I’ve been robbed!!!

Sit back young one and I shall tell you a tale. It is a tale of trust, loyalty, greed, romance and betrayal. And it is a true story, who’s conclusion occurred mere minutes ago.

As I am the protagonist in this story, let me insure that you are aware of a few key characteristics regarding my personality. I do not enjoy housework, I am a firm believer in outsourcing, and I value my time very much. Over the years these traits have morphed into me having what I call a personal assistant. My personal assistants’ duties have evolved into the following:

• Housecleaning
• Grocery Shopping
• Household upkeep
• Laundry
• Random Errands

About 16 months ago I hired a new assistant. To protect her privacy, I’ll hide her name. For the sake of the story, let’s call her “Beth”.

Over the next several months, Beth demonstrated her ability to consistently complete the tasks I required. She showed that she was trustworthy (she’d collect random money she found at my house and place them in a jar for me). I kept it professional, but over the months we even became friends. I could count on her to do whatever I asked. She was a great employee.     loyalty

Because she bought groceries for me weekly, and ran other errands that needed money, I let her use a $500 limit credit card that was in my name. I had my online bill paying service automatically send the card $500 per month–apprx what I was spending on groceries, cleaning supplies, etc.     trust

In December of 08, a little over a year into our employment agreement, I was contacted by my credit card company. They had received a payment from me and wanted to know which account to apply it to. This confused me as I only had the one $500 card with this company. I inquired and discovered that in fact I had two credit lines open with them. One had a balance of about $4500, the other had a balance of $12,000. My jaw hit the floor.

Over the next hour or so, I discovered that because of my consistent payments, my credit limit had slowly increased from $500 to $5000, without so much as a letter or a call. I also discovered that an old credit card that I hadn’t used in years had expired and they had mailed me another copy. It was activated and over 3 months, was maxed out to $12k.

Thus began my highly motivated and aggressive mission to find out who did this and how I could nail them.

Of course I was also concerned that I might be liable for the 17k. I am an investor in lifelock and a member. I contacted them and to my surprise they told me that they would take care of whatever the credit card company wouldn’t. Now I could focus on nailing this bastard without worry of financial loss.

I opened a fraud case immediately with Visa. While they began work on the case, they gave me a list of recent charges over the phone. As soon as I hung up the phone I started finding numbers for the charges and calling them. The first one refused to give me any information, despite it being my card. I pressed on. The second company was far more cooperative. As the customer service rep read the shipping information to me, my head dropped as disappointment and anger grew. It was Beth’s name and address. I called a few more and all signs pointed to her.   betrayal & greed

At this point I really only had once choice. I called the police and within an hour a trooper was at my door taking the report. He told me that if it was her first offense (which it was, I had done a background check before hiring her) she’d likely do no time. I asked how the case would proceed and he told me that I needed to go downtown and take a warrant out for her arrest. I asked if I should go immediately or if I should gather evidence first. He told me that the more information I could present at the warrant request the better.

Over the next few days, I received a complete list of all charges and began hitting the phone. About half the time, the company would refuse to give me any information. Other times, they would give me shipping info, order numbers and sometimes even fax or email copies of the orders. In all cases, Beth had the items shipped to her home address (or her parents’ address). It took me about a week to gather what I felt was enough evidence for the case to be a 100% lock. I filed out affidavits for Visa, and wrote a detailed account of the case for the warrant. Because Beth normally came twice a week, I had to lie to her and tell her that I was sick both times. (my lawyer told me to avoid all contact with her until she was arrested). After about 80 hours of work, I had a 45 page document with credit card statements, invoices, a description of Beth (including pictures and where to find her), even copies of her signature on shipping confirmations for orders placed in her name on my card. It was a slam dunk.

I confidently went to the courthouse and started the warrant process. I was very surprised at how short and simple the warrant paperwork was. I simply put “see attached” in the 3 line area designated for ‘describe the offense’. As the very friendly clerk (no sarcasm) processed my request for a warrant, I discovered why there were only 3 lines on the form. I saw maybe 4 other complaints as I waited, all involved physical confrontations. The two best examples involved a complaint of ‘her friend’s mom hit her’ (the girl was 14) and ‘his baby’s mama threw a brick through my windshield’. It was interesting to say the least.

Ok–back to the story. The clerk told me that my case would be reviewed by an assistant prosecutor and the warrant would either be approved or denied. My name was called and I went into his office. He was initially skeptical and somewhat cold. He asked me the details and once I showed him the monster document I had created, the mood of the meeting changed quite a bit. He thumbed through it, handed it back and told me the review was over. I went back to waiting and when the clerk re-called me, she told me my warrant was approved. She also looked through my document (‘warrant package’) and said, “you’ve done a ton of work. We never see cases like this. This is a slam dunk.” (her words). “I’m going to call over to the detectives office and see if any of them are still there.” (it was around 3pm on a Friday).

“I’ve got a guy here with a $17,000 credit card fraud case with 40 pages of proof. Anyone want a easy case?”.  Apparently they did. She hung up the phone and wrote down instructions for me on how to get to the detectives’ office. It was across the street. I walked in and spoke with Detective Thomas. There were 3 other detectives in the room and after a couple minutes of me explaining the case and him looking through my package, all 4 began work. I was very impressed. One would be searching the VIN database for her car while another was tracking her parents and trying to find her social security number. He asked if I knew where she was right now and I said that she normally visits her parents (3 hrs away) on the weekends. As it was Friday, they were worried she’d beat them out of town. He asked me to text her to find out where she was. I did. To say the least, this was exciting!

After a couple of minutes waiting for a reply, Det. Thomas decided he was tired of waiting and he and another detective hit the road to find her. His first try was going to be her home. He gave me his cell phone and told me to call if she revealed her location. I happily agreed and met my brother for our normal Friday lunch. BW3s. num num num…

I hadn’t heard from the detective or Beth, so after lunch I called his cell phone and asked how it was going.

“I just picked her up. She’s in the car with me now. She had both cards on her. Also–she told me that you guys were dating and that you allowed her to use the cards. She said you had a fight and you’re just mad.” I laughed and said “Ok, well I have about 50 witnesses that’ll say we didn’t date”. (I had been dating the same girl for the last 10 months, and it wasn’t Beth!).    romance? lol

He simply said “ya don’t worry about that”.

Over the next week she had her pre-trial hearing, where she was required to plea not guilty, as you cannot plea guilty to a felony. She crossed the felony line at $501.

Fast forward about a month, and her court date had arrived. I was worried she was going to claim we dated and drag this out. I was mentally prepared to parade witness after witness showing we hadn’t dated, but was hoping she’d changed her mind. I spoke with her lawyer and the prosecuting attorney. Her lawyer gave me some bullshit “she’s depressed and has mental problems” line. “All we want is to keep this off her record. Her and her family want to make this right.”Looks like she threw out the dating story.

I knew Beth, and I knew this was a sympathy ploy. I told her lawyer flat out that I thought that “mental problems line was bullshit.” He and I and the prosecuting attorney then talked for a while in the back room. Defense attorney was REALLY pushing for a misdemeanor with community service, psychiatric counseling, probation and full financial restitution. Although I have no official rights as the prosecuting witness, the P.A. (prosecuting attorney) explained to me and her lawyer that with this size of money and this extreme length of time (she had been stealing from me for 6 months!) he was going to leave it up to me. I left the room and gave it some serious consideration.

Misdemeanor or Felony?

No matter which I chose, the outcome for ME was the same. I knew I wasn’t going to be on the hook for the money, so that was a non-factor. The only real difference was the old ‘have you even been convicted of a felony?’ question on applications etc. I was surprised to learn that in either case, her record would be cleaned after a few years, assuming full financial restitution and no other convictions.

I thought for quite a while. I even called my parents and my brother to get their opinion. In the end, I decided that if any crime deserved a felony, this was it. 6 months of lying and deceit. Activating a card, running up 17 thousand dollars–it was insane. What ultimately pushed me towards felony was reviewing the many pages of her charges. She had bought items on eBay about 10 times per week. She did cash advances a few times for a few thousand dollars. All in all she had made maybe 150 charges in 6 months. Towards the end she was using the card 15 or 20 times per week! Felony.

I talked to the P.A. and he informed me that this required a higher court. A new date was set and eventually pushed back to have time to subpoena the arresting officer.

Then I started having more detailed conversations with Visa. I was assigned a special investigator who used a rule book too much and common sense too little. At first he told me that I would owe nothing–they would chargeback all they could from the merchants and would claim the restitution from Beth upon conviction.

Later he told me that the courts told him that I am the victim in the case, and the check must be made out to me. So now his position was that I was on the hook for what they couldn’t charge back–about 10 1/2 thousand dollars. He told me where to send my check.

Obviously, I told him this was crap. I said “If I get a check from her, I’ll send you the money. If I don’t, you’re not getting a dime from me.” For the time being I suppose we agreed to disagree. But I’d make them sue me for that money if she didn’t pay up. All in all, I was very unhappy with the level of service ELAN financial gave me.

And their fraud prevention is absolutely terrible!! When I use my American Express card, I get called twice a month or so to confirm “unusual” charges. Over 6 months, ELAN never once asked me if the hundreds of internet charges (with NO PAYMENT being made on the account!) were legit. Now they wanted to stick me with the balance? Riiiiiiiight….

Anyway, back to the case:

On the next court date, the P.A, officer, Defense attorney and I all met and once again the Defense attorney pressed for a misdemeanor. He has no shame. I again stuck to felony and once again, the date was pushed back…

That date was then pushed back via phone call from P.A…(the judge was out of town)…fast forward 3 weeks….

Then the day finally came. Today at 1pm on the 9th floor of the Judicial Center at 7th and Jefferson Street in downtown Louisville, the case concluded. Beth and her attorney sat behind one desk, I and the P.A. sat behind the other. The judge and P.A. officially declared the recommended sentence. The judge and the defense attorney officially declared that they were willing to accept the plea. Then the judge asked Beth about 30 questions, mostly to the tune of “do you understand….”

“that you have the right to a trial by jury”
“that you have the right to call witnesses on your behalf and have the court subpeona those witnesses”
“that if you plead guilty today you cannot appeal it to this court or any other court”

Finally he asked her “Is it true that between June of 2008 and December of 2008, while working for Mr. Landon Swan, you unlawfully used his credit cards without his knowledge to make purchases totaling $10,621.61?”
(This is the settlement amount. She actually stole about 17k)

“Yes.”

“How do you plea to the charge of (I forget the exact phrase, basically ‘credit card fraud’)?”
“Guilty”

The P.A. handed me a check for $10,621.61 (paid for by her dad, who is on a school teachers salary) from the escrow account of her attorney. The judge explained her sentence to her. 1 year prison sentence probated 2 years with probation officer. If she does anything from drink alcohol to shop lifting to DUI to anything worse, she’ll be locked up in prison for a year + the sentence for that offense. Its over, a mere 6 months after I called the police.

Throughout it all, she avoided eye contact with me and never spoke to me or communicated in anyway–not even an apology.

I’ve learned a lot about the justice system. It was actually a very interesting and frankly, fun, experience–but hopefully my last