So my neighbor (Arthur) showed up at my door asking if I could please pick up his mom from the hospital because he had some urgent things to take care of. (His mom is blind.) Of course, I said yes — I mean, how could I not?
I picked her up, brought her home, made her dinner, and we even had a nice little chat. She kept telling me how lucky she was to have Arthur, how he was working so hard to pay for a new surgery that might restore her sight. She said he had a “big meeting” that night to secure the money.
I made sure she was comfortable and left. But not 10 minutes later, my entire street was lit up with red and blue lights. It was the police.
I ran outside, terrified that something had happened to the old lady. They were surrounding Arthur’s house. I rushed up to an officer, explaining that I had just been inside and that a blind woman was in there alone.
The officer looked at me and shook his head. “Ma’am, the woman is safe, we have officers with her now. But Arthur isn’t here.”
And Arthur?
It turns out Arthur didn’t have a “meeting.” The police told me he had been under investigation for months for fraud. He knew the warrant was coming down that afternoon.
That “urgent thing” he had to do? He was emptying his mother’s joint bank account—her life savings, her pension, and the money for her surgery. He used me to babysit her so she wouldn’t notice him packing his bags or hear the notifications on her phone while he transferred the funds.
By the time the police knocked on the door, Arthur was already on a flight to another country. He left his blind mother sitting in the dark, penniless, waiting for a son who was never coming back.
