From an early age, Taliya Finkel was told that her uncle Sterik had been a KGB agent. Her father Shmuel was convinced of this. He and his brother immigrated from the Ukraine to Israel in the 1970s. Shmuel preceded Sterik, who was in prison in the Ukraine at the time. According to Shmuel, his brother was murdered in prison and replaced by a secret agent of the former USSR. No one believed Shmuel, and Sterik refused to take a DNA test. In 1999, while his daughter was filming him intensively, Shmuel revealed that he was afraid that his fake brother was going to murder him.