Food-Stamps for Cash Program
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An early threatening email from Psycho-SIL.
When PP was unemployed and exploiting every system she could, she managed to convince the PEW to act as an ATM-machine, trading the food-stamps she was on in exchange for cash. I thought that it was going to be a one-time deal, but apparently it was going on for a while. She’d get $100 or so in food stamps and trade them to PEW in exchange for $80 in cash. Given her substance abuse issues, suicide issues, etc. - this was obviously a horrible, horrible idea.
One day while at work, I was called by PEW to stop and get “her” some cash on the way home. This was right around Thanksgiving 2002. Between craziness at work, getting stuck late, etc. - I had forgotten. Nevermind that PEW could have rolled out to a nearby ATM at any time on her own.
When I arrived without the cash, the gig was exposed and I expressed the finality of my horror at the implications for PP’s health and well-being. Of course, PEW had all kinds of excuses and justifications for “helping” her sister. PEW had a meltdown, but I didn’t really care, I’d lock-down the account if I had to. Any involvement in our lives from PP was way too much for me. Soon thereafter, I got this gem in my work email…
LM,
I just wanted to respond to your accusations about my character. Despite my troubles over the years, I have yet to defraud or steal from my family.
The reason I was willing to “lose” $80.00 on the food deal was because I know what a cheap person you are and that you would make PEW’s life hell if she helped me out for anything that wasn’t a landslide deal for you guys. As for why I didn’t get anything at Walmart that I needed, you were supposed to be bringing the money home with you, so I figured I would go to the [drugstore] later. I needed eyebrow wax, which by the way, Walmart doesn’t carry the brand I use (surgiwax, in the microwavable tub) only [drugstore] does. Please feel free to check that out. Despite what you think of me, I don’t like taking hand-outs. I thought the deal I had offered you guys was a win-win for both parties. If you must know, I threw in a pack of condoms for $1.87 while with PEW because it was just less embarrassing to buy them with other stuff (hers that is).
Listen, I don’t think that you “forgot” to get the money, especially after being reminded twice. I mean, if it was an auction you were supposed to stop and check out, you wouldn’t have “forgot,” that, would you? I think that you didn’t like having to get the money before the food. Too bad, that’s what being ahead $80.00 get me - immediate cash. Anyway, I had pitched the idea to PEW - she was the one that said you could bring the money home that day - which I thought was great. I didn’t demand it that day. Once I thought I was going to have it though, I was relieved.
Do I think my sister is stupid? no, I think you batter her emotionally until she even starts to think in your warped way. That is why again, I had to make sure it was a win/win for you or you would use her doing me a favor to extort something that you wanted from her.
I said we could go shopping whenever PEW wanted, but for pride’s sake, I was hoping it would be at a not very busy time. PEW said she had just gone shopping so I didn’t think she’d need to go immediately. The card is good for a month. The day before Thanksgiving is a very busy day traditionally. They are after all, food-stamps - which I thought might be embarrassing to use. However, I went to the store after returning your money, minus the $18.00 I had spent, and it was pretty painless - just like using an ATM. I will get the $18.00 back to you as soon as possible. Don’t start emailing me and harassing me for it.
It’s funny, when things are important to YOU, you never forget them. When they are important to other people, you are VERY forgetful. You are a very one-sided individual and although I might get over this someday because I love my sister and my nephews, if you ever accuse me of trying to use or abuse anyone I love, if you accuse me of being that low, you will have bitten off way more than even YOU can chew.
PEW, keep other people out of this. I don’t like people knowing my business and trust me, everybody would take my side, knowing how cheap LM is. I try to be there when you guys need me - maybe it’s not money-oriented but I don’t think it’s less valuable. I’m sorry that you two trust your children with me, even your dogs, but you think I’m capable of stealing from you.
Have a nice Thanksgiving. Thanks for starting my holiday season off on an even better note.
~PP.
The sense of entitlement is apparently a genetic condition in this family.
I’m busy at work, have two children aged 4 and 1-1/2, a crisis condition in my marriage - and I forget to get the cash necessary to subsidize PP’s secret habits (whatever they were at the time) - and crazy as it is, they almost seem to make a rational argument about how wrong I am for the predicament PP is in.
Of course, I was having none of that. Sadly for you, the readers, this time-frame is one that precedes my obsessive saving of everything. I did fire off to her a reply that laid out all that I knew about her history, but don’t have the exact email:
- Embezzling funds from her well-paying, very important job.
- Stealing the identities of both her mother and her aunt (who have the same name) in order to secure loans and credit cards in their names.
- Failure to pay back PEW for things PEW bought for her without my knowledge.
- A failure to repay a few-thousand-dollars worth of loan that PEW gave her prior to our relationship.
…and a whole host of other things. She’s a liar, a thief, and a manipulator of the highest order. PP is a bully and really fancies herself as intimidating when she’s not and her threat that I will have bitten off “more than even I could chew” didn’t sit well with me. I let her know that she was a complete fraud and that the level of interjection into my life and that of my family was too much. Further, if it continued, I would make sure that she would not soon forget that she would have bitten off way more than she could chew… and that I would have no qualms about backing it up. I only wish I had a copy of it to share the details.
This email consists of nothing you haven’t already seen before in terms of projection, denial, lies, refusal to accept responsibility, and a lofty sense of entitlement.
Other weirdities:
- Why so much detail on her eyebrow wax and condoms? TMI!
- Of all of the households on her side of the family, ours (despite PEW) was the most financially successful. Nice house. Nice cars. Decent furniture. The term “cheap” epitomized the entirety of her family.
- One thing that was very clear is that I was never comfortable with her watching the children and probably wasn’t all that comfortable with her even watching the dogs!
- Yes, she thought her sister was/is stupid. It’s why, like the leech that she is, she attaches herself to those she can slowly suck the blood (money) from. PEW’s need for acceptanc
e (from others) overrode her common sense often.
One final thought… if “everyone is going to side with you” - that’s when you let everyone know your business.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
We have a PEW with a false sense of entitlement too - a fortysomething year old woman with a master’s degree who has never supported herself a day in her life while her ex (my husband) and I each work our butts off at 2 jobs apiece to support her and the ridiculous private school she insists her children attend. I am eager to see what happens when there’s no more sugar daddy supporting her!
June 16th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Wow. You know, what PP was doing was illegal–surprise surprise. IF the right people found out:)…there might be jail time etc. and she’d be made to pay back it all…or never be eligible again for food stamps. Food stamp fraud…
Then again, they might all look the other way like “they” did when it came out that Partboy was engaging in insurance fraud.
No matter what, aren’t you GLAD that you got out of looneyville when you did?
June 16th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Like I said, if there is a way for SIL to lie, cheat, steal (or any combination thereof) from people/organizations - she’ll figure out how.
If she put as much effort into trying to live a normal life as she did in ripping people off, she would be a smashing success.
I still get a chuckle out of her claim that she would never do things like that to her own family… I’m pretty sure she did so not believing that PEW had ever told me about those things.
She also has somewhere “north” of 2-dozen legal judgements against her.
Yes, I’m glad I got out of looneyville when I did and still have pangs of wishes that I was smart enough to do so about a decade earlier.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:47 am
If she put as much effort into trying to live a normal life as she did in ripping people off, she would be a smashing success.
Oh my gosh…I so can relate to this comment.
I too wish I had jumped ship about a decade sooner than I did, but look at it this way–at least you had the courage to leave when you did. Pat yourself on the back for that one.