Has Someone Ever Stolen From You ?

You did the right thing. If you had let him stay, he would have stolen from you again. I'm a child of a gambler and despite their best intentions their addiction always wins. He's obviously not a terrible person since he confessed, most gamblers are huge liars, but gambling addictions are hard things to beat. He needs to go to rehab and he won't do that if people keep helping out. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind

Yes. But I got even by not doing very well when I took his SATs.

Yes.

R1 ........... you're right. He is one of the nicest guys I know. That is why I was so upset and torn about what I did.

I am disabled and he's always been very helpful ....... even staying here, he was always taking care of things like getting the mail, taking out the garbage, grocery shopping. It was a positive for me having him around as well (up until this)

We're both the same age (53) and he could have a good life if he didn't have this monkey on his back.

I just texted him information on local GA meetings and he's crashing at his ex's tonight.

R4 You said that your friend is nice. But it's been my experience that if you are too nice to other people (including other nice people who just happen to have a gambling addiction) they will take advantage of you. I've seen it happen many times. Keep yourself somewhat guarded and don't hand over your power to other people by being too nice. There's a lot of users out there - including 'nice' people. Keep your addictive friend at a hand's length. He betrayed you by stealing your money. Don't let it happen again.

R53 Let him know you'll always be his friend. That you'll always be there to talk to even though he obviously can't live with you anymore. It sounds like he feels deeply ashamed and understands the severity of what he did. I love my dad but he came from a family of gamblers so he thought it was no big deal. If you described him as a gambler he'd be sincerely shocked. It was always "just a bit of fun". Your friend seems much more aware that he has a problem which makes him a better candidate for rehab.

Yes. A good friend watched my house when I went down south to my dad's funeral. He called me crying and saying he'd taken some money I had in a drawer. He went on a crack bender (driving my car). I told him to make sure the keys were on the counter when I got home and not show his face to me again. He'd gone through all my change jars and emptied them out. All good, about $1000 he stole. He called me crying when I got home and said he'd have me paid back I in two weeks. Never heard from him again.

The webmaster just stole the Oscars threads from all of us!

One time I met these two hot guys on the beach and took them back to my apartment for a threesome. I sensed something was wrong while they were there and asked them to leave. They stole my wallet. I felt so betrayed. I was trying to be a good friend to them. They were just users. They wanted me for my wallet not me. Why do these type of things always happen to me? Oh the humanity! Why do bad things happen to good people?

OP, no good deed goes unpunished! You've done the right thing. No one gets better until everyone else walks away.

Appreciate the people saying I did the right thing. I don't have much experience with this type of thing.

I had a friend years ago that was abusing drugs and I supported him for a long time (emotionally). But then I started having issues within my family (brother diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, chronic illnesses, etc) and I finally told him I had to take care of other things and I couldn't deal with his addiction.

I know 'taking care of yourself' is the right thing to do, but it still feels shitty to 'abandon' people suffering for an addiction.

1/10

OP, his addiction is stronger than his friendship with you. He probably does feel terrible for having stolen from you, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't do it again. Be glad it was a relatively small amount of money. You were a good friend to have helped him as much as you did.

Are you kidding? We have all been robbed.

R11 Realistically you don't have the skills to deal with a person/people who have an addiction problem. That's what social workers, therapists, Rehab, etc. are for. Protect yourself and stay away from problematic people. If they are not actively seeking help then you have every right to take care of yourself and NOT feel guilty.

Ahem...

I had known this one black guy for10 years,and many,many times I had let him sleep at my place as I worked overnights a lot and never had a thing come up missing or any problems from allowing him to do so. We had been fuck buddies previously,but that kind of died off and we were okay with it,or so I thought. I was off one night and had gone out,he was at my place hanging out,and when I came home I was sitting in the living room talking to him when it was like a light switch flipped and he stood up,walked over to me and broke my nose with one swing.I was blinded by pain and tears,blood was gushing everywhere when he then drags me by my hair to my bedroom,throws me across the bed,then stabs me in the back. I fought back and managed to run him off,but he stole my wallet and some jewelry on the way out.I was so very much in shock,I trusted him implicitly and never saw a violent side to him before this. I called the cops ,who could have cared less,and an ambulance,who cared even less than the cops.I had to call a friend to take me to the emergency room.About 2 months later I saw him in a park,called the cops to let them know he was there,and they never responded. Thats when I started hating cops and black men.Though one good thing did come of it,I never let anyone stay in my house again.

Yes.

Christ R17 .............

OP, you SHOULD have called the fucking COPS on your "friend"!!

It's a hard thing to do to someone that you care about, but he has to hit rock bottom before he gets his life back in order. Try to imagine who's going to be there for him if you're gone, and he's still leading an addicted, reckless life.

In elementary, this fat bitch named Missy (she was a year older than me), asked to borrow my Madonna Like a Virgin cassette tape. She told me she wanted to record it and she would bring it back to me. I was a very nice person and I thought she would. I let her borrow it.

The dumb cunt never gave it back. I kept asking her on the school bus and she kept telling me she forgot it. Finally, I told my grandmother. My grandmother took me to her house and we talked to her mother. We told her what happened and her mom said it was her cassette tape. Needless to say, I never got it back. Never trust bitches named Missy.

Crackheads steal. They're old now. Can't die soon enough unlike heroin addicts.

Yes.

In the 90s, I had a roommate who stole a few blank checks and forged them, causing everything of mine to bounce. He misspelled FOURTY!

[quote]It's a hard thing to do to someone that you care about, but he has to hit rock bottom before he gets his life back in order.

This is such a damaging myth. "Rock bottom" for an addict is usually death.

Better his than yours.

Yes, some clothes, books, and other bits and pieces. If I lend it to you, and you never give it back, despite my requests, it's theft.

Good, letting him stay would have only ended with worse happening. Those gambling debts can end up with broken bones and those guys don't make distinctions when crashing through the door. The hardest thing is to trust again after someone betrays you. This is why those online investigative sites are doing so well, and still, you have no idea what some random human may do in any given moment.

R28, I agree with you. Borrowing and never returning is stealing. I put tags in all my books, but it never mattered. Finally stopped lending anything out to anyone.

It was staged. No one looked all that upset. Big nothing over nothing.

one time i met these two hot guys shooting up heroin on the street. i took them home for a threesome. they stole my wallet. oh the humanity!

Yes. Their loan repayments are overdue. This is stealing. Measures have been taken.

I've never even enjoyed gambling, so I don't get this addiction a all.

Where is the high when you start losing and then keep going on waiting for the big win ?

It would just make me anxious from the get go ........... and that's how I gamble. If I bring $ 50 and start losing, I think 'What a waste of money, I could've used that for ...... '

And losing the entire paycheck you worked 40 (plus) hours to earn within just a few hours ?? And then having to go without (or miss paying bills) until your next paycheck ???

Oh yeaaaaaa ...... what a RUSH.

HE STOLE MY MILK!

R17:looking back, was there ever a sign that he was unstable, violent but hiding it, or anything like that? Some little thing that seemed to mean nothing but would point to something like this?

It's quite a cautionary tale. Ten years of okay, and then sudden trouble. Was there nothing whatsoever that pointed to a problem?

I know relationships can be far more volatile than most people think. But this is really extreme.

Also, are you saying that the cops literally did nothing? Did they not even call the medics?

OP you fumbled. You should have directly ordered him onto all fours and present hole for a bareback creampie.

R17= EST and a low IQ low imagination racist.

It has happened to me more than once. One of the reasons I no longer have close friends. People are users and out for themselves.

R36,not a one. He didnt do drugs,rarely drank,but he did like his weed.He used to stay at my place because he needed a break from the dozen women he was dating/living with.He was nice,fairly well educated,his father was retired military,but I will say he rarely worked a job,he mostly lived off women.The thing that really scared me the most was the hatred on his face as he was assaulting me.Pure,unadulterated hatred. I kept asking him why he was doing this to me,he never said a word.And no,the cops didnt give a shit and kept saying stuff like "lovers quarrel" and the ambulance people refused to transport me because they didnt want aids in their ambulance (their exact words).

R38,you dont know anything about me or my life,but I assure you its all true.I dont like the fact that after my brutal assault I developed a fear of black men,but I did and thats just the way it is.I know in my head that not all blacks are the same,but in my heart almost being killed by one I considered a good friend has forever changed how I feel.I cant help that,but I dont care enough about it to change it.I just will never blindly trust them again.You wouldnt either if you were almost killed by one.

Us and them. Le sigh.

well before my mom died our handyman with all our maintenance affairs like plumbing, house painting, repairs and what not. Also he was a neighbor of my aunt and a coworker of another aunt so since they’re both older (one is in Oregon) and handicapped my aunt hired him to come over. My mom had the house refinanced and we still needed repairs done since we had no choice but to sell the house. So he would come over and ask questions that my aunt would think of including about money since my aunt was appointed to take care of our finances particularly after the house is sold. So the first of the money from her insurance came to me. I did spend some of it in all honesty but the rest I was going to give to my aunt to hold so no one would steal it ironically. I made the mistake of bringing it up to the handyman. I assumed he’d give my aunt the money so he told me to take out EVERY penny I had from the bank. I actually DIDN’T thank God, I left a few bucks in JUST IN CASE. So I had the cash in my mom’s old jewelry box and I thought he was going to ask me for it. I was about to give it to him when he told me to “hold on to it, he’ll get it the next time he comes over.” He left and than he came back to ask for it. I went into the jewelry box and it was gone. I looked all over day and night for it. He MIGHT have gotten away with it but he kept getting greedy. My brother would give him his rent money to give to my aunt but he pulled the same crap he did when he stole the insurance money. My brother would put it in a market bag for him to take but again he’d tell us, “I don’t need it yet, I’ll come back for it.” Than I would look in the bag because in that same bag we’d put my mom’s bills in so my aunt could pay them, (she’d be reimbursed when the house was sold). So one day I put a bill in the bag and since I THOUGHT the money had fallen on the bottom of the bag I was gonna grab it and put it right on top for him to see. That’s when I discovered his rent money had disappeared. I asked my brother where he put it and he said “it’s in the bag!” So than I told him it was missing. Than after my mom’s Memorial Mass later in the day he would drop me and my brother off after we got some moving boxes from Home Depot. He went in the house to once again was about to get my brothers rent but AGAIN he’d say “don’t worry about it I’ll come back for it.” We’d look in the bag where the money and mail went, it was missing AGAIN! Than we tried to HIDE the rent money the 4th time around and make 100% sure to hand it to him this time when he asks for it, none of this “I’ll come back for it” bs! So we hid it in my pillowcase til he came to ask for it. We hadn’t seen him all week so I was just gonna get the cash and place it in another pillow cause I had the tiniest feeling he MIGHT have been stalking us as bizarre as that would sound. He got me a little paranoid. So I went into the pillowcase to get the money IT WAS GONE. The asshole came back and of course asked for the rent money AGAIN. I told him it WAS in the pillowcase but I couldn’t find it so he “looked for it” all over my room and he had the nerve to ask me “to think back and try to remember exactly what I was doing before it went MISSING.” Than the very LAST week we were in the house when he was helping us move, my brother made the boneheaded mistake of putting his wallet WITH THE RENT MONEY in the living room. He than left and the money was gone. So we did tell our aunt the third time he had stolen our money and this jade polar bear figurine my mom was given that my brother kept to remember her by. She said she believed us and even broke down wondering how she could have put all that trust into him. BUT she kept hiring him anyway. She never confronted him about it and he’s gotten away with $5,068 Scot free. The other $60 he took in addition to the rent money and my mom’s insurance money, I got from General Relief and it was the last $60 I had for the rest of the month. So that’s the living hell that me and my brother went through all last summer.....

.....Also I’m not OUT to everyone in the family. So my aunt hired him (again AFTER we told her he had stolen our money) to help us pack and he went through EVERY single inch of my room including where I kept my gay porn magazines. I have a (not so) soft spot for Roman Heart the porn star and he had autographed some of my magazines and I had collected all the magazines he was in. The handyman saw my collection and noticed it was signed to my name and of course since I hated his clepto ass I wasn’t about to come out to him of all people. So I just told him it was a friends than he was all “but why was it autograph to YOU?” I don’t know what the hell to see since I already suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder and am uncomfortable around most people let alone jackass who stole my money. So I’m pretty sure he outed me cause that’s the kind of person he is.

Here you go, OP.

Nick Lowe was late to his own wedding, for real, due to making the video.

The first time I experienced a guy who was a thief was in a business I owned with other people. When he would talk to you he could never look you in the eyes. He would alway move his eyes to the right. When he stole from us we realized he had done that before but the company he worked for had enough in his retirement to cover their loss and never prosecuted him so he did it to us. I was told when I was a small kid from my Dad that he would not tolerate a thief or a liar and believe me I could not be either!

Someone obviously stole R42's brain.

Husband who is about to be served divorce papers is a gambler. Self employed, he submitted no taxes to the IRS in 2017. He swore it wasn’t gambling. They are crafty and lie,lie, lie. I am heartbroken but determined to move on.

I am surprised that there are not many gambling threads on DL.

My shit-ass brother tried to get a car using my name some 20 years ago. I had shitty credit and he didn't have enough of my personal info to actually get one but that didn't stop him from going up and down Auto Row one sunny day.

I found out because I got all these auto loan denials from car dealers I had never been in contact with. So I contacted them and basically got "we sent that in response to the credit app you filled out when you were in the other day". I let all of them know what had really happened and I assume they followed up on their part regarding the attempted fraud.

An attorney I was working for advised me to press charges and I didn't because I knew it would have sent my mom rocketing to her grave. The end result of it all was that I cut my family completely out of my life, legally changed my name, cut them out of my will and got credit freezes set up.

Wasn't the story in R42-R43 in another thread some days ago?

My mom is a degenerate gambler. Blew through around $500k in inheritance.

Before that, drank and shopped too much off the stupid home shopping channels.

She has an addictive mindset that just switches to whatever is available.

When she was hanging in casinos for god knows hours at a time. And I mean 12+ hours. Heifer wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol.

If you have a gambler in your life, run.

After high school, my roommate's boyfriend moved in with us. Boyfriend had just gotten out of jail or prison. I was suspicious of him and I started wearing my jewelry (a 14K gold bracelet) all the time instead of leaving it at home. Sure enough, Boyfriend stole from us (4 roommates, not counting Boyfriend).

Robbed twice by guys I was trying to buy pot from. Once at 15 in Philly - and the guy had a gun in his pocket and made me walk to an ATM. Another time in Puerto Rico - just left with money. Thank God they are legalizing weed after all these years. Could have saved me a lot of dangerous situations.

My friend's brother was killed when his pot dealer roommate got robbed. My friend's brother was an up-and-up guy and the dealer was this small time dealer who was an idiot. My friend's brother walked in on the robbery and one of the robbers shot him in the chest with a .22. Those bullets are tiny and it really should only have broken a rib or two but it happened to go between his ribs and ricochet around inside his chest, ripping his organs apart.