This episode was clearly inspired by the case of Frenchman Jean-Claude Romand, who spent 18 years pretending to be a researcher at the World Health Organization (WHO) and tricked his relatives out of their savings. In 1993, as his scam was about to collapse, Roman killed his wife, his two children, his parents and attempted to kill his mistress so that they would never know about his deceit. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 22 years; he became eligible for parole in 2015 and was granted parole on June 27, 2019 after spending only 26 years in prison, despite being convicted of six counts of murder in the first degree.
This was the first episode of Criminal Intent to be filmed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. As such all of the characters that are police officers are wearing black bands over their badges, this is a custom to honor fellow officers that are killed in the line to duty. Of the 412 first responders that were killed in the World Trade Center attack, 60 of them were police officers: 37 were New York and Jersey City Port Authority officers and 23 were NYPD officers . They continue wearing the black bands from the remainder of the season in their honor, they also did the same on Law & Order (1990) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999).
Lawrence Summers was President Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary, and the former President of Harvard University.
Several years after this "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" episode, Cara Buono appeared on Michael Emerson's series "Person of Interest." In that episode, Buono's character tried to kill Emerson's character.