On trial: Scientology PI accused of assaulting woman he was hired to follow
Five years after David Smith and his wife Susanne Gold-Smith filed their lawsuits against a collection of private investigators in 2019, a trial is finally starting today at Nassau County Supreme Court on Long Island, and we will be there.
You may remember the strange background to this case: David and Susanne were at one point separated, and David, a wealthy businessman, hired a PI firm, International Investigative Group (IIG) to keep tabs on his wife. The couple later reconciled, but David was unhappy with the work the PIs had done, and accused them of driving up costs because they had a wealthy client on the hook. Susanne’s accusations were much darker: She alleged that several of the PIs had gone from following her to interacting with her socially, and even making sexual advances. One of them, she alleged, a retired NYPD detective named Yanti Michael Greene, sexually assaulted her late one night in his car, and he video recorded himself doing it.
We became interested in the case when the Smiths managed to obtain Greene’s texts under court order, and those text messages showed that one of Greene’s assignments with IIG was to follow Leah Remini for the Church of Scientology when she was in New York in 2017 filming scenes with Jennifer Lopez for her film Second Act. In one of those texts, Greene told his associate that Scientology wanted Remini tailed because “word is they want to kill her.”
Other evidence obtained in the case showed that after we began asking questions about Greene, IIG assigned him to gather information about us as well.
Over the past four years since we’ve been covering this case, we’ve seen some strange things happen at the Nassau County courthouse in Garden City. Greene didn’t deny that he and Susanne had engaged in sex in his car, but he claimed that she had assaulted him and not the other way around. However, Greene was found to be in contempt of court because he tried to submit shortened, edited versions of the video he had shot with his phone that night. Restored footage shown to the judge was very different from what he had claimed. He was fined $300,000 in that ruling.
Greene also changed his name during the case, and is now “Michael Moretti Ford Cruz,” and has moved to Louisiana. He’s defending himself in the case, and the other private investigators that David Smith hired have settled and dropped out of the case. The PI firm, IIG, and its owners, including TV polygraph expert Dan Ribacoff, also settled and will not be a part of the trial.
Unlike the Danny Masterson criminal trials we covered in 2022 and 2023, we don’t expect that Greene/Cruz’s work for Scientology will be much of a factor in the trial, if at all. But we’re still interested in seeing him in court. We’ve been fairly stunned to see the claims he’s made on the witness stand in hearings so far, and how boldly he has tried to portray himself as a victim, rather than a perpetrator of an alleged crime.
But it’s important to remember that this is not a criminal trial. Despite the fact that the court ruled that Greene was in contempt for submitting edited footage of his actions with an inebriated woman in his car that night in 2017, he has faced no criminal charges of any kind. This is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal trial.
We expect the trial to last several days. Today’s session will apparently get going after the lunch break, and we’ll give you a report from outside the courthouse at the end of the day.
Our previous coverage:
The Daily Beast, Jun 17, 2021: Texts Reveal How the Church of Scientology Shadowed Leah Remini and Jennifer Lopez
Jun 17, 2021: Private investigators stalking Leah Remini and Jennifer Lopez: The complete texts
Jan 4, 2022: PI stalking Leah Remini for Scientology was unlicensed, it turns out
Mar 26, 2022: ‘Oh gosh’: Judge views alleged rape filmed on phone of Scientology private eye
Apr 4, 2022: Scientology private eye found guilty of contempt after judge sees alleged rape on video
Mar 24, 2023: Private eye firm that spied for Scientology throws up the white flag in sordid lawsuit
Apr 10, 2023: Former Scientology private eye wants to haul us into court in rape lawsuit
Sep 15, 2023: SCIENTOLOGY PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR UNDER OATH: Quizzed about following Leah Remini
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Maybe getting Yanti or whatever he calls himself, found guilty will be another feather in Leah's case.