Tonight on CBS FBI: International airs with an all-new Tuesday, November 19, 2024 season 4 episode 5, “The Future’s Looking Bright” and we have your FBI: International recap below. In tonight’s FBI season 4 episode 5 as per the CBS synopsis,
“When an American man is kidnapped in Warsaw alongside a Ukrainian woman he met on a dating site, the Fly Team heads to Poland to track down the mastermind behind the site.”
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In tonight’s FBI International, the world was in agreement about Passport Bros. Everyone thought they were pathetic. They were men that traveled around the world to find/date foreign women.
They did this because they figured they could hold coming to the United States over these women’s heads, but most women aren’t desperate enough to overlook problematic behavior.
There were also women that just love to con these men. They get the guys to pay their bills. They pay for apartments. The men usually fund an entire lifestyle for these beautiful women they know aren’t interested in them. And so these “relationships” are transactional.
The men were paying for sugar babies. The latest man to mistakenly believe it was love was Gilbert Shrader. He was an older man. He has an adult daughter. His wife passed away a few years ago.
He retired from his company and he was feeling lonely with all this extra time. He joined a dating website. He met the beautiful Natalya. The dating website was originally based in the Ukraine until the war. It now operates out of Poland. Gilbert thought everything was fine and he traveled to Poland to meet this beautiful young woman.
He was barely there for an hour when both of them got abducted in plain sight. They were thrown in the back of a van. Gilbert was drugged and now his daughter was in Poland looking for her father.
He never even checked into the hotel. He disappeared and his daughter was freaking out. She blamed herself for not doing something early on. She knew Natalya was a scammer. She just hoped it would stay an online relationship and she didn’t know her dad traveled to meet this woman. Gilbert hadn’t told her in advance.
The dating website that Gilbert used was a fake. It was stationed in a parking lot. It took the FBI flyteam a day before they tracked down a man that works for the company and who could give them information.
The dating website was a few women putting up pictures while their handlers that were mostly men did all the messaging. The American men weren’t even speaking to the women. They’ve earned thirty million dollars with the scam and there was a list on the cloud about all of their customers.
Gilbert was surprisingly not on the list. He hadn’t been conned. He was a millionaire and so the feds suspected he was going to be ransomed back to his family for a hefty price. The man they arrested didn’t have an official name for the man that controls everything. He goes by the nickname “Bartek”. Only the feds did find one of their American victims. His name is Larry Holbrook. He came to Poland to meet this beautiful Ukrainian girl named Katya. He was there for less than a day when Katya’s cousin told him that Katya was in prison. And that he needed six grand to get her a lawyer.
Larry got the money. He was robbed right outside of the bank. He never saw Katya. He never heard from her cousin again. Larry’s ID was stolen. He’s been waiting at the embassy until he could get a new one and fly back to the States.
Larry didn’t tell anyone back home what happened to him. He has adult kids back home. The feds figured he stayed silent because of the shame. Larry also didn’t know who Bartek was, but he did tell them about the mixers in Poland with the Ukrainian girls at a special bar.
Wes posed as a single American guy. He met Natalya. The feds arrested her. They threatened her refugee status in Poland and so she talked. Natalya said the original plan was for her to get abducted. Gilbert was only supposed to witness the event so that it would make him desperate to pay a ransom. Something changed with the plan. Natalya still hasn’t been paid and Bartek personally grabbed Gilbert. Natayla found out that the new plan was to ransom Gilbert back. And so the feds had another conversation with the daughter, Melissa.
Melissa did receive a ransom call. She was told not to tell anyone or her dad dies. Bartek wants ten million dollars. Melissa needed time before she could come up with that amount.
Now that the feds know, they had Melissa contact the kidnappers with an offer of five million in exchange for her talking to her dad. It was a ruse to track Gilbert’s location. The flyteam got a location. They went there with local Polish police. They found one of the men. They also found Gilbert. There was just one problem. Gilbert has all of his fingers and the flyteam knew the scammers cut a finger. It was at their hideout.
Whose finger was it? It wasn’t Gilbert’s. There had to be another hostage out there. They eventually got DNA from the finger. It belonged to Keith Edmonds. He was British. He doesn’t have immediate family. He was also retired. He came to Poland months ago and has since disappeared. Bartek had gained access to Keith’s bank account.
Keith got payments every month thanks to his pension. Bartek empties the account every time the money comes in. It was never flagged down because no one cared. There was no one looking for Keith and so Smitty made it her personal mission to find him.
Smitty leaned on the man they arrested. She threatened to send him back to the Ukraine. She threatened to deport his family as well. That’s when the guy cracked. He talked so that his kids got to stay in Poland where it was safe.
He also wanted to do his time in Poland so that his family can visit him. He gave them Bartek’s location. Bartek was later arrested without anyone being harmed.. They even found Keith alive. Both Keith and Gilbert were now free to go home. And they’ll probably stay off the dating websites from now on.
Wes also met a young officer with the Polish Police. He gave him some great advice about doing things the right way and he left an impression before he went back to Budapest. He left rather quickly. He apparently couldn’t wait to go golfing with Vo. They used a golfing simulator they got from a bad guy.
THE END!
