Marshawnda:
As I saw you ascend the escalator at the airport in a hurry to leave, I began to think about everything that has gone on with you since I met you a few months ago. As I mentioned to you before, I have never lent money to anyone before, outside of a few dollars here and there. When I decided to help you out, it wasn't out of pity but instead I saw the promise of a woman struggling to keep her head above water in a new city, someone trying to make it by advancing her knowledge in school in pursuit of a career in social work. I felt that if I gave you a helping hand, you would pull yourself out of the financial rut you were in.
Instead as the weeks unfolded, it became clear to me that you had little knowledge of personal finance and practically no self-control in how you spend money. Every time I advanced money to you, you turned around and immediately spent it, sometimes within hours. The seriousness of your situation became clear when you said that you had been scammed through a Craigslist housing ad and your bank account was overdrawn. The net result of that mistake was that your credit rating dropped to zero as the bank was forced to take the loss and your name and social security number became blacklisted on a database that banks use to determine account holder risk. I remember asking you more than a couple of times to contact the bank and find out what needed to be done to fix that problem and what did you do about it? Nothing.
In a second effort to help you out, I went to Bank of the West to help you set up a bank account in your name and loaded the account with $125. Within days you had drained the account and were begging me to help you with gas and money to restore the account to good standing. In addition, your credit card was constantly exceeding your credit limit. Time and again and again you pleaded with me to transfer money to the card which I did. During that time, I gained access to your Premier account and discovered just how reckless you were with money. For someone with little money to spend, instead of spending on basic life expenses such as food, you were frittering your money away on useless crap, games, music, casino, etc.
Around this time, your own car was starting to fail, yet you had promised me that you were actively looking for a job and if only you had a car to drive, you could find a job and start paying me back. I made the decision to purchase a car for you, in my name with the expectation that you would begin making payments on the car. Of course, that never happened and I was stuck with the down payment, car payment and the insurance. Your contribution at this point: $0.
I began to wonder if you would ever be able to pay me back. It seemed like no matter what I did for you, it just didn't help. I tried to give you a helping hand to pull yourself out of a hole but instead of lifting yourself out, you grabbed a shovel and dug deeper.
In a final effort to assist you, I set up an account in my name at my bank since you had no way of depositing student loan advances and you had assured me that you would deposit future checks into that account to help pay me off. Instead, in a vague explanation you told me that you had given the large $6,795 advance check that you had been carrying around to some friend who had deposited it in her account. I asked you more than a few times to find out what happened to the check. The time dragged on while you insisted that your friend was incapacitated from being beaten by her boyfriend. After over a week had gone by, you finally produced a copy of a check that was obviously unsuitable for redeposit. Again, you had plenty of opportunity to go to the bank, find out what happened with the check and deal with an extremely important issue and what did you do about it? Nothing.
By this time, I had consolidated all your financial data into an online app and discovered that you had not changed your spending pattern. You had trouble even keeping $20 in the account. Your words of comfort that you were going to make things right just didn't seem credible and that proved true when you deposited a $4,000 check from someone name Bruce Monighan. As banks normally do when a deposit is made, the bank released $200 up front. Within seconds it seems, you drained what you could from the bank. When the bank released the remaining amount, you suddenly asked me to purchase one way airfare to Key West, Fl so you could be with your Dad, assuring me that you would take care of things. When the check bounced a day later, the account was completely drained and overdrawn by nearly $4,000. Fortunately, I had moved some money out to my other account and used that money to help cover the overdraft. By this time, you had drained me of over $5,500 and left me stuck with a car loan of over $13,000. I asked you if you were afraid of confronting Bruce and you insisted that you weren't. But did you do anything before you skipped out of town to solve this issue? No, once again you did nothing. Since you didn't appear to want to solve any of the problems confronting you, I stepped in and located Bruce for you and found his work address and phone number within seconds. Btw, I did this without spending $29.95 on people finder.
None of this made any sense to me. You had no agreement and no bill of sale for whatever it was you were selling. And why would a rich, old white guy like Bruce give you $4,000? What do you have of value that is even worth $4,000? That crappy old car that died on you was not even worth $500 and you had already sold it to someone else. Even I don't own anything of value that I could sell for that amount so quickly. The bank informed me that the reason why the check bounced was that Bruce's bank had locked down the account. It seemed highly unlikely that someone like Bruce with so much to lose from bad publicity would deliberately commit check fraud by giving you a bad check.
When I left the airport, all of these thoughts kept nagging me. At first I thought maybe I could confront Bruce myself since I was in effect acting as your agent by collecting money on your behalf. He did, after all write the check out to me. But I needed to do some more investigation.
When I got home, I pulled up the copy of the check and examined it carefully. The first thing that seemed a little odd was the fact that the check was missing a date. Normally, someone writing a check for such a large amount would certainly remember to fill out the check completely. The second thing that seemed a little strange was that the check was drawn on a credit card advance account, not a normal checking account. But the thing that caught my attention was the signature. I stared at that signature for nearly 5 minutes. Finally, I suddenly remembered that you had scribbled your signature on a luggage tag just before you left in case I wanted to forge your signature for that future student loan check that you promised was coming. I pulled out the luggage tag and compared it to the signature on the check. I am no hand writing expert but the M and the B in both signatures were identical. If this is true, it means you have committed a felony and engaged in check fraud, possibly implicating me as well since you used my name as the payee. I am so angry right now about this not only because you could do something so reckless and illegal, but also because I might be held responsible for your actions. I honestly do not know what Mr. Monighan will do at this point. He is not out any money but he was robbed in a sense as his check appears to be stolen.
I cannot continue like this. You are going off a financial cliff on your way to ruin but I am not going with you. You are almost 30 years old and should know better than to behave so recklessly. Even if I am wrong about the check being forged, your action or lack of action on so many issues that needed to be dealt with speak much louder than any words. No wonder you were in such a hurry to leave Sacramento! I can assure you, though that your problems are far from over.
I am taking possession of the car. After I clean it up, I will locate anything that belongs to you of value and place it in a box or envelope for you in case you do return.
I locked down the account that I set up for you. The debit card is now useless and won't work. As of right now, you owe me $5,626. I will deduct $1,000 for the down payment of the car since I am taking possession of it so the ending balance is actually $4,626. As for the insurance and car payment, you had possession of the car for over a month so you are responsible for that. If you do obtain the funds to pay me back, that would be great and help repair a lot of the damage you have caused me. Frankly, I doubt that will occur. As for the student loan check that is scheduled to arrive at my house, I do not plan to cash it since it isn't made out to me and I don't really feel comfortable depositing that type of check into my account. If I do receive it, I will mail it to the PO box on Marconi.
In short, my life has been turned upside down because of you. You repaid my kindness by punishing me with little to no remorse.
