Life can blindside you. We all know it intellectually, but how do you prepare for something you could never imagine? It can be an illness, an accident or something as simple as a job change that can throw your life into a chaotic spiral, and before you realize what is happening, you’ve lost everything.
This is a cautionary tale: This past year, I experienced a fraud and betrayal so all-consuming that I can process only a fraction of it. It has been devastating, but – from the ashes and all that – also resulted in an invaluable learning experience.
And I’ve had the opportunity to rediscover the gift of family and how sometimes it’s the one thing that keeps you from falling into the abyss.
It all started with a dream job offer. I’ll spare you the gory details, but the bottom line was that I had volumes of substantiation that seemed to prove that the nightclub-hotel start-up venture was fully funded, organized and legitimate. I also had known and trusted the CEO for years.
However, once I moved to Los Angeles to start the position, things began to go wrong. Payroll was sent yet never credited. The accounting error resulted in the controller being fired, and this triggered a legal investigation that froze the operations accounts. A litany of state and federal agencies were involved, and all along, the handful of start-up employees were reassured daily that the issues were erroneous and that it was being handled by the investors, partners, attorneys and bankers. Emails from these players kept us all in the loop. It would be resolved, and we’d receive our back pay and moving reimbursements, and we’d hit the ground running.
I continued to have faith as my savings dwindled. Again we were sent wires that never credited. Each issue resulted in a new investigation, and on it went until everything was gone. My boss and her partner beseeched us to be patient, assuring us they would have everything fixed. Summer work plans were canceled, and it became evident that I was going to need to stay with family until this last legal hiccup was resolved.
I’ve always been very close to my sister, brother and brother-in-law. We hang out together on weekends and holidays and have even plunged into entrepreneurial ventures together. It was during one of these ventures that I took a detour from my writing career, a few years after college, and returned to my hometown of Riverside to live with my sister, Diana, and her husband, Mark.
During that time, my nephews were born. Sharing the experience of the pregnancies, births and the boys’ infant and toddler years was the joy of my life. I loved them like my own.
Though I eventually bought my own house, I still lived nearby. But when I began a draining commute for a new job, the times we could get together grew less frequent. After I moved to Orange County for work, the number of visits dwindled even more.
Fast forward to July 2014: The company’s issues still weren’t resolved and I was forced to swallow my pride and ask if I could stay with my sister’s family. There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation before she cried out, “Of course!”
I truly believed it would be only a week or two, as our case was finally before a federal judge who was solidly on our side. He and our legal team were working to free all of our back pay, and the house I was to move into closed escrow through a trust account that was able to still do business. Again, the craziness wore on – with legal maneuvers, delays, banking issues and input from all sorts of government agencies.
I was now completely dependent on Diana and Mark. My two nephews are both engineering students at UC Riverside now and are hilarious, intelligent, caring, responsible adults. The younger, who is 20, has an intense chemical engineering schedule and maintains a 4.0 GPA. He gave up his room for me and has slept on the couch for months without complaining.
In December, despite supposed legal victories and guarantees that our back pay and reimbursements would arrive, we discovered that the legal issues were in fact NOT erroneous. The person I had entrusted my life to had perpetuated an elaborate fraud. It was so deep and sophisticated that much of it still cannot be explained.
But there it was. I had endured the worst year of my life truly believing all would be resolved. But in actuality, I was left with only shattered ruins and the overwhelming prospect of picking up the pieces of my lifelong independence and starting all over. I was blindsided – betrayed, devastated and … encouraged, in a way. My family continued to rally around me with unflinching support and, quite seriously, saved my life.
I was able to reconnect with them all and truly get to know the people my nephews were becoming and had become. We’ve had a lot of great times and laughs amid the heartbreak and, as cliché as it might sound, celebrating the small moments can give you the strength to take on the enormous setbacks.
