Thanks for your comment. The sentencing went well, but not what I expected. The perp didn’t get any real jail time, which blew me away. But, we will likely recover all of our money, which is very rare.

He got nine months of house arrest and will only be allowed to go to work and back, plus two weeks time served. He also got five years of probation and will have to pay everyone back as a condition of probation. The court will collect and disburse the payments, so there shouldn’t be any waffling.

In talking to the Investegator, he said there were nine victims for a total of $27K in fraud. He said the victims were more interested in getting their money back than in putting the man in jail. He said we should consider ourselves lucky, because he was working on a $1.5 Million fraud case and those victims wouldn’t recover anything.

People wonder why I use email for a lot of communications and the simple matter is that it is so much easier to document the history of a conversation on email than by taking notes on a phone call. That came in handy during a divorce, actually, when dealing with someone who kept denying that statements were made – finally I just refused to answer the phone and would only communicate via email … curiously, everything simplified and wrapped up rather quickly.

Anyhoo – email and certified mail are your friends. Good luck getting your money back. How’d the sentencing go?

Thanks for the tip. I was going to sue in small claims court before the Statute of limitations was up next summer, if the fraud case didn’t settle by then. And, I am already familliar with trying to collect a judgement, which is why I was holding off. He actually already agreed to payments, made one, then he quit sending money.

Instead of a civil judgement, we got the felony criminal conviction, with restitution as part of his plea agreement. That way, if he doesn’t make the payments, they can toss him back in jail. But, I am getting way ahead of myself, because the sentencing doesn’t happen until 12/29/09. Then, I will know a lot more.

Wow. I’m glad you are going to get some closure on this! Now, I don’t want to dampen your spirits, but you need to know that getting the judgment is the (relatively) easy part – but collecting on it is often a whole other matter entirely.

The Honeybee got a judgment against an old employer of hers a long time ago (he failed to pay her for about a month’s worth of work). After a lot of hassle and over a year, the sheriff finally got an order to forcibly take the funds from him.

I wish you continued good luck regarding this case.

Best,

Len
Len Penzo dot Com