I didn’t get anything done today

Well, I did, but none of the things I planned to do got done.  Except making my signature pea and ham soup in the crock pot.  Mmmmmmm, Hubby is on his way home and he will be happily surprised to smell dinner when he walks in (this hardly ever happens – I mean, I cook, I just don’t cook early!)

Most of my day was spent gathering paperwork from my computer and creating lists and timelines for the deputy assigned to record the police report I filed today.  Yesterday evening, after paying bills and getting “caught up” with at least one part of my life, I used my latest bank statement to reconcile our personal checking account with my recorded register on my computer.  There was one substantial check that I definitely did not have recorded.  I logged on to my online bank app and opened a view of that check which had cleared my bank on October 30.  $2,485.76, and I have to hand it to the thief – it did look very much like one of my checks.  Except it wasn’t.

Last night the bank opened my fraud investigation, and after taking down my information and returning the money to my account, advised me to file a police report with my local authority.  Today I spent quite a bit of time with Deputy “P” from my local county sheriff’s office.  There were many reasons that made it clear that the counterfeiter had previously actually seen one of my real signed checks, so Deputy P had me list all of the people to whom I had recently issued checks printed on my computer from my Quicken app.  The list is not terribly long, and I emphasized that I did trust each of these people – if the fraud came from a check I had given them, it would have been committed by another party in their life who had the chance to snap a photo of my check.  (I called my housekeeper, who comes here with a team of her family, and asked to speak to her daughter.  She asked, “Can you tell me what this is about?” and I answered that I could, but I did not want there to be any misunderstanding, so I would prefer to speak to her daughter whose English is much better.  I just did not want the nice lady with questionable English skills to think that I thought that she had stolen from me when the deputy contacted her.)

Coincidentally, today I received a phone call from a friend whom we had asked for legal advice that he won’t accept our payment for.  That came out wrong, but you know what I mean.  We are not asking for free advice.  That being said, this “free” advice did not come quickly.  Three years ago, Hubby and I purchased some raw acreage (our dream retirement property in the Texas hill country!) and hired a contractor to help us get started with some basic amenities.  He completed 2/3 of the job, and lied to us about some of the money he charged us to pay for electrical equipment to be assembled by a third party.  Then he disappeared, leaving thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and a ton of unmanageable trash on our property.  Our question for our attorney friend: “What do we have to do before we dispose of his expensive equipment?”  It sounds like a simple question, but for reasons I don’t care to detail here (unless you have an hour), it is not simple.

Then the two parts of my day hovered over my head in the form of a gleaming lightbulb. Oct 19: my second demand to Bad Contractor registered letter was delivered.  It basically said “We have changed the lock on the building where your stuff is and have added a lock on the gate into the property.  Please contact us so that we can arrange for you to pick up your equipment.”  Oct 30: Counterfeit check cleared my checking account.  Hmmmmm.