…And, the Mother of the Year is….
This is why your drill sergeants wouldn’t let you give your Mom a power of attorney (Click Orlando link);
An Ormond Beach woman was arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of stealing $4,000 from her son — a U.S. Marine — while he was deployed in Afghanistan.
Paula Barker, 43, was arrested on charges of fraudulent use of personal identification information.
According to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, Chadwick Barker, who was deployed for more than six months, discovered upon his return home in September that thousands of dollars had been taken from his bank account.
Thanks to Old Trooper for the link.
Category: Shitbags
Hey – ain’ t that Sgt Maj “Mailman”‘s fiancee? (smile)
I always thought PoAs were completely BS anyway. At least the ones that were “standard issue” when you were deploying that covered everything. They made me sign one for my husband and while he didn’t run off with all my cash, he bought some of the stupidest shit with it in my name. We had joint accounts for everything so there was no reason for him to have one, bills would have been paid anyway.
This is, sadly, more common than it should be. I know three people who had either money or personal possessions taken from them by family when they were deployed.
Classic. Right up there with one of my former O6s who came home from Iraq to find divorce papers and all his accounts emptied out by the wife.
The best I ever saw was the ex-wife of my team chief. He had given her a limited power of attorney to pull money out of his accounts for his kids while he was deployed. Instead she pulled the money to pay for a trip to Hawaii with her fiancé after dropping the kids off at his dads house.
That said, when I deployed my wife had full POA, and joint bank accounts. She paid off a lot of debt and pumped up the kids college funds, so while I didn’t come home with the cash to buy a new Mustang, I think she made the right choice.
The article doesn’t say any thing about a PoA; if she did have one that granted her unfettered access to his accounts she wouldn’t be in jail right now. Emptying someone’s bank account with their permission is not a crime. She stole from him through fraudulent use of his information.
You’re warned against PoA’s because you could be giving someone permission to fleece you and you’ll have no recourse but to admit you’re a dumbass.
@4: It happened to a guy in my unit, too. When we got back from a deployment; his “wife” and “stepson” were gone and so was all his loot. Come to find out, after CID got involved, it wasn’t her son and they were true pros at doing this. I guess the feds had been looking for the pair for a while, because they had done this several times before.
#2 – Who “made” you sign a general POA for your husband? That’a a serious issue if someone is giving orders like that.
I,too, am aware of three recent situations of this nature. Two in fact involved the mother of the deployed Soldier. One was the business partner. No prosecution in any of the cases but in one case a long and hard road to get out of debt. Isn’t that some shit? Deployed to a war zone – a single Soldier – comes home IN DEBT because of his effin mother.
I remember a chaplain’s brief right before we left Iraq he said, “some of you don’t have a home to go home to and don’t know it.”
Two things 1) never get married right before a deployment, 2) never trust family with your money. For some reason neither work out very well…
@8, Alberich, we deployed out of Ft. McCoy and it was mostly civilian staff doing our records at that time. Don’t mistake my statement to make it sound like someone with a shiny pin was standing there with a gun to my head. I didn’t feel the need for one but the response to my questioning was the standard type I remember from lots of DoD civilians working the mobilization process: “everyone was getting one because it was required to have one in the personnel file.” As in there was a spot for a check mark on a list, so it must be so.
I don’t know if I was lucky or the odd ball! My mom, all 5′, 100# of her, would have ripped off your head and spoon feed your brains to her Sheltie before she would have stolen from me. She had full PoA and, as far as I can remember, never touched it. She was a signatory on my accounts and everything. After I got engaged, my fiancé was even tighter with my money tha I was!?
#11 – Crazy. They needed a thwack with a stick if that’s what they were telling folks. If you’d been a single parent (or married to a servicemember) you’d need a child-care POA with your family care plan, but otherwise…uniformed judge advocates have to take extra care on general POA’s, and make sure the clients know what that little paper can do. (I heard this was because of Desert Shield/Desert Storm, when an awful lot of POA horror stories happened, but I wasn’t serving then and can’t say.)
Sorry, but in this day and age of e-mail and other technology there’s NO reason to give even family POA short of you being incapacitated. Take it from a guy who didn’t see daylight for MONTHS at a time…any semi-responsible adult can manage their affairs without “help”.
I gave my ex a POA before I deployed to Bosnia. We had a couple thousand in savings that I’d built up over the space of years and only a car payment for debt. Came back to no savings, several thousands in new credit card debt in my name, and the phone bill and car payment a few months behind. Never gave another POA or joint account to someone else again.
@11 gi_janearng, back when I was in, when we were still issued muskets, they had a generic ‘form’ for you to fill out! You know an “I___________SSN________do hereby give _________ authority to…” Mom never touched it, n I was rich! In the mid ’70s I had something like $1,000 in savings!? If memory serves I was making $318 a month as a PFC. Of course a beer at the club was $.65 or.75, a pack of smokes was $1.25(?). Geeze!?
It isn’t nice to speak of the dead, but my own mother was guilty of stealing from my older brother when he was serving in VietNam. At least he learned from his mistake when he returned after his first tour. His subsequent two tours he had me take care of his expenses. I had his car paid off, as well as a good chunk of change in the bank for him. The only thanks I got was a bottle Barcardi Dark (yum).
We had something similar, but from the opposite side of the coin. A guy with a kid from a previous girlfriend got married before he deployed. His wife, Jesse, was amazing. She came into the armory all the time and volunteered to help family support for everything they did. The only thing she didn’t do was take care of his daughter, who was with his mom. His mom also held his POA, which was odd. She always had money problems. Said that none of his checks were being deposited. We did what we could, but Pay Branch said everything was good to go. Not to mention, she said that he never called her or emailed her. She had to pay for his car payments, his student loan payments, and her bills our of her own pocket (full-time nurse morning/early day shift). When the unit finally came back, she got the shock of her life: A set of divorce papers in the mail. We, in the armory, were completely pissed. Come to find out, the asshat got back together with his baby’s mama who was a crack addict (literally). Come to find out, his mother was getting all of his pay into her own account. She set it up that way on his request when he deployed. We hooked Jesse up with a good divorce attorney who was a retired state JAG officer. Yeah, when he found out what was going on, he was pissed too, and took her case for free. She got justice, though. We told his squad leader who arranged for a couple of training incidents (in other words, world-class beat downs) while they were in Ft. Hood. Her lawyer got her half of all the money he earned while he was deployed. Could have got her all, but she said that half the BAH needed to go to his daughter. Jesse sold his car (his pride and joy) and used the money to cover some of the debt (she did it on ebay and got $500 for a cherry 1969 Camero that was completely tricked out). Douche’s… Read more »