Reesa Teesa’s 50-part Tik Tok Series Shows the Dangers of Ignoring the Red Flags – Here’s Our Perspective
Tik Tok user Reesa Teesa has the whole internet buzzing after releasing a 50-part series called “Who TF Did I Marry?”, where she tells the story of how she married a man who lied about nearly every detail of his life.
The Atlanta-based content creator tells a cautionary tale, shedding light on the necessity of background investigations in safeguarding oneself against unforeseen surprises. Her story demonstrates the significance of background investigations and explores the steps a private investigator would take in a situation like Reesa’s. After years of conducting private investigations in the Metro-Atlanta area, our team at CGA Solutions has seen our fair share of “Legions.” And while he isn’t exactly the most clever of his kind, his commitment to the web of lies he created (and his love of falsified documents) was enough to cause emotional and financial damage to the women who crossed his path.
A Brief Summary
Reesa’s story begins innocently enough, with the excitement of meeting a man she refers to as “Legion” online in March 2020, just before the onset of the pandemic. Their relationship quickly progressed, leading to cohabitation during quarantine and the devastating loss of a pregnancy. Throughout their time together, Legion spun an intricate web of lies, presenting himself as a successful regional manager and later a vice president at a major condiment company. He boasted of substantial earnings from playing Arena football and claimed to possess offshore accounts brimming with wealth.
However, cracks in Legion’s facade began to emerge when the couple embarked on the journey of purchasing a home. Each attempt to secure a property ended in failure, with Legion failing to provide proof of funds as promised. Suspicion heightened when Reesa conducted a background check for her new job, uncovering alarming discrepancies in Legion’s identity. It was revealed that he had been using a false social security number and harbored a criminal past, including felony charges for trespassing and impersonating an officer.
As Reesa delved deeper into Legion’s true identity, a web of deceit unfurled before her. Contact with Legion’s ex-wife unveiled startling revelations, including the fact that Legion’s supposedly deceased former step-daughter was alive and well, even though Legion claimed she had recently passed away. Family members and friends corroborated Reesa’s suspicions, cutting ties with Legion and exposing his fabrications about his job, financial status, and family background.
Ultimately, Reesa’s pursuit of truth led to the dissolution of her marriage and Legion’s arrest. However, the warrant with which he was arrested had expired due to the amount of time that elapsed since it had been drafted. The extensive amount of time that Legion was able to avoid arrest ultimately resulted in his release.
And while Legion is no longer an immediate threat to Reesa, the emotional toll of the deception lingered, as she grappled with the cruel realization that her love had been built upon a foundation of lies.
What a Private Investigation of Legion Would Have Looked Like
Reesa conducted basic background checks, likely using online resources available to the general public. These may have included simple Google searches, social media profiles, and possibly running her husband’s name through free online databases. However, these checks often provide limited information and may not reveal comprehensive details about a person’s past.
[RELATED: BACKGROUND CHECKS VS BACKGROUND INVESTIGATIONS]
While her at-home research and contacting Legion’s family members eventually granted her the answers she had been searching for, pursuing information on her own proved to be time-consuming and emotionally draining.
Private investigation firms have access to specialized databases that compile extensive records, including criminal history, financial records, employment history, property ownership, and more. This allows us to paint a more complete picture of an individual’s background.
In Legion’s case, we would have quickly disproved his infamous tales about his California college education (or any ties to the state at all), employment at the condiment company, previous home ownerships, financial situation, previous marriage(s), and criminal history in one fell swoop.
While this background search would have given us more than enough evidence to disprove the legends told by Legion, let’s say we needed more proof. What other services would have helped Reesa and others like her?
Records Research:
Public records can provide tons of information on an individual, such as bankruptcy, arrests, license search, and more. We’d be able to look through records on a federal, state, city, and county level to find the all of the information we needed and more on Legion. This could have led to a more prompt discovery of the warrant for his arrest, which could have been pursued before it expired and led to different outcome for his sentencing.
Surveillance:
Anyone familiar the Metro-Atlanta area raised an eyebrow when they heard about Legion’s alleged commute to work. Legion left their residence in Riverdale, GA (about 30 minutes south of Atlanta) at 6:15 every morning. From there, he claims that he would drive to Midtown Atlanta, a 30-45 minute commute depending on traffic, so that he could switch from his personal car to a company car, which was kept in a parking garage near the NCR Global Headquarters. From there, he’d allegedly drive all the way to Duluth, GA (30-45 minutes north of Atlanta), where the condiment company was located.
To get home, he would supposedly make the same stop in Midtown to switch back to his personal car. From there, he would make his journey home, where he would arrive right around 3:30 PM every single day. While a 60 to 90 minute commute each way is not unheard of, the pit stop in Midtown to swap cars, quite frankly, makes no sense. A routine surveillance of the parking garage that supposedly housed the infamous dark blue BMW would have quickly disproved this bizarre daily routine.
Side note: Let’s say he actually made this commute each day. Based on his daily departure and return times, Legion’s work hours would have most likely been from 8:00 am to about 2:00 PM. Therefore, Legion, the “Vice President of Production” at a major condiment company, was clocking in a whopping 6 hours per day and about 30 hours a week.
Situations like these – where the story is highly unlikely, but technically not impossible – can be hard to disprove when dealing with an experienced liar. They will explain away any questions their partners bring up and act insulted by the fact that their character is even being called into question. This can leave their partners feeling unsure of what to believe. Surveillance performed by a professional investigation team allows for the collection of irrefutable evidence regarding a person’s whereabouts. Private investigators provide a completely unbiased presentation of the facts, preventing further psychological and emotional manipulation from occuring.
Person Locates:
During the weeks that nobody had seen or heard from Legion, he had months of unpaid car notes and a warrant for his arrest. Based on the information provided by Reesa Teesa, Legion was living out of his car in Augusta, GA (about two and a half hours from Atlanta.) With the latest technology, investigative expertise, and data aggregation, private investigators are able to locate missing individuals in accordance with local, state, and federal laws.
Although people often refer to this as “skip tracing”, what would have been most beneficial for this instance would be a person locates investigation service. Unlike the historical association of skip tracing with debt collection, a person locates service’s focus is on precision and efficiency in finding individuals for various purposes beyond court matters.
[RELATED: SKIP TRACING VS PERSON LOCATES]
Our approach draws from an intelligence model refined during our team’s experience in law enforcement. We would have used resources and techniques acquired from our time in the field to track down Legion before he could raise enough gas money to return to Atlanta.
The Takeaway
Reesa Teesa’s “Who TF Did I Marry” TikTok series serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of blowing off those seemingly small red flags in a relationship. After watching this series, more women coming forward with similar stories about their experiences with men who seemed to have it all.
When it comes to situations like Reesa’s, she’s one of the lucky ones. Many women who fall into traps like this end up even more deeply entrenched in their relationships, both financially and emotionally, before they can gather enough evidence to break away from their partners’ webs of lies.
From an outside perspective, it is easy to label women who fall for men like Legion as naive. However, experienced liars fabricate their lives with confidence and ease, making their stories extremely convincing to prospective partners. And while Legion was no mastermind, there are plenty of other con artists that cover their tracks much more carefully than he did, which can make it nearly impossible for the average person to singlehandedly find the evidence they need to confirm their suspicions.
Enlisting the services of a skilled private investigator can provide clarity and peace of mind to individuals who believe they are in similar situations to Reesa’s, so they can make informed decisions based on the unbiased evidence we provide. With over 20 years of experience, CGA Solutions is committed to finding the truth. Click here to learn more about our premarital background investigation services.
Remember, when it comes to matters of the heart, knowledge is power, and thorough background investigations can help uncover the truth hidden beneath the surface.
