Elena Garrett will be traveling to Europe this upcoming week. 

RD will be closed completely on May 14-16, and work short hours for the rest of that week.

The cell phone listed as her contact information may not be functional in Europe, so the email will be the primary contact method for now.

4/30/08 In May and June of 2008, RD will only take a small number of new cases.

Elena Garrett, RD's owner, plans to take a vacation in the months of May and June. During that time, all contacts with the new and existing clients would have to be maintained through email only

4/30/08 May Holidays Announcement

Russian and Ukraine will be celebrating May 1st (the International Labor Day) and May 9th (the anniversary of the victory over Germany in the WWII). Both holidays are among the most beloved and celebrated holidays among the people of the ex-Soviet Union. Because they coincide with the beginning of the dacha season, most people in those countries traditionally use their vacation days to take the whole week and a half off work. Most government agencies and business will be closed from April 30 till May 10th. Consequently, requests for new investigations in Russia and Ukraine will have to be postponed until May 10th.

04/04/08   "VOICE OF AMERICAN IMMIGRATION FRAUD VICTIMS" site launched earlier this year.

Better late than never, as they say. The site like this was long in planning, and, finally, it launched.

It is intended to help American citizens who are falsely accused of domestic or sexual violence by a foreign spouse. Green Card Hunters are becoming a very serious threat for Russian-American dating community.  Everyone considering a marriage to a foreign lady, please make sure that you are familiar with the main warning signs of this particularly serious scam.

03/30/08 Prices are up again

The dollar value drop is forcing us to raise the prices again. We are hoping that this raise is temporary.

11/23/07 Ukraine Investigations 

Once again, the political situation in Ukraine is becoming very unstable.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071123/wl_afp/ukrainepolitics_071123131127

All investigations in Ukraine are expected to be delayed.

05/14/07

We added Google Checkout as an optional credit card processing system. Unfortunately, they only accept US-issued credit cards, but they are planning to go international in the future.

04/12/07 May Holidays are coming up

Due to May Holidays (May 1 - May 10), Russian Detective will be closed from April 30th through May 10th.

04/09/07  Yet another political crisis in Ukraine is delaying investigations  

Due to the escalating political crisis, the investigations in Ukraine are expected to be delayed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17921707/

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/04/04/ukraine.ap/index.html 

03/19/07 Plans to split the web site

We are planning to create a new web site (called Russian Dating Scams), and move our black lists, prosecution information, and our articles about the scams to that site, and leave the www.Russian-Detective.com to deal purely with the business side of our work. The new site will be available shortly.

03/19/07 We are back online

Due to a problem with the domain renewal, we were offline from March 14th through Match 19th. The problem is now fixed. We apologize for the inconvenience.

01/13/07 Raising Prices

The dollar value has been steadily declining in Russia and Ukraine throughout the 2006. We have been managing to avoid raising the prices on our services for the last 6-7 months by cutting into our own revenue, but as of the beginning of 2007 we can no longer afford to do that. Therefore, as of today, the new prices on our services take effect. We sincerely apologize for having to do that. 

11/28/06 - Russian Detective is back online

After a month of being off the air, Russian Detective is back online. For those of you who do not know, Russian Detective was brought down by a hacker attack on Oct 28. It took a while to get the site back up because Elena Garrett (the site's owner and webmaster) was preoccupied with school and some additional family circumstances.

We are glad to be back, and we are ready to jump right back to work.

07/12/06 - New Mailing Address

Please note that our mailing address has changed. The new mailing address can be found on the Contact Us page.

07/12/06 - About big Changes in RD

Please read the article "Changes in RD" to find out about the new changes in RD schedules and work policies.  

06/04/06 - Elena Garrett will be off for 2 weeks beginning of July

Due to yet another move across country, Elena Garrett will be taking time off at the end of June - beginning of July. As a results, Russian Detective will be closed June 25-July 17th. All existing clients please contact Yulia with any pending requests.

04/24/06 - Welcome Our New Staff Member 

Please welcome our newest staff member! Her name is Yulia, she is a Russian lady who agreed to work as our administrative assistant and interpreter. 

Yulia speaks Russian, English and German. 

04/24/06 May Holidays Are Coming Up (May 1st - May 10th)

This week Russia is entering a string of holidays (called May holidays) that will last from May 1st and through May 9th. 

May 1st is the Day of Workers' Solidarity (or something like that), it used to be a big holiday in Soviet Union, and then May 9th is one of the biggest holidays of the year, the Victory Day (the anniversary of Germany signing a capitulation arrangement with Russia in 1945). Most folks take vacations and days off between May 1st and May 10th, so most of the investigators in Russia and Ukraine are off until May 10th. Naturally, all cases will be postponed until the end of May holidays.

04/24/06 Changes on "Contact Us" Page

We have changed the Contact Us page. Now, instead of sending us an email, you will be filling out an Information Request form. The email address was removed in order to reduce the amount of spam, and also to prevent eager scam hunters from sending us endless photo portfolios of every possible scammer on the Internet. 

P.S. Dear scam hunters, please use instructions here to publish your reports.

03/29/06 Forum Problems

Our forum is experiencing technical problems. Once we get it debugged, you will be able to access it again.

02/03/06 New instructions for scammer reports.

I am implementing a new way of accepting scammer report from the viewers. Read more here.

12/24/06 Black list information

Due to changes in my schedule I will not longer be able to attend to the black list on a regular basis. 

After February 1st I will stop weekly updates to the black list.

Occasional updates will still be performed, but I cannot guarantee when.

Thank you,

Elena Garrett 

12/24/06 Forum Added  

RD now has its own forum. http://russiandetective.forumup.org 

11/28/05 - December - January holiday schedule

Our agency is going to be closed from Dec 23, 2005 until Jan 10, 2006. 

11/18/05 - RD will be closed Nov 24th through Nov 27th

Happy Thanksgiving to all our clients and visitors!

11/15/05 - Problems with email

Last 2-3 days our server has been really slow with delivery of incoming messages. We hope the problem will be fixed soon and apologize for any inconvenience.

11/02/05  November Holiday Season

November Holidays in Russia and Ukraine are going to affect our schedule. From now until about November 10th you can expect delays due to holiday season.

10/24/05 RD is back to work

We are back online. Our new mailing address and other contact info will be posted shortly. Our hours of operation for the next few weeks are going to be Mon-Fri, from 10 am to 5 pm ET.

Because of large amount of emails that accumulated during the time we were offline, all your requests will be answered in the order they were received. Please expect delays.

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding!!!

10/13/05 Another Interruption of Service due to Moving 

Next week (Oct 17th through Oct 21st) Russian Detective will be moving to its new location in Billerica, MA. As a result, all ongoing investigations may be put on hold, and all new inquiries will be answered on Monday Oct 24th or Tuesday Oct 25th. I apologize for the inconvenience.

10/11/05 Elena Garrett is taking several day off

Due to a flu virus, Elena Garrett, RD Operations Manager, is taking several days off. All ongoing investigations will continue to be services on a normal schedule. New investigation will be processed with some delays.

09/20/05 Update on Ukraine

Political situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate. Most Ukrainian investigators are "underground" once again, and there is no telling for how long.

We still should be able to do Basic Checks in most Ukrainian towns, but anything beyond that (like Employment, Marriages, Actual Address and other checks) might have to wait until the situation improves.

09/12/05  Problems with articles_@russian-detective.com and alert_@russian-detective.com 

Today we discovered, that due to some malfunction of our POP3 mailbox a large amount of emails sent to articles_@russian-detective.com and alert_@russian-detective.com never was forwarded to us. We are now digging through over 5000 emails (60% spam though), and finding lots of scammer reports. So far over 170 new scammer reports has been recovered, and over a dozen suspected scammer reports.

To all, who submitted your reports to those mailboxes, please we want you to know that your reports will be published shortly.

09/11/05  UAProfiler is a scam?

http://www.scamalert.freeservers.com/scamagencies.html reports that UAProfiler is a scam agency. We never heard any complaints about this agency before, but would like to pass that information along to you and let you decide whether it is safe to use their services.

09/11/05 Site Statistics  

We were just checking our site statistics. In August 2005 our web site was viewed 1431461 times, with a daily average of 46176 hits per day (well, some of those hits were probably just search engine robots collecting information). While in the fall of the previous year we were getting only 402148 hits per month (average 12972 per day). 

Bottom line: it is still amazing how many people remain UNAWARE of Russian dating scams and therefore loose money to the scammers.

P.S. Interestingly, a large number of hits came from 178.236.dialup.mari-el.ru. Apparently, "they" are watching :)

09/10/05  Political Situation in Ukraine

Prime-Minister of Ukraine was fired from her job last week, and the political situation in Ukraine is unstable once again. We hope it will not affect our future and ongoing investigations in Ukraine, but please expect possible delays with the investigations, and we may decide not to take any cases in Ukraine altogether if the political situation will continue to deteriorate. 

09/08/05 Guest Book

A guest book was added to the web site today. For now it's a free little guest book (with some annoying ads flashing all the time), but if this feature will prove to be of interest to our visitors, will will make is ad-free.

08/02/05 

It seems that Belarus finally outlawed private investigation services altogether. We no longer can offer our services in that country.

07/26/05  Cheboksary

We can now work in Cheboksary and Chuvashia Republic.

07/14/05 A Current Affair Show Aired

A Current Affair aired a story on Russian Brides Scam this evening. Elena Garrett (that's me!) was proud to participate in making the story. 

I hope you had a chance to watch it.

 07/11/05 Ukrainian Investigators

We can now confirm that we can once again start offering our services in Lugansk and Donetsk.

07/01/05 Our New Address 

Our new address now is:

E. GARRETT GROUP

131 DANIEL WEBSTER HW #618

NASHUA, NH 03060

USA

06/29/05 - 4th of July 

We will be closed Monday, July 4th 2005.

05/10/05 - Problems with our email

In the past few days we were experiencing some problems with our email distribution center (BIGFOOT). Now this problem seems to be fixed. If you sent us any emails during the time period from May 30th and up until June 10th, and did not receive a reply from us yet, please contact us again.

05/07/05 - Checking IP Addresses

Hey guys,

One of our viewers is offering to check your lady's IP address info for you. As you may or may not know, IP address info can be very useful in determining where your lady's computer is actually located.  So, check this guy's offer out and give us some feedback about it.

05/07/05 - New Address

Our new address in Nashua, New Hampshire (that's where we have settled for now) is going to be posted on our Contact Us page shortly. 

05/07/05 - New Phone Number

Elena Garrett's cell phone number (469 271 4961) is still the primary contact phone number, but in the area we are in right now the signal strength is low so if you can't get through, just leave a message and she will call you back. Please don't forget to leave your phone name AND phone number..

05/07/05 - New Business Hours

Thanks for your patience, guys. We are back online. However, there is still mush to be done before we can finally settle in the new place. So, for now our business hours are going to be: 10 am-2 pm Monday through Friday. 

05/12/05

MAY 22ND THROUGH JUNE 6TH RUSSIAN DETECTIVE WILL BE CLOSED. We will be moving to Boston area.

04/25/05 

Russian Detective is going to be moving to Boston area of MA at the end of May (over the Memorial Day weekend). The existing cases are still going to be processed, but we are going to be working only part-time May 20th through June 10th. It is unlikely that we will be taking lots of new cases.

04/25/05 

More bad news for clients who are interested in doing investigations in Ukraine. We are taking Nikolaev off our list of cities for now. Most of Ukraine is very politically minded these days and performing investigations there is getting to be very difficult. Kiev, Odessa and Kharkov investigators are still working with us, so we can take cases in those cities.

04/25/05 

Russia is entering yet another holiday season. First we have Russian Easter on May 1st, as well as the traditional Russian's May 1st Day (Day of Solidarity of all Workers -  an old Soviet holiday); and then the Russian Victory Day is on May 9th. As a result almost everyone in Russia is having May 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 9th and 10th off. The farming season in Russia begins just about the at the same time so everyone is going to be off to their dachas for the next 2 weeks. The investigators are no exception. 

As a result we won't be taking any more new cases until May 11th. The existing clients with active cases in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus etc - please be aware that almost no progress will probably be made during the next 2 weeks.

04/16/05  

We will be closed Monday, Apr 18th. Only emails that are going to be answered would be from our current clients who have ongoing investigations with us. 

04/14/04 

CBS Evening News aired a story about Russian brides scam tonight. http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?channel=eveningnews -  video

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/eveningnews/main3420.shtml - text

Producers from "A Current Affair" are preparing their own story on the same subject. Elena Garrett is doing an interview with them next week.

04/13/05

CBS Evening News are going to run a story about Russian dating scam tomorrow evening. An interview with Elena Garret, the owner and the manager of RD, will probably be shown during that program. 

04/11/05

NIKOLAEV, Ukraine. Investigators from that city are having some kind of issues with the law enforcement regarding them employing surveillance techniques, so things like Basic Check, employment, marriages or criminal records still can be offered, but any kind of surveillance or undercover operations cannot be offered in that area at least for now.

04/05/05

We have found a new contact in ODESSA, Ukraine. So, we CAN work in Odessa and Odessa area. The prices there are still above average.

03/24/05

We are temporarily removing ODESSA and LUGANSK from the list of cities we can work in. Ever since the election mess in Ukraine last Christmas season our work with the investigators in those two cities became increasingly difficult. Lugansk investigators are asking for $150-$200 for a Basic Check (name, address, date of birth), while Odessa investigators are asking $250-$300 for the same service.

If you are still interested in the investigations in those two cities, contact us and we will try to negotiate the prices with the investigators for you.