle has spent over two decades proving that people always leave digital traces, financial breadcrumbs, and location blips. The fantasy of truly disappearing is just that — a fantasy. Everyone has a pattern, and patterns always give them away.
Michelle began building her professional network in the repossession industry in the year 2000, over a decade before she became a licensed PI in 2014.
Michelle's parents were both engineers who retired from IBM (International Business Machines), and they had their children build and solder motherboards from scratch at a very young age.
Michelle's parents were IBM engineers who had their kids solder motherboards before they were teenagers. That instinct to figure out how systems work — without needing the manual — became the blueprint for tracking people who disappear.
Before Uber, Kalanick built a peer-to-peer file-sharing system and was sued for a quarter of a trillion dollars by 33 major media companies.
CIA operative Edwin Wilson, part of the illegal arms network used by Oliver North, was sentenced to 52 years for supplying Libya with 10,000 machine guns and 20 tons of C4.
US prosecutors sought a 186-year prison sentence for Kim Dotcom, largely because of his financial support for WikiLeaks.
Mario Tabraue, a central figure in Monsters of God linked to drug trafficking and murder, was sentenced to over 100 years in prison but served only 12 years.
Zelig Williams disappeared on October 3rd, 2024 after leaving his mother's home in Columbia, South Carolina and has not been seen since.
Dateline: Missing in America Season 5 features six new unsolved missing-persons mysteries, hoping a listener may hold a crucial clue.
At a high school party, Strickland broke one victim's nose, jaw, and knocked out teeth requiring multiple reconstructive surgeries, resulting in two felony GBI charges.
Joyce LePage's murder has remained unsolved for 55 years despite active investigation from the start.
Joyce's own letter revealed that Mark Wadley had once stayed at a mental institution for trying to strangle people — a detail investigators apparently never followed up on.
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