668 - Neighbor of the Beast

Last night we had at least eight warrants left, and the DA talked to the judge. He cleared seven of them, all ones he signed.

Unfortunately, he could not clear the eighth because it was from a different judge, so bam, $225 more. Fine. Hopeful that that would be the end of it due to what the DA said, we then went to bed.

Midnight-ish... another. $200 more.

Ten minutes ago... another. $200 more.

The cushion is once again toast (more accurately, down to about $105), and as usual, there's no end in sight, because nobody can tell us how many fucking warrants are actually left. There's NEVER a fucking end in sight. Us? Catch a break? Not today. Or tomorrow, or next millennium.

Even if we get more money somehow, the weekend looms, where I can't access anything I could even get into my bank account (sans for pulling up to $400 from an ATM) on Sunday, meaning to even give them a fighting chance again, not only does there need to be more money, I need to be able to get it to them sometime during the workday today, or at the very latest, sometime between 9-Noon on Saturday - and of course, the longer she goes without an unpaid warrant, the higher the risk an arrest will get made, not to mention that my co-worker won't be working.

So we just might have to deal with her arrest after all.

Great. -_-

---

EDIT (5:14 AM EDT): That $100 is gone too, and worse, we've found out that the judge behind these ones, McLeod, is a real hardliner and asshole, who almost certainly won't clear anything unless we pay it, and gave my co-worker a mere 20 minutes to pay it or he was sending the cops.

I will be going in to work with my co-worker this morning. Unless something radically changes (via funds or the DA going all-out somehow), I likely won't be this afternoon - because her daughter will either be hiding out, or arrested by then.

---

EDIT #2 (10:11 AM EDT): We managed to scrounge $200 more, and it went onto a $150 warrant. According to Judge McLeod, he told the lawyer he thinks it's the last one. The DA can do nothing for these cases as these were filed in criminal court (as opposed to civil), which is also why we thought we were done last night when we actually weren't (because they hadn't checked criminal court).

We shall see, either more money will come and we will (hopefully) have a cushion in case a warrant comes in, or we won't and she will get arrested.

---

EDIT #3 (9/22, 12:12 AM EDT): Another one came through, for $275 but they'd settle for $200. We don't have it. She used the $50 I had left her to buy us some time, but after midnight (and I didn't even wake up until after midnight) the price on it went up, and the longer she's in hiding, the more the price on it goes up.

We are completely, totally, and royally screwed unless we get more money. She's thinking about turning herself in.

And yes, it's from McLeod. Of course.

---

EDIT #4 (9/22, 1:56 AM EDT): Cleared that one, although it took getting the $200 as well as my co-worker using the $50 to buy us the time even for that. So we're good until the next one, because at this rate, there definitely will be a next one - it's just a question of when, since this one struck 15 hours after the last one.

The lawyer was trying to get McLeod to give us until Monday to pay it off, because they know we're in money distress every weekend. McLeod's reply: "Your client deserves to be in jail."

Nice to know you can talk tough when it's not your own ass, but when you're implicated in a case, you quickly mistrial it and recuse yourself. You hypocritical motherfucker.

He's hella dangerous, and every warrant that he has signed off on is a very dangerous threat. The lawyer is going to see if she can do anything about this at all, because she knows my co-worker's daughter is innocent, especially if this winds up with her turning herself in or being arrested. I hope she's recording his words and making sure she notes this judge is extremely biased and, if my co-worker's daughter did get arrested or turn herself in, he would clearly be gunning to make her guilty.

So yes, we're trying to avoid that happening for those reasons (as well as others), and as a result, we're still in a big money pinch. I know that I've tapped out a lot of the people out who've helped us so far, but I'm still hopeful that a few more are still willing and able to give. As far as I know, no new civil warrants have come in since we cleared the ones on Thursday, meaning that those are probably all cleared now, so if we clear out the (much smaller) amount of criminal warrants, we should be home free; after some time of being sure no new warrants come in, we would then focus on getting the check again. We would have the luxury of being able to do that at our own pace/finances, not need to beg people for money, and then once we get it, most of BL will be getting paid en masse since that would cover almost everything everyone here has contributed. (The ones who gave more probably won't get paid back in full, but I will definitely put a dent into what I owe them.)

As far as the criminal warrants go however, we've killed six of those, including this latest one. The main problem is the cost is significantly higher due to them being criminal warrants, and of course, the very hostile Judge McLeod.

If I get a significant chunk of money before Noon tomorrow, me and her can go to the bank as early as 9 AM, and I'll give them as much of a cushion as I possibly can; otherwise if it's via ATM I can only give her $200 more today (due to this midnight run just now) and $400 more Sunday, and with how these things go, who the hell knows if that will cut it. But it's better than nothing.

That's all the hope I've got, really. That and if she does turn herself in/get arrested, McLeod isn't her trial judge as well, because if he is, she's probably very fucked.

---

EDIT #5 (9/22, 9:13 AM EDT): Well that next one didn't take long to show up! $250, I need it within an hour and a half.

I hate this fucking judge. No sympathy for us whatsoever.

---

EDIT #6 (9/22, 11:06 AM EDT): Thanks to some help from three people, they actually gave me a cushion that was more than Paypal would let me move (for now), but now we should hopefully be good for at least this weekend.

The DA who's been helping us is going to try to go over McLeod's head, as he's convinced that 1) these warrants are all bullshit and 2) this judge is hostile towards us as McLeod overturned a warrant we'd paid and made it valid again. Apparently, doing that gave the DA wiggle room to go to a judge above McLeod as a result. He will be talking to the judge who's above him to try to cut it off by having that judge sign off on clearing/closing these warrants. If that happens and that judge agrees with the DA, McLeod should be able to do nothing about it, and this nightmare may finally come to an end.

Time will tell, but to those three people, me and my co-worker can't thank you enough. Angels, all three of you, as are everyone who's helped us no matter how small the amount.

---

EDIT #7 (9/22, 5:18 PM EDT): Apparently the DA has successfully gone over McLeod's head. We had closing court costs of $360, but according to both the DA and the Chief Executive, that is it - no more warrants, period. Once the court costs clear, my co-worker's daughter should be able to go back to having a normal life, and my co-worker is supposed to get all the proof she needs for everything.

She and I are both in agreement that we will hang on to the remaining leftover money until after Monday, possibly even after Tuesday, to be sure nothing else comes up or happens. If no new warrants come up in 48-72 hours, this probably is well and truly over, and we can focus on resuming our efforts to obtain the check.

As far as we know, we owe $180 on that to get it, from hospital-related charges. Even if we owe more than that, we will not be asking anyone for financial help in terms of us getting that check. There is no time limit on the charges (unlike what the second lawyer who'd fucked us told us), so we will finance getting that out of our own pockets if it comes down to it.

Of course, once I get that check, I will be able to repay most BLers en masse. The ones who gave more might have to wait longer because I will be finishing the remainder of their debt out of my own work checks, but a couple thousand dollars is a hell of a lot more manageable out of my work checks than six or seven thousand would be.

My co-worker, on the other hand, will be paying me back for quite some time even with giving me the remainder of that check. But at that point, that's between me and her - you guys will be cleared.

So here's to hoping the next few entries in this ongoing saga are a LOT less urgent and dark in tone. We should have the confirmation in anywhere from a few to 24 hours.

---

EDIT #8 (9/23, 12:08 AM EDT): As far as we know, this should all be completely and totally closed now. Closing costs: $360 to kill all the remaining shit we had left, $300 for the DA/Chief Executive's work, $300 for the lawyer who did it (as it wasn't our own). According to them though, my co-worker's daughter should now be completely and totally in the clear. I've asked for my co-worker to get some signed paperwork on official stationery for that to give all of us peace of mind.

They've also confirmed that Judge McLeod should not be able to touch or mess with these warrants or do anything to us.

So while we've burned through $1210 today... $960 of that was on these court fees; $250 more was on the warrant we had to deal with intially. I wish they were less than this, but if this will finally end it all... money well spent.

This leaves my co-worker $90. $80 of that will go to keep her phone on, which is actually very important since me and her (when we are not riding to/from work together) primarily communicate by text message. It's also not even the full amount she owes, but it will serve as a bridge payment that will keep it on until paychecks begin to let her clear her shit. Her pension check on Thursday will go towards clearing her back rent balance; her work paycheck on Friday, towards getting her bank account back in the black, and the next several will presumably go towards getting her back bills caught up and cared for...

...unless we manage to get the check.

I've got $200 left I can spare her, and we owe $180 on the check for an apparent hospital-related charge that has come up (and in truth been up for at least a month or so - it came up while we were dealing with warrants, by which point I'd told her to let it sit there until all this warrant shit was killed). If that's all that's owed, great - we get the check, she takes care of her bills (she'd better, because she knows I'll be pissed at her if she just hands over the whole check to me without taking care of her back bills), makes sure she will be good to go financially from then on (i.e; food in the house, gas in the car, some extra money until our next paycheck after the next one on the 12th), and she gives me the rest, cutting deeply into her debt she owes me (and in turn letting me begin to pay back BLers and others not related to the site who've lent me anything).

At that point, most of BL is paid off, but I will probably keep at least a thousand or two for now just to begin to give me a proper cushion again... and because, quite frankly, I feel like I deserve to reward myself with SOMETHING after three months of nearly non-stop stress, especially in the past month when shit really hit the fan. Maybe I will buy that new monitor I'd been planning on for my next PC... that's about $600-700 now, a lot lower than the $900 it was when I'd initially eyeballed it. Might wait an extra paycheck or two for that though, since if I can pay most of BL out of that big check, then really I'll only owe a couple thousand to those left. And believe me, once I get my money back in whole from her... that PC WILL be following. Darkseid-V has been taking far too long to be built because of how long I'd been saving up. And I need to reorder that Pyra as well, since that should be available near Christmas, and $700+ of what I gave her out of my $3700 was directly derived from preorder funds I'd had paid in full for nearly a year until I got them refunded.

If not, then as I said in a previous edit, even if we owe more money on the check, since that is not pressing in any sense (we don't lose it for nonpayment, and we have no deadlines we have to pay it by), we should be able to manage getting it on our own money. I only wish we'd known that back when we had the second lawyer... we would've dumped the check to deal with the warrants. Then again... I also wish we knew what our second lawyer was doing to us. Would've saved everyone involved here literally thousands of dollars.

The remaining $20? Probably gas for her vehicle. That's normally what I give her per-paycheck for gas at any rate, since she lives literally only a block or two from my house. I'm hardly out of her way, but it's a simple courtesy thing.

So hopefully, this is the last sort of post I have to make where we're scrambling for money, and dealing with warrants. As I said in a prior edit, I'd love it if the next few installments in this series can be about us getting that check, and the beginnings of the fraud case (which we're still waiting for a court date on).

As usual... time will tell.