What a crazy last couple of weeks. You think you can trust someone who has been working as your accountant for the last 40 some years. Charlie started with our accountants father in 1963. The father past away about 10 years ago - in steps the son. Charlie Sr. past away in July of 05. In December of 06, the son sees our vulneriblity and takes advantage of it. He had total access to our payroll account (the accountant has always done our payroll and also reconciled the payroll statments - we never thought twice about it - it has always been done this way). He took well over 200,000.00 by writing himself a check and using a scanned image of Charlie Jrs. signature and deposited the money in his account. So much for trust.

Can you believe the gul of this guy? We were stupid (we never checked up on him). We found out by his bank calling me to see if a check he was depositing was valid. It seemed a little high (27,500.00) and it didn't feel right to the guy at the bank. Thank God he called me. If he didn't, there would have been another 80,000.00 down the tubes this month alone. Since this call, our bank has stopped 2 more checks in excess of 50,000.00.

When we contacted him, he wrote a letter to our lawyer asking that if we allow the checks he deposited in July to go through, he would start paying us back at 15% in the course of 84 months. You see, he needs to settle on his new $500,000 home in Arizona on August 1. What an ass.