Love detective sorts out frauds
Fernando Alverez says his firm, Drakonx Investigations, is the only one in the U.S. offering sleuthing services in Cuba.
As they begin to visit this long-forbidden island in greater and greater numbers, it is only natural that some American travellers will fall in love with Cuba. Others, with Cubans.
And when they do, a few may return home anguished by doubts about their budding Cuban romances. Are they real? Or just scams to get off the island? They need a love detective. Fernando Alvarez is a licensed private eye whose firm, Drakonx Investigations, claims to be the only one in the United States offering high-level, professional sleuthing services in Cuba. Infidelity cases are its specialty.
“A lot of foreigners go to Cuba and fall in love, but when they start looking into what it will take to bring their girlfriend or boyfriend out of Cuba, they suspect things might not be quite what they seem,” Alvarez said. “They hire us to check it out.”
The work is not legal in Cuba. Alvarez’s private detectives operate on the island at risk of arrest. But for roughly $100 to $200 a day, they will conduct surveillance and produce detailed reports and timestamped photographs of their targets’ movements and encounters.
With more and more tourists streaming into Cuba, demand for this type of service is blooming with every beach-born romance. An amorous culture that is famously libertine and an economy that is famously dysfunctional have left little stigma in Cuba to deceiving one’s way off the island, even if it means breaking foreign hearts to do it.
“Some Cuban men even encourage their girlfriends to marry a foreigner in order to eventually get them out,” Alvarez said.
Cautionary testimonials of fraud and deception are plentiful online, screaming with warnings like “NEVER MARRY A CUBANA.” Victims don’t fit a single profile, but older foreign men and lonely middle-aged foreign women appear to be prime targets. Some are looking for a long-distance sugar daddy; others wait until they’re out of Cuba to make their move, professing a sudden change of heart before running off.
The problem is so bad in Canada — which sends nearly one million tourists to Cuba each year — that immigration officials have launched ad campaigns warning tourists about “marriages of convenience.”
In a 2013 case uncovered by the Star, a Brampton woman’s would-be groom went missing three days after stepping off the plane, taking all her money and leaving a badly misspelled goodbye note on a napkin: “Sorry I don’t fell love anymore. Don’t lock for me.”
Alvarez said his detectives try to catch fraudsters before they can do that much damage. They offer a range of services for the lovestruck-but-skeptical.
Some clients are simply trying to determine whether their Cuban lover is two-timing. Others are the wives of foreign businessmen who travel to Cuba, wanting to know what other transactions their husbands may be engaged in.
Plenty of the relationships Alvarez’s team investigates prove to be authentic, of course, but he says a little extra certainty can save clients financial and emotional stress.