The Smoking Gun

By late March, Diane was feeling better. And now, an IRS/Treasury Dept investigator (working together with the FBI) wanted to sit down and interview her and they wanted me there to make her feel a bit more comfortable. If they liked what they heard, there was talk they would put her before a grand jury!

Though I was skeptical as to how much coherent information she'd actually provide, the agent very patiently walked her through everything and she was surprisingly lucid in her answers. What was notable was the "aha" moment when we figured out that Diane's note with Countrywide was a re-finance of a previous loan. This was significant because all along Diane had said she went to Countrywide on her own and surely she wouldn't have been dumb enough to actually take out a loan against the entire value of her home, would she?

What we figured this meant was, Diane went to the con man for a loan of some form, he got her a loan against the whole house but diverted the funds, and Diane only went to Countrywide when she got fed up with the con man. Countrywide then re-financed and paid off the previous loan, and this answered the question of where all the money went from that loan. Because, surely she couldn't have been dumb enough to take out a loan against the entire value of her house, right?

In addition to trying to get Diane out of this mess, I also decided to see if there were any veteran's widow's benefits that she was entitled to. Apparently, in seven years of marriage, George never got around to getting Diane down as his spouse for the VA. He either never signed and returned the form or was too cheap to pay the nominal premium. Thus, save for TriCare health insurance (which was all encompassing and pays for everything) Diane wasn't getting a damn thing as the widow of an over 20-years-of-service veteran.

The VA told me to get a number of items, such as death certificates, dishcarge forms, etc. It took six weeks of nagging Diane but she finally handed me a large, vinyl bank envelope (that reeked of cigarette smoke) filled with all kinds of random paperwork and several of George's official military forms, still in the frames she had put them in!