A Fool and Other People's Money

A recent case started out innocently, if not dully, enough: make a field call to an address to speak with the customer of a client who had not made a number of payments and had also not responded to attempts at communication.

Fairly routine so far. Except that I had a feeling that the name (let's call him Porter) and the address sounded familiar...

Well, once I arrived at the address I realised I had been here before on behalf of another client some months previously, and there was in fact no such person by the name Porter ever having lived there. Aha! False details given... now we're going somewhere more interesting.

So then I started to scratch a little deeper into Porter found another historic file relating to another individual connected with Porter; a woman by the name of Sullivan. She had been listed as the mother of Porter's child and as a character referee. I had recently attended another address for her, on behalf of a third client, in order to effect a repossession of some consumer goods, although she had already vacated the premises after a violent domestic incident with her then boyfriend, Turner.

Well, she contacted me by phone after I had left a number of messages on her voicemail, and made an interesting allegation: Turner was using the identity of Porter to apply for finance from various companies and obtain goods or services that he subsequently would not pay for.

I managed to obtain a number of credit applications from various companies made by Porter and also a Tenancy Agreement made by Turner and the handwriting was identical. The style certainly was fairly distinctive as Turner/Porter wrote like a 12 year old girl: a circle above a lower-case 'i' (instead of a dot), and a pronounced curly tail on a lower-case 'y'.

But then there were the other tells; the fact that Porter stated Sullivan was the mother of his child. Sullivan is the mother of Turner's child. Or that Porter used the child's name as an account password.

But best of all, I managed to locate a number of witnesses who have given statements as to their first-hand knowledge regarding Turner's use of the Porter identity - a stolen driver's licence - which he not only used as ID in support of the carious credit applications but also presented to the police on at least one occasion when stopped for a traffic offence. Also, it may be that he is guilty of more serious offences as well, such as benefit fraud, since one witness stated she actually completed the paperwork for him in the Porter identity.

I've passed my findings on to my clients, as well as several other victims of Turner/Porter, and I certainly hope they make complaints to the police so that further action will be taken.

At the time of my investigation Turner is facing charges relating to assaulting a 31 year old woman with Multiple Sclerosis. He put her in hospital. He has also assaulted his girlfriend on a number of occasions and, having met her, I can say she is about the size and build of an 8 year old boy.

What I don't understand is how Sullivan could possibly have gone back to him, which is what she has done, even though she has a Protection Order in place against him prohibiting him to have contact with her or their son. I know that she is pregnant again and has told Turner that it's his but, allegedly, it isn't.

Perhaps that's the only form of revenge open to her?