A larcenous driver

A few years ago I had a female driver I will call Betsy. Betsy was a great person to be around. She was upbeat and she liked to do things. As long as I paid her, she would take me places and do things. She was always so enthusiastic, at least in the beginning.

There was always something about Betsy that made me uncomfortable. I wondered what it was that I noticed that was so offputting. One thing she did that bothered me was she wanted me to write her paychecks at the end of the week before the day was over. She had to cash them at my bank. She said the bank told her I had to be in my van with her when she went through the drive-through. So, that's what I did.. The rationalization was if she withheld her services I would not get to go out. When you live in a nursing home, getting out is important.

But I got so tired of signing checks in strip malls, in winter, when the wind was blowing. I also did not like doing things under duress. But I realized many people are under duress and just deal with it. My bank required two IDs. A driver's license or state ID and either a credit card or some type of employer ID. I eventually found out that Betsy's individual provider ID had been confiscated. She had provided care services for Medicaid.

She told me there were disputes with former patients. They accused her of billing for hours that she was not at their house. I asked if she ran errands and she said she did sometimes. I told her she had a right to bill for the errand time she put in. But, I told her there was no way she could bill for a lot of hours spent away from her patient.

That subject got dropped and then picked up again at times. It was always when Betsy needed extra money. She would try to stay longer even though I tried to limit her hours with me. She only worked two days a week for five or six hours. But she tried to stretch it. She would call me and want to come on weekends. To someone who's in a nursing home and wants to have company that is not a hard sell.

Betsy had worked for me about five months. One day in March we had lunch at a restaurant. When she went to get my usual credit card out, it was not in my credit card case. I wanted to pay immediately with another credit card and go back to the nursing home, get online, and check my credit card balance. Betsy told me not to worry because I was only responsible for $50 worth of fraudulent charges. Somehow that did not make me feel better. But I thought I was being a reactionary and just let it go. Besides, there was no way I could have checked unless I had called right then and without the card I did not have the credit card company's phone number. Nevertheless, I put it in the back of my mind.

A few days later I checked my credit card balance and saw that almost $1000 had been charged on my card. I called the credit cards fraud division. The charges were at two big-box stores and one gas station. I knew the gas station charges were not mine because it wasn't the receipted day/date I bought gas.

The fraud division asked me if I had buyers regret. I was aghast. I told them definitely not. I told them to check my previous spending patterns which would show I had not spent $1000 in one place for a while.

They told me I had to call the police. I called them and they told me to call the Sheriff's department. Then, I was told to call the police again. At some point the police took a report.

My driver was a bit suspect to me. That little inkling I had prior came to fullbore when I realized someone had charged on my card. I thought she was capable of doing it. I think we all are.

I found out later her boyfriend did it. Anyway he's the one who owned up. It was horrible. He was prosecuted and had to spend 30 days in jail eventually. It was almost a year later and I don't know that it was much of a deterrent. For some reason they only went after the charges at one big-box store, not both, which I did not understand.

Within a couple of weeks, I had to let Betsy go. Wondering if she would do it again, or if she would get in cahoots with someone who would, made me really nervous.

Strangely at this time she started talking about her days working for Medicaid. She told me that she was suspected for fraud and was under investigation. That kind of scared me.

The next day I emailed Betsy that her services were no longer required. The nurse manager here made sure she could not get back in the building.

It's four years later, and I have not seen Betsy again.