A Friend Robbed Us During Our Own Party

A cautionary tale about trusting the wrong people

In the pre-COVID era, my husband David and I would regularly throw parties at our place. Pool parties in the summer, holiday parties around December, movie-themed parties. Aside from the occasional drunk guy who might fall asleep in the bathtub, they were pretty predictable. So when we had about ten people over for a small pool party not too long ago, we had no idea that one of the people we trusted would go into our house and take our stuff.

For several years we’d had this friend of ours in our circle. He’d gone to our annual Christmas parties and met us downtown for wine. He had thousands of followers on social media. So of course he was welcome at our pool parties. He was like family. That was why he was invited to this small summer get-together.

At some point he went into the house to use the bathroom and came back out. We didn’t pay attention to how much time he was inside because who keeps track of that at a party with trusted friends? Other people had been doing that too. We thought nothing of it.

After the party was over and we were cleaning up, I was putting bottles of alcohol back and saw that over half our wine, vodka, whiskey, and tequila was missing, including a couple of bottles that we’d gotten for our wedding that had custom labels on them with our picture. I looked around and some more things around the house were also gone. For a split second I thought that maybe we’d all had more alcohol than usual and maybe the other stuff was misplaced. That was replaced pretty quickly with somebody stole this.

But who?

David is a problem solver by nature, so he had a possible solution pretty quickly, and it involved social media.

Because Facebook is so interactive, he posted about the incident in detail and then called up a friend who worked in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and asked her to post a comment under his post about having someone look into the matter. She wrote that one of her colleagues was going to call him about coming over to dust for fingerprints. As scripted, David commented back, “I think that first I’m going to give that person a chance to return our stuff before I do that.” He then edited his original post and added, “In case the thief sees all this: you have 24 hours to bring back what you stole. You can just leave it at the door. And then we’re putting up security cameras so we’ll know if someone ever steals from us again.”

That night we got a knock on the door. It was the thief, holding a big bag containing the stuff.

To his credit, he owned it. He had to know that he was taking a big risk. He was in tears. He begged us for forgiveness. Maybe it was all an act because he was in the system and he was terrified of getting arrested. Maybe he was truly remorseful. Who knows. But I think that if David had never made that post, he wouldn’t have apologized at all, let alone returned our stuff. I think that he does this s**t all the time and has zero remorse and that this time he reacted out of fear and used the emotion angle to make us feel bad for him and drop the case, as it were.

So we did. And then we dropped him and took the whole thing as a learning experience: Trust would have to involve passing some serious criteria, and even then we’d have to be careful when it comes to letting our guard down. The people who dupe us are good at waiting for that guard to drop.

One of the best ways to take something from a person is to gain their trust in some way. A good con artist or cheater or liar makes sure that they seem trustworthy by walking the straight and narrow for as long as it takes. They are above suspicion. There’s little chance they’d be called out by people who trust them, because those people are confident in them. No wonder the term “con artist” is short for confidence artist.

I don’t have enough proof that the person who robbed us is a textbook con artist, but he’s most definitely a liar who led us on. And I’m convinced that he hasn’t changed in the least. He just got caught. His tearful confession was a strategy he probably uses when he deems it necessary. And he’ll just be more careful next time.

With us, there won’t be a next time, for him or anyone else who comes into our house or garage. We started limiting our gatherings well before the virus hit the West Coast. And there are hardwired motion sensing security cameras everywhere, in plain sight. People who know about them are aware that we can at any time put a video on a drive and take it to the police.

I know that when it comes to getting robbed or tricked or backstabbed, it can be a lot worse. A lot worse. My story above is nothing compared to the level of betrayal others have felt.

Take my father, as an example.

Over a decade ago, Dad entrusted one of his cousins to run one of his car dealerships up in Georgia. Many dealerships have their vehicles on a floorplan, which means that the finance company — GMAC , in his case — allows dealers to put cars on the lot that they didn’t have to first buy outright. The agreement is that once a car is sold, the dealership is to send over the initial cost of that car to the finance company. So if a truck is sold for $29k with a profit of $3k, then the dealership has a specified deadline to send $26k to the finance company.

Dad’s cousin did that for a while, and then at some point he slipped. For whatever reason, he decided to float the money and pay salaries and whatever else using the money he owed GMAC, even though he knew he had less than 72 hours to send it. Before anyone else knew what was going on, that dealership owed GMAC $250,000.

And then he and the comptroller cooked the books right before Dad went up there to see how things were running.

Suddenly owing a floorplan company a lot of money is not unheard of. If it comes to either paying the employees or paying the finance company, a car dealer — who takes risks anyway, since it kind of comes with the territory — might feel like he has no other choice. It’s easy to feel the necessity to float money and assume that the money will show up soon after so they can pay what they owe. Maybe that was what Dad’s cousin was doing. But he was always rather showy, so I suspect that he was trying to keep up with appearances and was quite used to floating money and doing other things knowing that he’d probably have to ask forgiveness.

Dad is brilliant in a lot of ways, but he also has the unfortunate double skill of both trusting the wrong people and giving them the benefit of the doubt.

And sadly, his cousin was known for taking risks. Some were worth it. When things worked out, he’d buy a bigger house. One time he had his own plane. His kids had a go-kart track on their giant piece of property, huge train sets, and giant stuffed animals like what you might see at a high-end toy store or a place like Harrod’s in London. He and his wife traveled abroad.

Other times, the guy would take the wrong risks and lose money, close a startup or whatever that had started out so promising, and start over from scratch.

So my dad had a few warnings he apparently looked past when he agreed to become majority shareholder of a dealership that would be run by a guy who had zero experience in the car business.

Sadly, those warning signs were spot on. Dad got a certified letter from GMAC informing him that if he didn’t come up with the quarter of a million dollars within 24 hours, they’d close the dealership. Somehow he was able to smooth talk them into giving his cousin one more chance. This was just a rookie mistake on the part of the office, you know how that is. He made good on the unpaid balance himself and then drove right up to Georgia and yelled at his cousin, who assured that it wouldn’t happen again.

It happened again.

And GMAC had the dealership shut down.

And then they went after my father.

They not only sued his corporation, which was the parent corporation of the Georgia dealership, but they sued him personally.

They sued for literally millions.

Dad got the best lawyers he knew to fight the case, but they were no match for the firm working for GMAC. After months of back-and-forthing and paperwork and subpoenas and arguments, he lost. Badly.

My wonderful, trusting father was not only stabbed in the back by his own blood, he was forced to sell every dealership and every piece of real estate he had. Every share of stock that was worth anything. He borrowed money from people who trusted him. The money he’d set aside for his three children’s inheritances was given to GMAC. He scraped together as much as he could manage, and then his lawyers got GMAC to agree on a payment plan.

And this was right before the 2008 Recession hit.

All because he trusted someone who ended up betraying him. Someone who had no trouble lying to him. A family member. A first cousin, which is one step away from being a sibling.

Because of that cousin, my father is just a few more months away from paying GMAC whatever amount the settlement was. His cousin didn’t get away with it; he’s paying Dad back for pretty much the rest of his life. But the damage was done. Dad was still stabbed in the back, and his mistake of trusting the wrong person cost him nearly everything.

He ended up recovering (discussed in a previous story of mine), but it was a very hard lesson that I’d be hard pressed to wish on anyone.

So many of us get robbed in ways other than stolen liquor and embezzlement. We get let down by people who didn’t do what they promised. We invest time into someone who takes advantage of us. We say something in confidence to a person who ends up using that information against us. So we end up feeling robbed. And it’s pretty much true. Being robbed of your dignity is very real and very hard to get over. Being robbed of your trust is just as bad. Being robbed of your innocence is heinous, because once that’s gone, you can’t really ever get that back.

In my experience — and hopefully my dad’s — I just have to call it a learning experience. And actually learn from it. If I survive a snake bite, I’m going to make damn sure I know what to look for every time I’m in the woods going forward. The same applies to people. I’m less likely to get taken if I study up on body language, patterns, and hallmarks of people who shouldn’t be trusted. As with snakes, people like our ex-friend and Dad’s cousin are good at camouflage. Coming across as trustworthy is one of the most important skills to have for people like them.

One of my top tools that I now use to learn how not to get taken in the future is Maria Konnikova’s book The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time. It’s about con artists, but I’ve found it incredibly useful to look at the psychology behind people’s behavior. I think it’s important to know what drives people to believe liars and cheaters and hustlers.

As an example, I learned that con artists appeal to people’s emotions. Intelligence and education often take a back seat when a person’s emotions are in control of their thinking. People who are good at the hustle have become adept at things like getting sympathy or admiration in order to get closer to getting whatever it is they want. The guy who robbed us had made his way to our friend circle by building himself up to be a highly successful business owner, one who had respect and influence. None of it was true, but he’d never given us any reason to fact check until after he stole from us and confessed that he was desperate and had no money and whatever else he could say to gain our sympathy for the moment.

Knowing some of the tactics people like him use to get their way primes me to look out for warning signs. And to keep my emotions in check.

The key to avoid getting robbed — of anything — by manipulative people is to be prepared. Know your weaknesses. Look for every chance to observe people’s behavior. Take note of how they behave around people besides yourself. Observations like these are along the lines of a doctor who’s looking to rule out a condition or disease. Ruling something out when it comes to people is different from straight up expecting everyone to take advantage of you. You’re looking to ensure that someone is not likely to end up being another lying backstabber.

When it comes to identifying and getting rid of the bad folks in your life, you pretty much have to be your own security system. But once you’ve got that system up and running on knowledge and, likely, past experiences, your chances of getting robbed in the future will become slim. People who hustle will be more likely to see the signs that you aren’t easily duped, and they’ll weed themselves out.

And what you’ll end up with will be the people who are worth their weight in gold.

*The book mentioned is an affiliate link.