This true story is morbidly fascinating… but before you worry, our club credit card information is set up in a way unavailable to any worker. No credit card numbers are kept on any computer or any paper copy. The only risk was my personal credit card. You are okay! Read about our club felon. Hopefully, it will be a cautionary tale; when sociopaths lurk amongst us.
So this strange tale begins. Yesterday was an odd day (10/26/20). The police visited and took Stephanie, our nice-looking worker away in cuffs, and put her in jail.
As the old Persian curse goes “May your life be interesting”…..
So it has been, I write to you the club, to address the perfectly understandable question of what the devil has been going on at our house. In short, we run a charity, focus on the outdoors, and getting disabled veterans back out into doing the things they once did before being wounded in service to our country.
In the last two years, we have had a terrible time with workers having drinking problems. So our turnover has been higher than normal. We thought we had made a great hire. A Texas A&M graduate with a strong marketing background. Did a Google search and indeed, such a person existed and we made the hire and she started like a blaze of fire.
Well as the months progressed, I began getting fraudulent charges on my credit card. One card was one I never use in an unsecured environment. Then I noticed our worker… just didn’t act like an Aggie and didn’t know those little factoids all Aggies share.
Hmmmm…. Then I dug a little deeper dive into the background. The Aggie marketer of the same name was not her…. The dates on her resume didn’t add up. Her birthdate was said to be in 1978, yet the year she told me she was in A&M was 1991…. making her 13 years old at A&M. I wondered why someone would lie about their birthday on an employment application. A little further digging revealed the truth…..
She had a shocking number of felony arrest warrants over the last 20 years. Mainly for forged checks, stolen prescription pads, altered prescriptions, and credit card fraud. She had been to prison twice, paroled each time.
This time… she was out on parole and had “skipped..”..“jumped” or in the legal parlance absconded and an arrest warrant was outstanding. So in addition to stealing money from our charity to help wounded vets, credit card fraud on our personal credit cards.. she defrauded the charity of almost $10,000.00
Boy, I feel stupid! She went to different towns around Texas and stole and forged checks, fake prescriptions, etc. The police called her an “Oxy-Queen.”
Here is a woman who had some college education, who was personable, an articulate woman… she could have made a lot of money in sales or a legitimate job. Yet, she has chosen to be a criminal, obviously enjoys it, and refuses to change. I served in a jury pool in Travis County, a person of color was on trial for a relatively minor offense that I honestly couldn’t believe was a felony. Previously, he had two felonies for minor offenses as a juvenile. As I said they were trying him for this minor crime – a felony. The district attorney office was asking me (actually strongly insisting) to impose the "three strikes you are out" rule… and send him to prison for LIFE, for three very minor felonies. None as serious or harmful as the ones our worker committed. Wow, makes you think.
With multiple felonies, she just keeps on trucking.. stealing from people, even a charity helping wounded veterans. Some of the theft was big money. What’s unimaginable – she was treated as one of our family. Rehabilitation hasn’t helped her one bit.
Eventually, I got very upset and said enough. So our neighborhood got a little drama yesterday, our defunded police still responded, went to unbelievable lengths to confirm it was the right person. Then made the arrest with professionalism, grace, sensitivity, and de-escalated the whole thing admirably. The felon finally was hauled to the police station. No tears on her part, no visible surprise… less emotion than me going and checking my mail. Frightening cold-blooded – a real cool cucumber. I am telling you it’s kinda scary that someone is in your house for months, and is a complete sociopath – and you barely have a clue. I am writing to tell you, check everyone, secure your checkbooks and credit cards.
Some warning signs… moves several times in two months. Their story begins to have holes in it, small things… you should then look for the larger problems. One clear marker is the name dropping of famous people like they know them. Yet their life standard of living is different than the social circles they claim to know as good friends. In these instances, as in this case, some of those people always seem to be professional athletes. There is always a sob story about why they are financially not where they should be, and they always cast themselves as a victim. The above applies to honest unlucky people as well, but it is a warning sign. A sociopath running amok in your personal records can do unbelievable harm.
Think on this: after our club pheasant hunt in the coming weeks, Leann and I would've come home to an empty house!