Facebook

As I explained in Wednesday’s chapter I had been plagued by debt collectors after money that was owed by the previous owner of my home. He was still using my address to obtain new credit even after he had been made bankrupt.

I had tried everything possible to stop it. I had informed the police, I had informed various government run fraud agencies (and it cost me my own money to register this information?) I had contacted all the companies that kept sending threatening letters to my home demanding payment, but to no avail. I spent hours on the phone, writing letters, sending emails, but none of them seemed that bothered that there was a fraudster out there taking their money.

He was being clever, always using a slight variation of his name, plus I kept getting demands in his wife’s name as well. Thousands on credit cards and car finance, she was in it as much as he was.

When I had run out of options I didn’t know what to do next. I did think of trying to track him down myself and face him man to man, to see if I could get him to stop using my address.

Where could I start?

I knew!

It could be a long shot but I logged onto the internet, and summered up Facebook.

I typed his name into the search box and within seconds a long list of people appeared on the screen, and there at the very top was my man. I knew it was him because in his picture box was a photo of him sitting in my back garden.

I typed in his wife’s name and once again, like magic, she appeared at the top of the list with her face brimming at me.

Both their pages where open to all to join and I started to scroll down. What a pair of bare-faced liars. The wife wrote about how great her life was etc. There was no mention that her husband was bankrupt and a fraud, that they had both been evicted from their home, and that she was running away from more debts on her credit cards than the Greek Government.

The anger was bubbling up inside of me like a witches’ cauldron and I felt the urge for a good stir. I was going to post an open letter onto both their pages so the whole world, and their friends could see them for what they really where.

This is basically what I posted on their pages.

Dear Mr and Mrs so and so, or should I call you by one of the different names you have used between yourselves to defraud hardworking and innocent people out of their money. I know since you have been made bankrupt and had your home reposed, that it will be hard to gain credit, but do you still have to keep using my new address to scam people. I have had contact with dozens of people who are now owed tens if not hundreds of thousands in unpaid credit to you two, and they keep turning up at my address because you lied to them.

Well I’ve had enough. I have reported you to the police, the national fraud unit and had this address registered for protection. If you try to get another penny, then the law will be paying you a visit.

Silence, that’s what followed. I never got another person knocking at my door; I never got any more threatening letters, occasionally we got junk mail in their name as company’s reactivated out of date mailing lists, but that was it. I sent back the mail with ‘not known at this address, evicted in 2010, return to sender and slowly they dried up as well (except for this Monday when one popped through my door, only two and half years after they had left.)

Public humiliation on Facebook! More effective than the law, and more powerful than any threat, just like in the middle ages when wrong doers were locked in the stocks, and rotten vegetables where thrown in their face.

Maybe we could stick some of those financiers who conned us all with fake promises and dreams into the stocks so we could piss on them or whatever. It wouldn’t get any of the money back, but believe me it can give you great satisfaction.