Part 11 - The IRS, a Police Report, and Nancy Goes Out of Business
We received our W-2's in the mail and I was shocked to discover that they incorrectly listed our salaries at less than half of what they should have been. I didn't know what Nancy was trying to pull, but I immediately called the IRS. After being transferred around a number of times, a woman took my information and said she would send me the form to make my own W-2.
When I received the form, it was packaged with the response Nancy had sent the IRS when they let her know we were disputing the W-2s. Inside I found a police report she had filed against us in Hamilton County alleging we stole money and jewelry. I was shaking, I was so angry. How dare she file a false police report to bolster whatever shenanigans she was trying to pull with the IRS. I showed the report to Peter and told him that we better call the Hamilton County Police Department and see if they needed to interview us and to find out what was the status of the case.
I called the number on the report and was transferred to the detective who took the report. He told me that when anyone calls the police department to make a report, the police are required to come out and file a report. He asked me if I read the last page of the report. I said, "yes," and starting reading from the top of the page. He said, "No, the page that says the conclusion." I looked through the package from the IRS again. The last page of the police report was not in there.
He said that Nancy showed him some paperwork she claimed proved we stole money and jewelry. He did not find her accusations credible, but wrote a report because that is his job. After he wrote the report, he closed the case and attached that conclusion as the last page. I asked him if he needed to interview us or ask us any questions and he said no. As far as the police report went, it was over.
Nancy sent in the police report without the last page so that we would look like we were still under some type of investigation for theft. She was alleging in her IRS response that we stole the money we were paid as salaries. What was even more ridiculous is that if you were to look at our past 2 years W-2's, they were consistent with the amount I said we were paid. To believe Nancy's scenario, you would have to believe that our salaries were essentially cut in half for no apparent reason the last 9 months we were employed at the jewelry store. I let her treat me badly for 2 years, but I would not have stayed around for 9 months at half pay.
None of it made any sense and I felt sure that any rational person, like the detective, would see the logic in what I was saying and see Nancy for what she was, a liar. However, I was dealing with the IRS so I didn't want to take any chances. If Nancy won in the W-2 dispute and I had to file taxes with her fictitious W-2 numbers, that might encourage her to pursue other stupid nonsense against us, like a lawsuit.
I worked for a week on the response letter and sent in copies of everything from pay stubs to bank statements, past W-2's (just in case), the information on the last page of the police report, and everything but the kitchen sink. Without getting the file out to check exactly, I know I had well over 20 groups of attachments and documents. The envelope from me to the IRS was inches thick.
I was contacted by the IRS pretty quickly after I sent in the envelope telling me to file my taxes with the W-2's I had created from my records and discard the ones we received from Nancy. In one of her recent rambling, nasty emails dated 9/1/05, Nancy claims, "The IRS believed me or I would have had to pay more in penalties and fees than I did." To be honest I am not exactly sure what she is talking about unless she was penalized for filing a false W-2. But the IRS definitely accepted the W-2's I prepared so her delusion that the IRS believed her would be laughable if it wasn't so sad and scary. She has recently claimed that we were responsible for paying taxes for the company and when we saw the list of taxes we were supposed to have paid in her mind, she listed taxes and time periods during which we had our own shop open. I suspect that she was trying to blame us for whatever financial shenanigans were going on that she blocked Peter from seeing via her accountant. I suspect we only saw the tip of the iceberg on that note.
The really insane part of it is that in Nancy's recent emails she claimed that the only reason the police did not arrest us is because she was protecting us and asked them not to. Here's a direct quote from one of her 9/1/05 emails (we received 6 that day,) "The police believed me but I asked them not to prosecute you (much against my father's wishes)." What makes her lie even more disgusting is that she is now claiming that Peter's late grandfather wanted us prosecuted. This is a new twist to the story that is designed to hurt Peter by attempting to make him think his late grandfather wanted him prosecuted. Really, really sick.
Other than her constant harassment via emails and letters and the fact that we received so many hang-up phone calls we had to change our home phone number and get an unlisted one, we had little direct contact with her.
Around the time that the mall lease on her store was to be renewed (about a year and a half before the end of the lease,) we received a letter ordering Peter to a corporate meeting with Nancy in Lexington. We checked with our attorney and found out that he did not have to attend, she could not order Peter to a meeting. Shortly thereafter we received a letter offering a buy-out of Peter's company stock. For his stock which was allegedly worth $30,000 total according to Nancy when she gave it to him, they were offering $500. Our attorney rejected the offer saying the stock was given to Peter and alleged to have a much higher value. Nancy claimed that the reason the stock was not worth more is because we destroyed the store, so it was Peter's fault that his stock was not worth more. It was ridiculous.
After discussing the situation with my father and our attorney, Peter and I agreed that the faster we could settle the stock value, the better. If negotiations continued, it was just more time we had to deal with Nancy and her lies and drama. We decided to tell them we would take $1,000, which was a tremendous bargain for her. Even at that ridiculously low price, she still took over a week to decide to accept our offer.
Within a year, we heard Nancy's radio advertisements for her going out of business sale. It wasn't really a surprise to me. We had proposed ways to make the store profitable when we were there that she flatly rejected. I guess even to the end her delusions and ego would not allow her to just run a retirement sale, she ran ads saying that she was leaving to care for her ill mother and father who was pretty much senile. It was a good ploy, we had clients coming in saying how badly they felt for her. As soon as the store closed she moved to Florida to the city where her father had a 2nd home, despite the fact that her family home was in Lexington. Then shortly thereafter, she moved across Florida to a panhandle city. True to form, she was lying to the clients of the store to the end.
Despite all of her false allegations, attempts to ruin our personal and professional reputations, hurt our feelings and destroy us, we are still here. We are still married with a wonderful son, in love, happy and in business. She is not. I think that the thing that really makes her angry nowadays is the fact that we were not destroyed by her. She claimed in one of her 9/1/05 emails that she wrote to us because, "I am sick of YOU and all the stupid journal lies about me. That's the ONLY reason you hear from me." However our website and Peter's journal are relatively new and the journal entry she referenced was the one Peter wrote about our family vacation to North Carolina. I reread "Waves of North Carolina" and I fail to see anything written about Nancy at all. The "stupid journal lies" about her? Can someone read that entry and please tell me where she is even mentioned?
From that peaceful journal entry, Nancy felt compelled to write the following, "Get a real life. Grow up. Act like a man. And realize that your wonderful wife is a user and a thief." I cannot figure out why she reads Peter's journal if it is so upsetting to her. If she gets upset hearing about our nice vacation and our happiness, then I would submit that she should not read our journals or go on our website to see the beautiful jewelry we make. If there was a way I could block her from our website, I would.
In regards to Peter's journal and mentions of her, all of the things he has written about her are true and the simple fact is that she was a part of his life. She may want to pretend that all of the things she did to us did not happen, but they did. He has every right to write his journal about his life and she may play a part in some of his memories, of that there is no doubt.
I started my journal on 9/2/05. Her nasty emails to me could not possibly be in response to any journal entries. All of the entries regarding her in my journal were not posted until after 9/2/05. My postings are to tell the truth and to use her words to establish the truth. I really hope that she will just go away. The true story is finally out there, so she can just leave us alone now. I will use quotes from any future communications from Nancy in my journal postings. Maybe that will discourage her from writing any new ones.
Peter and I have asked her for over 2 years in private in at least 15 different ways to stop harassing us and leave us alone. Now I am asking her in public to leave us alone because frankly I would like to forget she exists. I am scared of her and her behavior. The really disturbing thing about the continued harassment is that I only had direct contact with Nancy for 2 and a half years and that ended 10 years ago. She does have a record of displaying stalker-like behavior; Paul, Peter's father, an ex-manager of her store, and now us, so perhaps we are naive to think it would ever stop. But sometimes the bully has to be confronted and that is what I am doing with this journal entry.