Part 3 — The Insurance Man
The name on the red tab was Tom Haskell. My insurance agent for twenty-two years. The man who sold me my truck policy, my life policy and my wife burial plan, and who came to Thanksgiving with a bottle of wine and a calendar.
Agent Park of the Secret Service financial crimes unit let me read the folder slowly. He did not rush me. “Mr. Hensley, you are a victim here,” he said. “So are thousands of other people.”
The boxes held identity files. Twelve years of copies of driver licenses, Social Security cards and bank statements, collected from policy applications and used to open fake credit lines in other peoples names. Tom ran the operation out of his agency in Salt Lake City, and my trailer carried the originals so no state held the full set.
The photographs of my house were for the day I figured it out. Tom thought a picture of my granddaughter at the bus stop would be a gentle way to keep my questions quiet.
My own name was in the file, too. Tom had opened four cards in my name. I looked at the stack and understood that I had been paying for his lifestyle in more ways than one.
A friend who holds your whole file in his drawer has never really been your friend.
Tom was arrested at his office that evening in his good suit. He pleaded guilty to identity theft, bank fraud and obstruction. The court ordered restitution to more than six hundred victims and sentenced him to ten years.
The credit bureaus erased every false account within sixty days. A federal victim advocate walked me and my wife through every form. We got our names back, one line at a time.
The seized assets also covered my unpaid bonuses and the cost of my credit monitoring for ten years. The advocate said I was the first driver who had ever thanked her for a form.
My wife Marjorie and I sold the old truck and bought a camper. We drove it slowly up through Montana, stopping wherever the road looked pretty.
In Glacier country, I parked by a lake and watched the sun set. Nobody knew where I was, and I liked that more than I can say.
