On ethics

In today's world, it seems that there are people with ethics, and there are people with ethics. You know who I'm talking about. The people you encounter on a regular basis whose personal morals loosely resemble those of a used car salesman. Or a loan shark. Or your great-uncle "Little Joey." Since this particular ethical breach could earn this person a lifetime enrollment on my personal if-the-Mafia-came-to-my- door-taking-requests hit list, it is only fitting to dub this person as "The Weasel."

The Weasel is a real estate agent. Recently, her nefarious dealings have included screwing her best friend out of her house. No, really. The friend was going to be foreclosed upon, and they struck a handshake deal (it's hard to shake hands with a snake as you will see) that the friend would deed the property, valued at roughly $25K, to The Weasel, make payments to her for it, and after the financial situation had gone away, The Weasel would sell the house back to the friend at a small percentage profit for her trouble. Easy, right?

Wrong. When the time came to sell the house back to the friend, The Weasel got a crooked pal to reassess the house to be worth just shy of $80K. (Understanding this house is approximately 1000 sq. feet in a bad part of a bad little town...and our big house in the nice part of town just barely cleared $80K...) Since the friend was having trouble making the $25K, she ended up living in one of our rental houses (she is the assistant to the lawyer I used to work for, and a friend of the family) when someone else bought her house and The Weasel had her evicted.

Fast forward to last Friday.

Ma gets a phone call from a random town resident asking whether she should take the money to her or to The Weasel to get the quit claim deed. Ma asks, "What money?!? What deed?!?" and finds out that apparently The Weasel sold this woman and her husband one of our vacant lots. In April. They had given The Weasel a $300 commission for the lot, along with $100 monthly payments since APRIL, and Ma and I had yet to see a penny. Ma asked her if there was a contract on the lot, and the girl said there was, to which Ma told her that it must be fraudulent since she had not signed a contract on that lot, especially with The Weasel, since the lot was actually listed with another realtor. The girl said that she had her receipts that were received in exchange for the payments that specifically state the money was going toward the purchase of our lot. Hmm.

Ma calls The Weasel to see what was up, and this was roughly the conversation that ensued:

Ma: "Did you sell our lot?"
TW: "Yes."
Ma: "Is there a contract?"
TW: "Yes."
Ma: "Is there a reason that I've not seen the contract I've supposedly signed?"
TW: "It's in my desk drawer. I was planning to bring it over." (When???)
Ma: "You do realize that the lot is listed with someone else, therefore you can't sell it, right?"
TW: "But it's already sold!"
Ma: "But there's no contract!"
TW: "I have the money too. It's on top of the contract in my desk drawer." (Why???)
Ma: "But there's no contract!"
TW: "Well, I was planning to give you the money when I gave them the contract."
Ma: "But there IS NO CONTRACT!"
TW: "Sure there is. It's in my desk drawer!"
Ma: "You can't sell a lot that's listed with someone else."
TW: "I probably shouldn't have taken the commission."
Ma: "YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN ANY MONEY! THERE IS NO CONTRACT!"

OMG. Could The Weasel really be so stupid to not see any ethical implications to taking money without a contract?!?

Not ten minutes later, our friend from the law office (yes, the one The Weasel screwed) calls and says, "Well, I hear The Weasel is at it again." Apparently the people buying the lot went to the attorney complaining about Ma and I because we were reneging on our contract to sell the lot. Friend knew that this didn't sound like our normal M.O. and called to find out what happened. Ma roughly told her what she told The Weasel (as in every other statement was "There is no contract!") and finally the people understood that we'd sell them the lot if they would give us the full amount (they have the money on hand) and start the whole process over. They went ape because they thought they'd lost their money to The Weasel.

Not my problem. Either way it goes, we get rid of the lot and get our money in exchange. But I'd sure like to be a fly on the wall when the paralegal and the couple sue the pants off The Weasel in the kangaroo court that the AD Judge (another business acquaintance that knows my family VERY well) runs in the blessed little town.



Let the games begin.