…”an accelerated payout on your life insurance policy. He used forged medical records saying you have less than a year to live.”
I almost laughed. I had run a half marathon in the spring. I had seen my doctor two months earlier and gotten the cleanest checkup of my life.
The friend, Alan, worked as a claims investigator for the insurance company that held my policy. When the file for “Mrs. Diane Foster, terminal diagnosis” crossed his desk, he recognized my name immediately. He’d eaten dinner at my house fifty times. He knew I wasn’t sick. Something was very wrong, and he couldn’t just call me, because my husband, Paul, checked my phone.
“The bag was the only excuse I could think of to see you alone for five minutes,” he said. “I didn’t expect him to throw it in the pool.”
The $85,000 transfer had gone to a woman named Kristen. Alan’s investigation showed Paul had been seeing her for over a year and had promised her a house. The insurance payout would have been half a million dollars. And Paul had already started telling our friends and neighbors I was “very sick and keeping it private,” so nobody would be surprised by the claim.
Paul had gone completely silent. Then he tried to say that Alan was jealous, that the documents were fake. Alan simply handed me one more paper: the doctor’s letter in my file. It had my real doctor’s name, spelled wrong.
I asked Paul to leave the house. When he refused, I called the police. Insurance fraud and forgery are serious crimes. He was arrested the following week after the insurance company completed its investigation.
My lawyer froze our joint accounts and traced the $85,000. Kristen claimed she’d thought it was a gift. The court ordered her to return it.
I filed for divorce. My children were devastated, then angry, then fiercely protective of me. My daughter moved back home for a while so I wouldn’t be alone.
The handbag survived the pool, by the way. A leather repair shop fixed it for forty dollars. I carry it everywhere. Alan and his wife came over for my fiftieth birthday this year, and this time, nobody threw anything in the pool except my grandkids.
