|
A few years back I got a call from an old "friend" I hadn't seen in about 3-4 years. I had moved and we were never close, just had hung out a few times. So he tells me he just saw something that had reminded him of me and decided to give me a call. He comes out to my house and hangs out for a couple of hours and we shoot the shit and have a beer and it's all cool. Then about two weeks later I start bouncing checks and getting calls from places about bounced checks that I had never heard of. Turns out the fucker had grabbed a couple of checks out of my check book when I was in the bathroom, had new checks printed and was writing them all over town. He also used my identity to open up a bunch of credit accounts in stores all over the place.
To make a long story short he really fucked me over. In the end the police caught him and he is doing a little bit of time. But he had outstanding batter warrents so they got him on those too. So he has two strikes against him. When he gets out, if he does it again he's going away for a long time. It took me about 2 years to get the whole mess cleared up and there is still some shit I'm dealing with now.
In short I learned a valuable lesson. Everyone should buy themselves a small lockbox or safe. Doesn't need to be anything fancy, just be able to withstand fire. Lock up all your sesative stuff in there like passports, car titles check books anything like that because you never know when a "friend" may drop by, see it laying around and snag it.
|