SCIENTOLOGY PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR UNDER OATH: Quizzed about following Leah Remini

It’s not every day that we get a Scientology private investigator under oath, and so we’re grateful to David Smith and Susanne Gold-Smith that they deposed former NYPD detective Yanti Michael Greene this week, and then we got ahold of some of the footage.

Yanti, who has legally changed his name to “Michael Moretti Ford Cruz” since he was sued by the Smiths, is someone we’ve been watching for quite a while.

Back in December 2017, a source we have never identified happened to come across Greene as he was staking out Leah Remini in Manhattan, and asked him what he was doing.

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.

So we then called up Greene, who denied that he’d ever said any such thing to anyone.

At the time, Greene was working for a company called International Investigative Group (IIG), and later IIG and Greene got in a lot of hot water when they were hired to follow a woman (Susanne Gold-Smith) that Greene and other IIG private eyes befriended and even had unwanted sex with. The subsequent lawsuits over that have gone on for years, and in that process Greene’s phone texts were acquired, showing him talking about stalking Remini for Scientology.

This week, Greene was deposed for several hours in the Smith lawsuit, and for a few minutes Smith’s attorney Daniel Szalkiewicz asked him about stalking Remini, and about talking to us. We thought you’d find it interesting. How often, after all, do we ever get this opportunity?

Yanti Michael Greene/Michael Moretti Ford Cruz: Other cases include, let’s see who was it. Again, you know her name, a celebrity, Leah something. We were tasked with conducting surveillance on her. And someone else. I forget who the other person was.

Szalkiewicz: And in these other cases you reference, did you ever interact or communicate with any subject you surveilled?

Yanti: No.

Szalkiewicz: With these other cases, did your employer ever direct you to communicate with the subject that you were surveilling?

Yanti: No.

Szalkiewicz: And specifically relating to Leah Remini, I believe you said, what were you tasked to do with her?

Yanti: Just conduct surveillance.

Szalkiewicz: What sort of surveillance?

Yanti: Covert surveillance.

Szalkiewicz: What does that mean?

Yanti: We were just surveilling her, you know taking pictures, video, of her whereabouts, which was very different from this case [referring to the Smith lawsuit]. In this case the surveillance we conducted was overt and not covert. So just a very big difference between the two.

Szalkiewicz: What was the purpose that you were surveilling Ms. Remini for?

Yanti: I don’t recall. And I’m not sure if we were told.

Szalkiewicz: During this surveillance, do you recall whether you ever acquired her production schedule?

Yanti: I don’t recall.

Szalkiewicz: Do you recall if you ever received any information from third parties regarding her schedule?

Yanti: I don’t recall.

Szalkiewicz: As part of your surveillance of her did you ever trail her vehicle?

Yanti: Yes.

Szalkiewicz: Do you know for approximately how many days you were trailing her?

Yanti: I don’t recall.

Szalkiewicz: Do you know whether IIG was hired by the Church of Scientology to follow her?

Yanti: Yeah, I heard that. Did I confirm it or seek to confirm it? No. But I heard that, yes.

Szalkiewicz: And who did you hear that from?

Yanti: I don’t recall.

Szalkiewicz: Did you have any communications with any reporters, such as Tony Ortega while you were following Ms. Remini?

Yanti: So Tony Ortega, I wouldn’t really call him a reporter. More of a blogger. But, you guys have hired him to write some stuff about me. But I believe he contacted me, and I believe we had one conversation on the phone, I believe.

Szalkiewicz: This would have been in 2017 or 2018?

Yanti: Somewhere in that time frame.

Szalkiewicz: Do you know, if you were conducting covert surveillance, how he knew to contact you?

Yanti: No.

Szalkiewicz: Did he tell you why he was contacting you?

Yanti: Yes.

Szalkiewicz: And what purpose was he contacting you for?

Yanti: Because unbeknownst to me, he’s pretty fixated in the Scientology world. I know he’s a former disgraced editor from the Village Voice, and he just seems to be engulfed and embedded in the Scientology world and what’s going on with Scientology. He just wanted related information from me.

Szalkiewicz: When you were trailing Ms. Remini, was she alone or was she with anybody else?

Yanti: It was more than one day, so I forget if on any given day she was alone or not.

Szalkiewicz: Did you ever follow her when she was with her children?

Yanti: I don’t recall. I don’t even know if she has kids, but I don’t recall, no.

Szalkiewicz: And, going again how this person contacted you when you were performing covert surveillance, would that lead you to believe that someone had identified you as following her at the time?

Yanti: Oh, at some point we were aware that yeah, they had become aware. Yeah.

Szalkiewicz: And how did you become aware of that?

Yanti: I mean, at least on one occasion we saw them, like, looking at us. They spotted us.

Szalkiewicz: By we, do you know if there were any other investigators from IIG that were trailing her?

Yanti: Yes.

Szalkiewicz: And who were those investigators?

Yanti: I don’t know if there were more, but one was definitely Saul Roth.

Szalkiewicz: When they became aware that you were following them, the subjects I guess spotted you, were you removed from the case?

Yanti: I don’t recall.

Szalkiewicz: Were you penalized in any fashion by IIG?

Yanti: Not that I’m aware of. You don’t really get penalized if people, you know, spot you. You try not to be spotted, but that happens to the best of investigators.

Szalkiewicz: When you were spotted, did you have any communications with the subjects at that time? I’m talking about this case, by the way, not this case but the Ms. Remini case that we’re discussing.

Yanti: Oh, Remini case. Can you repeat the question?

Szalkiewicz: So you said that they had become aware at some point that you were, that they were being followed. Right?

Yanti: Yes.

Szalkiewicz: Did you have any communications with them at that point?

Yanti: I believe no.

Szalkiewicz: Do you recall whether or not she was with Jennifer Lopez as well at the time?

Yanti: I believe maybe on one occasion, if my memory is right.

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That’s some good stuff. If you remember, in our previous reporting on these lawsuits, Greene was found to be in criminal contempt of court to the tune of $300,000 when a judge ruled that he had tried to keep from the court video evidence of his sexual assault of Susanne Gold-Smith. He had video recorded himself assaulting her, but then had turned in a small, misleading amount of footage trying to convince the court that she had assaulted him.

The court didn’t buy it, but still, no law enforcement agency in Nassau County has filed any charges against Greene for not only sexually assaulting a woman, but recording himself doing it and then covering it up from a court of law.

And for the record: We have never been hired by the Smiths or anyone else to write about Yanti Michael Greene/Michael Moretti Ford Cruz. We have covered him as part of our work here at the Bunker, and we were paid by The Daily Beast for a story we wrote about him after the fact.

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Meanwhile, coming Down Under this Sunday

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