Collecting evidence

Where was my mother in all this? Well, she didn't know I was in town, so when my sister and I showed up at the house on Friday just before the lawyer appointment, she was so taken aback that she cooperated, initially anyway. She produced a hefty stack of wire transfer receipts totaling over $53,000 during the prior six months, all of them to numerous individuals in Costa Rica. Of course I had to tell her that the FBI needed them in order to get her to hand them over. But when I tried to persuade her to let me take over her finances voluntarily, she became extremely agitated and angrily refused, so we had to leave her in that state and move on.

After the emergency court hearing, our lawyer advised us to visit her banks immediately and freeze her accounts. Once again, we had to go to the house. Again, she was so surprised that she named without hesitation the three banks where she had accounts. Three banks? Why three banks? I only knew about two.

The day the FBI called

On Thursday, January 15, 2004, my cell phone rang in my office. I answered my sister's call, and thus began a long and trying tale of intrigue, greed, grief, deception, and madness. By 5:00 pm that day, I was three hours away from my home in Fayetteville, sitting in my sister's living room. We listened raptly while an FBI agent described in shocking detail the unhappy fate of $80,000 that my mother had transmitted via check and wire to Canada during the previous one and a half years. Just that week, the transmissions had escalated into thousands of dollars each day to Costa Rica with the help of her friend and accomplice Bill. I knew I needed a lawyer fast. By noon the next day, my sister and I were in the lawyer's office with $53,000 worth of wire transfer receipts to Costa Rica. Within two hours, I had an emergency court order granting me guardianship of my mother's person and estate for 90 days. This from the reputedly "meanest" judge in Little Rock who had never before been known to grant emergency guardianship in such a case. The evidence was compelling.