As You Wish - Part 5

As all the problems with Frank were happening, Remy was getting increasingly nervous. He'd pushed The Company to hire Frank, pay for Frank's bar exam, his bonus for "passing", etc. Plus if there were problems with Frank, guess who'd go back to doing more work? That's right - me. But before I did it, it'd be stopping at Remy's desk, and the thought of that stressed him out.

Meanwhile, I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown due to hating Florida and my life there. Golden Boy told me to take a vacation, come visit in San Francisco, and to bring a resume. Because Golden Boy is golden, he knows his vacations. So I listened, and put in for time off. While all this was going on with Frank, we moved our office. And as I said previously, Frank was given a cubicle rather than an office. And he was PISSED. But wait, don't be too upset because this was a temporary move. That's right - we were moving again in less than six months. When word got out that I was going on vacation to San Francisco, Frank told me one of his fraternity brothers had traveled to SF for a vacation, and never returned - he loved it so much he moved. I laughed - I wasn't the type to move across the country; that'd be ridiculous. Besides, it would take me months of planning! Or it'd take me less than a week.

I was actually visiting San Francisco and plotting my move West, while the legal department moved for the second time. When I got back to Florida (having given my notice over the phone, standing at Fisherman's Wharf, looking out at the Bay), Frank's dream had finally come true, and he had an office. Or a large closet with flimsy walls and no windows, but whatever. There was a door, and he could close it.

You're probably thinking that it was only because I was leaving that I laid out for the General Counsel and Remy why I doubted Frank's legitimacy. I think you'd be right. The details are boring, but there are a lot of liability issues when an attorney allows someone who is not an attorney to sign things only an attorney should be signing. You might say "but if they didn't know..." and for laypeople that excuse can work, but for attorneys? It's their job to have proof of things they act on.

Remy, true to form, tried to hide from the whole thing, and told me to do whatever the G.C. wanted. The G.C. told me to look up Frank's social security number and find out what states, if any, he was admitted to practice law in.

I started with Florida. I didn't just look him up in Martindale-Hubbell. I called Tallahassee, and spoke with people who worked for the Florida Bar. And then I called the state in New England he was from, and checked with them. I presented to both as a hypothetical, but Florida was interested right away, and wanted a name from me. I wish I'd asked if they blacklist people.

During this time, I was also trying to train my replacement, pack up my apartment in Florida (Freecycle came in handy), and wrap up loose ends at work, lest I leave a mess for my replacement.

After I'd returned from San Francisco, I got word that Talia wanted to speak with me urgently. I didn't really have time. We met in a hallway one day and she asked if I was moving to San Francisco. After I nodded she asked why. Whined it, kind of. I shook my head - I was too unhappy in Florida. It was unhealthy for me to be so unhappy. I didn't tell her that it was nore than "unhappy" - that it'd been a nervous breakdown and months of crying.

Talia gave me a shy smile. And told me she was moving to New York. I told her to look for a place to live in Queens rather than in Manhattan - it'd cost less but still be an easy commute. We hugged. If I saw Talia again before my last day, I can't remember it.

Meanwhile, I'd reported my findings about Frank to the General Counsel. He'd put the pressure on Frank, asking for the date of the swearing in, asking if Frank needed that day off, saying he needed proof Frank passed the bar to add him to the Company's insurance policy.

The Brother, whose office was now in the new Legal Department, knew what was going on, and was worried. He wanted the truth. I was instructed to call New England, and find out if there was reciprocity between that state and Florida. Grasping at straws. I called; there isn't. But now New England is interested. I'd presented it to them as a hypothetical. They're cool with that - people are always paranoid when they report someone.

New England asked me if I happened to have the phone number for the Florida Bar handy. Why yes, I do. New England asked for the name of the person I was calling about. I put them on hold. This was the moment when I was about to totally kill someone's legal career. That's a big deal; I could not make this decision and walked into the General Counsel's office to tell him what part of the conversation we were up to.

"Green, Remy and I could be disbarred. You want me to talk to them?" I knew they could be disbarred. I knew there could be a huge lawsuit. Oh, did I mention The Company was trying to go public at the time and couldn't afford any bad publicity?

I got back on the phone. "Thanks for holding. It's not a hypothetical. His name is Frank XX." They asked if I was an attorney. "No, but I can put you on the phone with the General Counsel if you'd like." Turns out they didn't need that. My guess is that if I'd been an attorney, they'd have looked at my record.

Frank didn't show up for work my last week in Florida. For two days we couldn't reach him. Then someone saying he was a friend called the office, claiming Frank had been in a motorcycle accident and was in the hospital. Bullshit. I asked the guy which hospital, saying The Company would want to send flowers. He stumbled around a bit before coming up with a hospital name.

Immediately after sharing the news of Frank's alleged accident, I was instructed by The Brother and G.C. to look up the phone number of the hospital and call to ask if Frank was there. I was NOT to dial the number the friend had given me. So I did. They said they couldn't give out patient information. Fucking HIPPA laws. I asked the woman, "If someone was there due to a motorcycle accident, they'd have been in your ER first, before being admitted, right? Can you tell me if he was in the ER?" HIPPA laws prevented that too.

I explained that we believed someone was lying about being in the hospital to avoid coming to work. She told me she could not violate confidentiality. I responded that I certainly understood that, and then she asked for the spelling of Frank's last name. South Florida is so corrupt. After spelling it, I was told nobody by that last name had been through the ER in the last month. The Company never heard from Frank again, and of course, couldn't reach him.

Less than a week later I was living in San Francisco. Frank was disbarred from New England. Per Google, he was last working in Texas, but not as a lawyer. I noticed the person he was working with was a graduate of his law school, and a member of his fraternity. I wonder what he told his frat brother about why he left Florida.

If you're going to lie about being a lawyer, it's best to lie to people who won't think to check the truth. Lie to the plumber, the pizza guy, a cab driver. Don't lie at work.

If you're going to be a liar, be good at it. Liars really do have tells. Frank's tell was his shit-eating grin.

If you're going to be evasive, know where to draw the line. Of course it's fine to not decorate your work space with personal things if you don't want to. But give your office a way to reach you in an emergency.

And that's how it all went down.

As You Wish - Part 4

There was a lot of back and forth over whether The Company would pay for all the fees associated with Frank taking the bar exam. Some of it he didn't know about, some of it, he did. Frank wanted to take the bar in both Florida and New England. Of course The Company was only going to pay the fees associated with the Florida one. So of course, Frank told me about taking both exams, and told me not to tell anyone else.

What happened was that I'd give Frank a form to fill out, and he'd make a photocopy and fill it out twice, once for each state. And then instead of giving it back to me to get signed, he'd give it to the General Counsel to sign. After it was signed, he'd bypass me again and push the paperwork through again, saying I never sent the first one out, or lost it. I won't bore you with the details, but it took until after I'd given notice at The Company for us to sit down and figure out exactly how Frank had done it.

But before that, Remy kind of caught on that something wasn't kosher, and told me flat out that Frank had better not miss work to take the bar in New England. Well guess who called in sick? Yeah, he did. Wait, but the thing is, when most people call in sick, they call their office before they're supposed to be there. Or within the first half hour.

Frank's idea of "calling in sick" was to simply not show up, wait for us to notice, and then not be at any of the phone numbers we had for him. Eventually he'd call us, late in the day with some excuse, and let us know he hadn't died in a car accident or something. He'd previously asked me to not call his house - he didn't want his baby mama (I'd say common law wife, but there's no such thing as common law marriage in Florida) being bothered by us. I think the truth was that there were some days he was out with Talia and didn't want his screwing around exposed to her.

So Frank went to New England and took the bar. Then he took the Florida bar. Umm... hi. I work with lawyers. Members of my family are lawyers. I know stuff like when the bar is in whatever state I'm living in, and what date bar results come out.

When bar results come out, first they're only available to bar-takers initially. Later on, around 24 hours or so, they're available to the general public. So when bar results came out, I let Remy know, and we all gave Frank a lot of space so he could find out the news in his own time without us hovering over him.

Finally at the end of the day, Remy couldn't stand it anymore and when Frank walked by, Remy asked if he passed. Frank told him bar results hadn't come out yet. Remy looked at me, and I looked at the internet, where it said bar results were in fact out that day. The General Counsel asked what was going on. Remy told him. The G.C. shrugged and said that clearly Frank was too scared to look at work. He told Frank to go home early that day.

Next day, Frank came in saying he'd passed. Who the hell would lie about passing the bar? The truth is, Frank passed the bar in New England and didn't pass in Florida. But we didn't know that yet. It didn't occur to any of us to go look for ourselves. Why would we?

Around this time I found out something else to add to the long list of Frank's deception. The Brother did a lot of business with one specific guy. That guy gave him a lot of work, work which ultimately gave The Brother a lot of money. The Brother had Frank do some work for him here and there. Frank asked me for the Guy's phone number. Thinking nothing of it, I gave it to him.

Suddenly, I found myself taking calls from the Guy for Frank. Which made no sense - Frank was supposed to be somewhat behind the scenes of what The Brother was doing. There was no reason Frank and the Guy should be talking. I said nothing - it was none of my business, and maybe The Brother was giving Frank more responsibility or something that I didn't know about. It would be wrong for me to assume and jump to conclusions.

The truth is, you want to believe people you deal with on a regular basis. If you start listening to the doubts you have about them, then you're forced to admit to yourself that you're not as good a judge of character as you wanted to think you are. Remy had been really happy that he'd been able to hire a black guy. (Yes, everyone else in our tiny Legal Department was white.) He didn't want to think he'd made a mistake.

Only one more left - aren't you excited?

As You Wish - Part 3

Talia was smart and pretty and black and not that tall and wanted to be a model. Instead, she worked at The Company, downstairs, and at night, went into Miami to party. Talia was four or five years younger than me. Remy liked her as a person, and I think he related to her drive, and every so often I'd find Talia in Remy's office chatting with him. There was nothing but friendship going on between them.

After a while, Talia found my lunch spot downstairs and would come ask what my book was about, or tell me about a video she was going to audition for, or what was going on at home, or how she wanted to move to New York. She liked to ask me about New York, and even though I explained I hadn't lived in the city, she decided Long Island was close enough, and liked hearing about it anyway.

Talia lived with her mother, and a sister or two (I can't remember), and her only expenses were her cell phone and car. She was taking a class or two at FAU or some other local college.

I liked Talia. She was smart and nice and funny. I learned all about how it doesn't have to be uncomfortable to wear stilettos and how she talked men into paying her cell phone bill. In a very round-about way, Remy was Talia's supervisor, and he'd hear about it when she came to work late. He was hurt by Talia's being late - he felt that since they were friends, she shouldn't put him in the position of having to deal with her lateness. So, he often ignored it. Talia was late because she was at open casting calls in Miami, but knew enough to say she'd had car trouble, or had to take her mother to the doctor, or some other lie.

Talia wanted to surround herself with people who she thought were smart, or successful. At some point, Frank and Talia noticed each other. I got the vibe that Talia was impressed with Frank's impending lawyerness, that she'd never been friends with a black man who'd graduated from through law school. The type of men she'd casually dated were ... not the greatest. I don't know how else to say it, because all I have are hazy memories of impressions, rather than facts.

Talia knew she was pretty, and she was learning at this, her first "real" full-time job, that other people knew she was smart. Remy told me privately once that this was the first job Talia had where she was valued for her intelligence rather than her looks.

Remy wanted me to handle anything I possibly could, to take work away from him. That's how the job of attendance eventually fell to me, and that's how I started noticing that Frank and Talia were gone at the same times. Talia was quiet but not secretive about it, and in answer to my, "We missed you yesterday," would respond by telling me flat out she'd been at the beach with a friend.

Usually when Talia would come talk to me during lunch, she'd lean against a desk or something that showed the quickness of it. One day she pulled over a chair, and propped her feet up on the same box mine were on. I took the hint and closed my book.

"You think it's fucked up that we're hanging out?" I told her not at all, that I understood his appeal to her. "But, he lives with the mother of his child, and what does it say about his respect for her?"

Hell yeah, I'm judgmental. Talia was upset by my answer and walked away. I went back to reading. Talia came back. "You don't understand."

"Okay," I challenged her. "Explain it to me." Talia waved her hands around and tried to form sentences, to defend herself. I caught one of her hands. "You don't have to justify your actions to me. I'm sure there are things I do that you don't agree with. You only have to justify your actions to yourself."

Talia told me that they'd only gone to the beach for part of the day. The other part of the day consisted of going out on one of Frank's fraternity brother's boats. She met his friends. His black lawyer friends. I understood just fine.

Potential Fraud

Stick with me here. I know you read the title and your eyes glazed over, sure that I'm either going to talk about something boring or try to sell you something. Well, you're partially right - I want to sell you knowledge, but I think it's so important for you to have that instead of selling it, I'm giving it away for free.

About a week ago I got a two-page letter in the mail from Estate Trust Asset Recovery. It's a company I'd never heard of before. Immediately, I was suspicious. They have my current address in SF, as well as the address where I'd lived in Florida. The letter is a refund notice, saying Progressive, which I did have car insurance with years ago, owes me $405. And if I'll just send a copy of my driver's license along with providing the last four digits of my social security number, they'll send me $356.50, taking out $48.50 as their processing fee.

Hey, I'm out of work. Money sounds good to me these days. I can't figure out why on earth Progressive would owe me money, since I sold my car only a few days before my car insurance policy expired though...

And I was totally prepared to go claim my money up until I noticed where, on the second page, I'm asked for the last four digits of my social security number. You may think it's nothing, because what can they do without the entire SS#? However.

At least twenty years ago, the Yogurt Family was on vacation in New Hampshire with family friends. The adults were sitting on couches and chairs while the kids were on the floor playing. The other dad was talking about fraud, and he said that it's really easy to con people. He gave the example that if you tell someone the first three numbers of their social security number, they'll probably tell you the rest of it. Even though surely millions of people must have the same first three numbers. I don't know how I managed to remember that, but it stuck with me.

I'm one of those people who should follow their gut. My gut always protects me. Sometimes I put in more effort than I needed to, but I'd rather do that than not put in the effort when I should and have problems. Listen to your gut, people. The gift of fear really IS a gift.

The refund notice I got doesn't list any portion of my social security number. But I'm really careful about who I give any of it out to. So I did what any smart consumer would do. I called my daddy. Who suggested I call the Attorney General's Office in Florida. Which I did.

I spoke with a very nice woman named Samantha, explaining I wanted to check on the legitimacy of a refund notice. Samantha told me, in her deep Southern accent, that she'd already gotten 11 calls regarding this company. That if I wanted to know if I was truly owed any money, I should look at FLTreasureHunt.org. Which I did.

And I came to this page. Hmm. I looked at this page too. It's looking more and more like I am not owed any money. When moving West, I did not call Progressive to cancel my policy with them, knowing that it was only a few days. So they should not owe me money.

But I decided to call Progressive. Just in case. Because what I used to do was, each time my insurance policy was about to expire, I'd shop around to see where I could get the lowest rate. I switched between Progressive and Allstate multiple times. In speaking with Dara at Progressive, I was told that in 2001 (years before I sold my car to move to SF), I did cancel a policy with them after only two months and they DID try to refund me $405. I asked Nina how it is that they tried and failed, since I was living at the same address for four years. And that's how it is that I'm now on hold while Dara is researching the answer to that question with her accounting department.

My goal, now that I know I am in fact owed money, is to get all of it, as opposed to having a portion go to a company that handles refunding money. I'll let you know how that goes.

The State of Florida hires companies to handle refunds for them, and apparently they're allowed to take a percentage of the money owed. In looking at that Treasure Hunt page, I see that Estate Trust Asset Recovery is listed a company hired by the state. Thus, legitimate.

While on hold, Samantha called me back, and said I should pursue my money through the state, if not through Progressive directly. Dara said her accounting department needs to research this whole thing, since it's so old. She personally will call me back around the end of this week.

Obviously, since I was expecting nothing, $356.50 would be great, and I should be happy with that. However, if by simply making a few phone calls I can get almost $50 more, I'd like that. If I can't, then that's fine, and now that I see this is a real company. Though I can't help but wonder why Samantha said that she's gotten 11 complaints about Estate Trust...

Yeah, so I'm holding out for Dara. She's going to call me back by the end of the week, after having her accounting people research this.

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I blogged this all while making these phone calls and doing the research. You might say that since I found out everything is legitimate, I wasted my time. I disagree with that. If you've ever talked with anyone who's been a victim of identity theft, you'll agree with me that it's worth being careful to ensure you don't become another victim. It's worth spending an hour (and yes, I'd have spent this time even if I were working) to make sure you're not going to have to spend YEARS clearing up identity theft problems.

Also, I know the majority of my readers are from California. Here's the website for the CA Attorney General's Office. Don't get screwed over, people.