Dorie ensured to show the fresh Nest investigators images away from Derek inside the Navy uniform, together with investigators contacted the fresh Naval Violent Investigative Provider. According to the Stolen Valor Work off 2013, trying gain having fun with bogus military remembers is a federal offense-which intended one NCIS you will definitely discharge a beneficial multistate investigation.

Just after Derek try arrested, Linda and you may Missi discover an effective checkbook , playing cards, and you can a student ID affect his actual name, plus bogus puppy tags along with his alias. (Ariel Zambelich)

Shortly after Dorie trapped to your, Derek first started adhering to his almost every other wife, Tracie Cunningham. Nonetheless it don’t take long to have Tracie, which functions during the a post-intense rehabilitation studio, to locate tired of which have your to day long. He was, she’d decided, totally too whiny, constantly insisting one she drive your for the health for the majority of emergency or another. “There are a lot of guys nowadays that will score a tiny nightmare, and think he’s got an enormous cyst, that they’re passing away,” she explained. “It’s a guy question. He had several of that. Genuine remarkable.”

A couple of hours afterwards, if you’re she is at really works, she got a visit from the NCIS representative, whom told her that she’d already been matchmaking a great fraud child

Shortly after Memorial Day, Tracie fundamentally broke up with him. Derek had not taken everything from Tracie as much as she could share with (“but time and a little self-esteem”), but when she heard of another sufferers, she instantly provided to let NCIS capture him.

During the agent’s urging, Tracie delivered Derek a text, delivering straight back the fresh new breakup-“I’m very sorry infant, I was hormone!”-and made intends to render your an experience domestic immediately following their 2nd scientific conference. Whenever Derek try willing to end up being acquired, Tracie informed brand new NCIS manager and his cluster. “It hightail it more truth be told there, and you may I’m to my means, also, since I am not saying shed it,” Tracie explained. She taken doing the average person loading town. Through the hospital’s slipping glass gates, she spied Derek within the handcuffs, flanked by one or two agencies. “I stimulate my threats, come out with my portable, start taking photographs,” Tracie told you. “The fresh NCIS representative feels like, ‘No!,’ but I am eg, ‘Ok last one, I need images on the. This might be for justice for others.’ ”

W ith Derek in the end in child custody, his sufferers popular, texting both grim desires regarding upcoming one anticipated your when you look at the prison. NCIS representatives interviewed sufferers in the country, whose stories bolstered the case you to definitely Derek are a chronic culprit.

For many years the guy used fake identities in order to charm lady out of hundreds of thousands of cash. Next his sufferers banded along with her to take your down.

Because of the spring from 2016, Missi Brandt got emerged of a crude long-time that have a good the latest sense of solidity. At the forty-five, she is actually 3 years sober and on the fresh new leeward edge of a beneficial stormy split up. She was managing the girl preteen girl regarding the suburbs off St. Paul, Minnesota, and dealing just like the an airline attendant.

Missi considered ready for a serious matchmaking once more, therefore she generated a profile on the OurTime, a dating website for people during the middle age

One of every duds-the newest eager and depressed and not-quite-divorced-a good forty five-year-old-man named Richie Peterson stood aside. He had been a job naval manager, an Afghanistan veteran who was finishing his doctorate into the political science at School out-of Minnesota. When Missi “liked” his profile, he delivered the woman an email immediately and titled the girl one mid-day. It talked about their infants (he had a few; she got around three), the divorces, the sobriety. Richie informed her he had been on holiday into the The state, however they wished to meet up when he had straight back.