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LOVE LETTERS:  Here are a series of Love Letters. Tied with a bold, black ribbon they were all in a bulky, single packet and, we hope, in proper sequence as this is the same order in which we have arranged them. The packet was found inside a still clasped old camelback trunk bought at an estate sale near London.
The auctioneer declared the old trunk had been found in a dark attic. Some murmured this was said just to raise a priceless anticipation of Gold or some other coin, but why then would he add the almost puzzled stipulation that the trunk was found in the servant's quarters?
The new owner promptly snapped the clasp off when the old camelback trunk was in its new home. As the lid was lifted, the odour of old books hissed from the interior. Naught else but the packet of letters was inside. Bookworms had eaten the glue from all of the envelopes. There were no names, no dates, no addresses on any of the envelopes.
Consequently, Tale Wins has published them in the same spirit. Editors make no claim for antiquity and cannot connect the parties with any known figures from the past. It is our hope that we have at least kept the matter of spelling and designations as they were found in the original. Any mistakes you find were probably the author's.

***

Green Mansions  A love story set in the jungles of South America.

Identity Thefts:  An elderly woman in Seattle, Washington (we’ll call her Jane Doe), was the victim of a telemarketing scam in December of last year. Jane provided her checking account information to the caller and later found that her account had been cleaned of $800, leaving her overdrawn by $300 when the next check hit. When her December Social Security check was deposited the Bank of America withdrew $300 of it to cover the overdraft. Jane was left with barely enough money for food and rent and was forced to “skip” Christmas that year. By February the Bank of America had returned some of the money to her and was continuing to work with her to repair the situation, but let's face it, the bank was not obligated to help at all.

A retired California couple (let’s call them the Smiths), were also the victims of identity theft in April of 2001. The Smiths, when attempting to refinance their home mortgage discovered that there was $75,000 in unsettled debts on an account that they had held with this particular mortgage company over a year ago. This was very strange, as they knew they had settled their debt and closed that account a year earlier. It seems that an identity thief had re-opened the account and switched the original mailing address to one in Houston Texas, which is why the Smiths had never received any bills or statements for that account. After three months of phone calls and paperwork, the Smiths had finally received confirmation from the mortgage company that they were not being held responsible for the debt. However, in December of 2003 the Smiths received a notice from the mortgage company’s Financial Services Network that they were being sued for $75,000 plus attorney’s fees for their negligence in not discovering and reporting the identity theft in a timely manner, and thus causing injury to the mortgage company. The Smiths hired a lawyer who specialized in identity theft cases and who was eventually successful in convincing the company to drop the lawsuit. The remaining bad news in this case is that the lawsuit was dropped “without prejudice”, meaning that the firm could resurrect the case in the future should they choose to do so. The Smiths endured this nightmare for almost a three-year period and still the possibility of future incidents hang over their head.

Think not that just because you are poor or hard pressed by your circumstances that you are immune to the crime of identity theft for even the lame, the blind and the deaf shall be victim to the serpent. So shall be the poor and even the homeless. Crime strikes swiftest where defenses are fewer. Thus it is the days are upon us again when a man may be killed for a pair of socks. Small wonder then the hand of crime is raised against all them that are lax in the protection of their substance and the substance of the poor shall be devoured first for it is least protected. As the quickest growing crime in America, identity theft already affects approximately 7 – 10 million Americans every single year.

You may hope that identity theft only happens to people that have a lot of money left over in their checking accounts. Thieves don't care a bit how little you have left over after paying your bills. They will steal your aggregate, that sum available before your bills are paid. Thus, even that party that has “only” a social security check can be plump pickings for identity thieves when the theft is timed when the victim has the most money available.