How Addiction Led to a $250,000 Identity Theft and Financial Ruin

What's up, dudes? It's Pat, and welcome back to another video. And today, guys, this is a video I really wasn't expecting to make. The first two, I knew that was happening. When I got out of rehab and I was trying to get sober and work on myself, I wanted to make a video to help people. And honestly, the comments have been awesome. Like, so many people have messaged me saying it helped them or helped their family members. And really, if I could save someone's life, that would mean the absolute world to me. Um, but this one, something I really wasn't expecting. And I did know during my addiction, my brain pretty much shut off. Like I was so like unaware of anything. And I think some people sometimes don't realize like how

bad it can get. And I hit absolutely rock bottom. Like so far you could imagine. Like I couldn't remember anything. Like it was a lot scarier than like um I would have ever expected to be. Like I would wake up some days I wouldn't remember like family members names, wouldn't remember my girlfriend's name, my own name, people's birthdays. Like it was like I was getting amnesia and it wasn't like um blacking out from drinking or something. It was literally like I just couldn't remember things. I couldn't access parts of my memory. And I assume that's definitely mixing, you know, drugs and alcohol, which is just scary. And guys, like I'm so glad people are joining me for this journey because I don't want anyone to go through some

of the stuff that I went through. And if you are like just know like if I was able to crawl out of that hole and literally I could not have been further down in it. That means you can too and so can like any family members or friends it's always possible cuz I was waking up not remembering things and people expect you to be able to like make the right decisions. I couldn't even remember people's names or know what was going on at all. It was impossible. So you do have to be supportive to people going through something like this. Um so yeah guys uh thank you. I love you guys all. Seriously. Um, so thank you for joining me for this journey. And let's jump into this. All right, guys. Here we go. So, I

literally got a text on my phone. Um, this is actually how it start. Well, this is kind of how it started. Um, I got a text on my phone. It said that my account was overdrawn. I never wasted money even when I was drunk. Like, not a lot. I would waste a little bit of money. Everybody does. But I never got to a point where I would be wasting money and just run out of money in an account. Never would have happened. So, I'm looking at I'm like, what? I have to look this up. And like then I'm trying to figure out how to get onto my accounts. Can't get into any bank accounts. I have to go like I couldn't get into any accounts. Everything has went haywire in the last five years. And

with a lot of work, eventually I got on to it, but there's a step before that. I did get something in the mail right when I got out of um rehab. I ignored it. I was like, "Okay, what's this? Someone got arrested." And we're going to go into this right now. And it said that I signed something for their car. So I was like the co-person for it. And I was like, probably did it drunk and I ignored it. Probably shouldn't have ignored it because um this was weeks before I found out about my account getting um overdrawn. So, as you can see on this piece of paper right here, and guys, stick around for all of this. This is crazy. I have tons of evidence of someone stealing so much money like and doing a lot of terrible things. So,

stick around for all of it. It gets pretty insane. And I figured out everything. Now that I'm sober, I'm able to think and I'm functioning really well. So, kind of interesting to see. So, yeah, someone got arrested. Um, if you read this right here, so it says, um, what happened to them was driving under the influence, prostitution or sexreated offense. So, they probably got a DUI, honestly. They just didn't like, you know, write exactly what it was. So, their vehicle got impounded and apparently it's mine. Like, I want a car somehow, but it sounds like I paid for this car. So, you know, this is why you have to check your accounts. Like even if someone doesn't have a problem with like um alcohol and drugs, literally

this is a reminder to everyone. Check your accounts cuz people could be stealing just a little bit of money. It does add up over time. This added up to a lot and it's horrible. So apparently I have a 2018 Mazda. I know nothing about cars. I actually didn't even look to see what one looks like, but at the end of this guys, I may actually get this car. So, and the person's name is here. I did I am aware of who it is. Um, I'm obviously not going to put their name in the video because the police are handling this and oh my god, talking to the police. That scared me. Um, but I've never looked at a Mazda and I opened up a tab. So, let's check out see what car we're getting. 20 2018 Mazda.

All right. So, let's look at the images here. Um, apparently I may get this car, which is hilarious in itself. I'm trying to make light of the situation that a lot of money was stolen from me and I might not get it all back. But um yeah, apparently this car I may have paid for without even knowing which is crazy. So also I got this too. So this I also ignored because it went with that. Um so as you can see my name here towing they have really great penmanship. Great job. Um and apparently I was supposed to pick this up. I mean it wasn't actually where I live either. It was like down further south in Florida. And trust me when I got out of rehab I was just trying to restart my life. I wasn't worried about

some random person that I knew years ago like getting arrested and their car being impounded. Didn't really care. So, ignored this. So, then I received that text. My account's overdrawn. I'm like, why is it overdrawn? I finally figure out how to get on. And you can see I have three different accounts and I blacked out everything so that you can't like re-steal my identity. Like, that would be ridiculous if I set myself up for it again. Um, but as you can see here, guys, um, this account right in the middle is negative $2,000 and it just doesn't make sense because like, and this was also an account from like Connecticut before I moved like 10 years ago. I didn't really use it much. I

wrote some checks with it, but that's about it. Um, so it's in the negatives. I'm like, why is it in the negatives? All right, let's dig deeper into this. Okay, so here's where had money had $112. Discover e payment goes into the negatives. They try again. Discover e payment further into the negatives. Thank you for that. Um and yeah, that was bad. So those are the first like couple ones I see and I'm like discover e payment. I'm like that's a Discover card. I don't have a Discover card. So I'm like okay someone has access to my

account and I'm like thinking I'm like who could it be? I'm thinking like exes or something. I'm like possibly. Um that isn't what happened though. Um not at all. So the first thing I did is I called the bank. Um, and I was like, "Whose account is this?" And because I can't look into it. The details online don't show it, which banks really should show the details. I'm like, "Can you give me their name?" And they're like, "Do you know a" And I was like, "Oh my god, out of anyone that could have done this." Um, it was someone I knew a long time ago and I didn't know them well. So, it was crazy that they somehow robbed me when I was drunk, I guess.

Like, didn't know that for years. That's insane. They stole so much money doing that. like absolutely horrible, guys. So, definitely look into this stuff cuz if you do it quick, you can actually get all your money back like pretty like quickly. That's going to be a longer process for me. So, I keep looking at this and I'm like, "All right, what else is there?" So, there's a million Discover charges. I'm like, they're doing it every day. Look, 19th, 19th, 18th, 14th, 13th, 12. Like, Jesus, you really pushed your luck on this. Good luck. I Good thing I'm so drunk, I guess. Um, so it's like 600 bucks, 150 bucks, and then um I don't know how to say that. Loan payment right there. So

there's loans. I don't have loans. Like, so that also makes no sense. So it's getting to where I'm really confused. I'm like, okay, what's that? Let's keep going with this. Definitely don't have loan payments. Um, and then here, look how many there are. Like, it's crazy. 12 13 16th 17th 18th 19th 23rd 24th 27th I literally had a sugar baby but I didn't even get any of the sugar at all. Like how is that even fair to me? Um also progressive uh car insurance. I don't have progressive. I don't have that one either. So I'm like this is terrible. And um then I'm like what's this credit one? I'm like I know I have like a Chase card. I'm like that's not credit one. It's another credit card. They opened two credit

cards. So eventually I figured out how they did this, right? So they got a hold of one of my checks, right? And apparently, and I didn't know this. This is why this video is important to me because I know I'm not the only one. I might be one of 1%, one of one out of a thousand. If this helps one out of one,000 people, that would be awesome. Just from having a check and writing out a check to someone, like if you wrote out a check to someone, they can literally steal all your money. They can't. All they need is the account number and the rowdy number. I the lady at the bank confirmed it. That is actually possible just from those numbers. So even leaving it around your house, which uh clearly happened as

you'll see further into this like seriously stick around. It gets crazy. They're going to get so many charges and the time in jail for this is actually pretty significant which we're going to see. Um so yeah, lots of different charges here. And they were able to open these accounts like these cards and link the cards to my account just from the account number and the routing number. Like I didn't have to confirm anything. I didn't have to sign anything, but they learned how to sign stuff themselves apparently. And then we go even further.

This is when it gets crazy. And I'm like, "Wow." Like when I said I had a sugar baby, like apparently, like, wow. Because look at this one down here on 52. So I obviously blanked this out. It had an address. So apparently what was happening was I was um paying for rent. So, that was $1,942, which isn't cheap rent either. Like, someone was living good and like they had to know eventually something was going to happen like which it will. Um, but yeah, $1,942 is kind of crazy to me. And here it goes even more. So, I'm looking at this and I see Verizon. I'm paying a phone bill. $600. Like, what do you have 15 phones? Like, oh my god. And then I'm looking at multifunding. I

got rid of some things just for privacy, just so people aren't going through everything. This is the internet, of course. And I'm looking it up. I look up the place multifunding. I'm like, this is also rent, which some of them overlap the dates. And I'm like, you really like paid for two places at the same time for a while there? Like really? Like, could you push your luck anymore and be more of a criminal? You got arrested? And that's how I found out some of this information. Now you're gonna get arrested again because I talked to the police, guys. Um, so when I found all this out, I was dreading it. Called my lawyer. I'm like, "Okay, not only am I having these problems and just got out

and like figuring out probation, like but also just so you know, like I got robbed for like a lot of money." And uh and she's like, "You're going to have to talk to the bank." And I talked to the bank. Um and they helped me with some things, but I have to call the police. I call the police. I'm like, "Hey, like I got robbed, fraud, you know, lots of charge. Like about how much money?" I'm like, "Couple hundred,000." They're like, "We're going to have to send police to your house." And I'm like, "Oh my god, no." Like I don't like talking to them. I have PTSD. I've been arrested a lot of times and um just them coming over gives me so much anxiety. It's insane. Like I can't control it. I start

like shaking. Like I feel sick. Like I feel like I'm going to pass out. That's a big problem. So luckily one guy came over. A second one came eventually but never came. And I explained the situation. They're like you need to take all your bank statements and mark every single transaction that wasn't yours. There is like a thousand. And when I say a thousand, that's not an exaggeration. There really is like a thousand. So, I'm going to be working on that. Yay. Um hopefully I get some money back. According to my lawyer, they're they're going to get arrested. Uh which is good. And then they may be forced to pay

restitution, which means they'd have to slowly pay me back over time. It'll take their whole life probably. And um if they don't pay it, they just go straight back to jail. So, I'm okay with that, I guess. Like, um I'm more okay with actually like helping other people not make the same mistake cuz this is ridiculous. And once again, $2,400, like that's a very expensive rent that I was paying for. Here's where we get into another thing. Um, there are checks. Like, so obviously like I cut off the bottom so I don't like re like do this to myself again. Just have someone else steal my identity or whatever. This would be considered fraud, I guess. So, as you can see, this part's really

interesting because I looked at this some of these and I'm like, "Huh?" So, it's clearly my check. Uh, I blurred out their name, address, and stuff like that. But my signature, I'm looking at I'm like, that's not my signature at all right there. So, this is $650. They paid it to themselves for insurance. Um, but there's four of these, and they're all like right around the same time. This one's $700. Different signature. Look at it. Look, a little like squiggle circle thing there. This one goes way further and just the last name became way less letters. It is possible people kind of differ each time. But then look at this one. That one's like two letters. It's like two zeros. So really far off. And

it's $1,000. Is it getting higher? Wait, hold on. 650. I didn't even look at this. 650 700 1,000. There's one more. 2 thou. They up their game every time. Oh, man. All right. So, $2,000. This one actually, when I saw it, I was like, is that my signature? Cuz it was getting It looks closer. But then I looked at it. Like they literally forgot how to spell my last name when they got to the I and had to stop and go there. So clearly not my signature. I don't stop in the middle of it. Thank you very much. Um so then I was like, what's my actual signature look like? Made a slight video here. Um it's really not the best. I was holding my phone at the same time, but like this is a more accurate representation of

pretty much what my signature looks like. Although it varies from time to time, but there's no weird squiggles at the end of it. Like I don't do that. So they're caught in that. So they don't just get like normal fraud for hundreds of thousands of dollars. They get check fraud, too. So that's a pretty big deal. And it actually is thousands of dollars in check fraud right here. Like that's quite a bit. And the regular fraud, um, we're going to look at the math in a second. They get the highest like felony. It's a first degree felony for stealing this much money from someone. Can't believe it went unnoticed. So take a look at this. And this is just like estimates. It's probably more, honestly.

And I actually do have to go through this. There's roughly 400 credit card charges. There's probably more than that because um the 400 were the ones that I saw online. When I went to the bank, they showed me two years previously of more charges and stuff. So, this is a low-end guess. So, about $300 each. It could be higher than that, too. That's about $120,000 in credit card charges over the course of four years, which is insane because that's $30,000 a year just in credit card charges. Not even the rent or anything. So, they're spending money like crazy. Um, car insurance. This is also like I think it was more like $1,000, but $15,000. It could be as much as $30,000 here, which I mean this could these two

together could be more like $200,000, but I didn't want to like overdo it and act crazy. Um, uh, rent. Yeah, about $2,000. As you saw, some of them were more than that times about 30 times I saw them in there. That's another 60K. Crazy. Verizon bills. Another$10,000. Loans. 10,000. Why do they need loans? They already got my card and information, everything apparently. Um, so $10,000. Other expenses just cuz I missed things. I didn't put the checks in here. I put about another $35,000, which puts it at a quarter million. That means this person, they spent over 60 thou what? $62,500 a year. See, my brain couldn't have done that before. Now that I'm sober, I could think again. So, that is insane. And the reason I'm making this, guys, is I want

to help you. Like, I don't want people to have to go through this kind of stuff. Like, because of my like addiction, I let other bad things happen to me. Not only would I be like throwing up blood like and like my organs were having problems, I'd end up in the hospital. Like, I was also getting robbed at the same time. So, like not only like mentally was I destroyed, I was physically destroyed and apparently getting there financially destroyed, which is insane because once you go down that hole, guys, every part of your life crashes down. And I honestly don't want to see that happen to anybody. And yeah, guys, I'm going to continue posting about this um kind of stuff in my life going on and my journey like during

recovery. I hope it helps other people. Hope you guys will stick around. Love you guys. I'll see you next time. Almost forgot the most important thing. We got to look this up. What is the jail time for $250,000 in fraud? This is why I like AI now. It answers all these questions for me. All right, generating and let's see, range from a few years to several decades. Okay, that's crazy. Several decades. So, for a loss more than $250,000 but less than 5 550, federal sentencing guidelines add 12 offense levels to the base sentence. This looks really bad. And right here, sentence of up to 20

years in federal prison. So, this is pretty bad. I hope the police take care of it. This is the first time in so long like I'm on the right side of the law. Feels pretty awesome. But yeah, see you guys