The Case of Wanda Snarska

When Wanda Snarska died in Chicago in 1998, she left behind $250,000 and no known heirs. What began as a routine search for missing beneficiaries quickly spiraled into one of the most complex and globe-spanning cases the Heir Hunters team had ever tackled.Born moments after her White-Russian family stepped off a ship in San Francisco in 1921, Wanda was the only American-born child of Ignatius, a former Imperial Russian naval officer who fled the Bolshevik Revolution. The family’s harrowing escape took them from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, Harbin (China), Vladivostok, and the Philippines before finally reaching the United States.As Shar and John dig deeper, the trail reveals shocking twists: a brother imprisoned in Leavenworth for draft evasion, a deportation battle during the Red Scare, forged documents, and a mysterious prior marriage in Russia that could invalidate everything. Fifteen years of research stretch from Chicago courthouses to remote Russian archives, with competing heir hunters, questionable Russian heirs, and a dramatic courtroom showdown over a fortune sitting unclaimed in Cook County.In the end, a sworn 1940s deposition from Wanda’s terrified mother may hold the key to whether the money finally went to the right hands or if the true heirs are still out there, unaware of the inheritance waiting for them.A 15-year odyssey of revolution, deception, and one final jaw-dropping revelation: this is the unforgettable case of Wanda Snarska.