Cotton-eyed Joe

My brother came up with the title and it's so accurate. "Where did ya' come from, where did ya' go". Of course, we are referring to all the money. Weeks and weeks of documents and pages and pages of money coming in and money going out with nothing to show for it and no answers.

By the end of August, we still would have questions and would have to refer to paperwork to see if we could find answers. I still think Dad was in shock because he would still tell the old narrative of things or the lies she had told him...and to him it had been truth for years. For me, who remembered details, it drove me crazy and we would have to tell him, no Dad that's not true, and tell him the facts we found out and then he would remember and say "oh, that's right, that's right".

So during that time that attorney named Tina, that Justin and I had met with that first weekend hired me as her legal assistant, and Dad had also retained her to represent him in the divorce. Dad was still having a hard time figuring out living his life and how to manage his household on his own. I tried to help as much as I could, because all of this was overwhelming to everyone and I couldn't imagine how he felt. So often he would come up to the office and sit with me while we changed his information with different companies and whatever else needed done.

During one of Dad's visits to the law office, I don't remember what we were working on, but once again we were talking about the money. The subject of the large lump sums came up. I pulled the bank statements up and in February of 2014 there was a large deposit of $31,917.08 and the depositor was the same as his retirement checks. When I told him that he said that didn't make sense because he took the full annuity and there shouldn't have been a lump sum. So we called the retirement company for answers. After waiting on hold for a what felt like forever, the person on the other line tells Dad that there was a lump sum requested out of his retirement. He said that couldn't be right he remembers taking the full annuity. Of course, she helped fill out the papers and then mailed them from her work. I requested for them to send us a copy of the papers that were sent to them. They wouldn't email them or fax them. We had to wait for snail mail.

When he called her about it, she denied it and said "I don't remember what I did, I just checked a box". But a year later on the bank statements in January of 2015 (I think we previously said it was a couple of months but these dates are accurate), there was another large sum of $10,182 deposited. We found out this was for disability back pay for Dad, he never even knew that amount of money was there. I think she told him it was like $2000 or so but I don't even remember that detail, and I wasn't a part of that conversation.

Now I will tell you this, just because it annoys me to no end. In March 2015, (after the $10,000 deposit) we took a trip to Galveston for one of my daughter's dance competitions. They were going to go with us and so we planned on renting a beach house for all of us (Dad and her, Justin and his wife and my family) and we were going to split the cost. Later, she came back and said "your Dad and I talked and we want to pay for the beach house". We argued and said no we will pay our share, we said no time and time again, but then Dad presented it as... I never get to do anything nice like this for y'all, just let me do it. So we did. How could you say no to that? So in the hundreds of times we asked where the money went - she always brings this up on how they paid for the beach house.... EVERY TIME.... just a side note, the cost of the beach house was a very tiny fraction of the money that is unaccounted for. But I'm 100% sure she will still tell this story if asked where the money went.

So now, the mail we were waiting on finally arrived. I was at Dad's and he walked to his kitchen table and picked up the paperwork. He said I don't even want to show you. He handed me the paper with his head hung. You can see the portions of the documents Dad filled out but then there were additional pages of paperwork filled out requesting the lump sum equal to 24 months of the standard annuity which would total $39,701.52, and my dad's forged signature. Also, another letter in her handwriting on a regular piece of notebook paper: (typed exactly as it appears)

"Dear Sirs:

Please find my election not to rollover but to recieve a lump sum distribution payable to myself and deposited into the account I provided with earlier paperwork. I understand there will be 20% taxes withheld

I do not with to purchase withdrawn service.

Thank you,

(Dad's forged name & SSN)

Again, I do not want to rollover any amount, just recieve payment for my PLSO and I do not want to purchase withdrawn service."

Once again, my anger rolled. "I just checked a box" would continue to be her defense on this until I showed her that we had the letter. This lump sum, that she had taken out and deposited into the bank account in which my dad NEVER saw the bank statement for...diminished the amount of his monthly retirement check for the REST OF HIS LIFE, by several hundred dollars.

This is one of the facts that I don't know that I will ever get over. She stole from his future.

And all this money, lump sums, and still receiving paychecks, disability and retirement checks they were still broke. Trying to trace the money has been one of the most frustrating things we have done. There are no answers, honestly even now. There's nothing to show for it. So we went through the typical list, is she a drug addict, alcoholic, shopaholic, gambling addict. And while yes, there was a ton of shopping, I will say this if anyone went through four years of our bank records they could probably say we shop a lot too - so was it excessive...I don't know. But even with all the purchases, there's still nothing to show for it. There wasn't any one thing that we could point at and say ... ah ha there's where it's at. But I will tell you this, she withdrew massive amounts from the ATM's daily (amounts to come in a later post) and also wrote checks to herself for cash. Thousands upon thousands, and she did this even when there wasn't large lump sums in the account.

Where did you come from and where did you go? Thousands of dollars, we'll never know.

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