Dick's Impossible Mess

There's this real estate lawyer named Dick, see?
See Dick get in trouble.
See Jane from accounting totally freak out when she discovers that Dick has hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding unpaid fees. That's just the tip of Dick's iceberg.

See this $5,000 check?
It was meant to cover the closing costs on a home purchase, but it's dated 2004 and probably can't be cashed.
Where is the Title to the property? Who knows? That's a $5,000 question, multiplied by forty boxes.

We know where the check is. It's where it shouldn't be.
Cached.
Uncashed.
It was found inside a box of papers Dick left behind.
Dick left at least 40 boxes just like it - they had to bring in some temps to help sort through it all- I feel sorry for the poor bastards in the Xerox room who have to scan all that crap- it's bad enough having to sift through it all looking for specific documents- but scanning it? Shudder.

Lunch is a firm-wide panic picnic as Dick's misdeeds are discovered- literal misdeeds- it seems that money was exchanged for dozens, even hundreds of home purchases that Dick never finished the legal paperwork for, meaning that there are dozens or hundreds of people living in homes that they don't legally own- it's such an enormously egregious set of offenses that I would have thought it impossible to get away with -had I not once worked real estate loans at Bank of Generica and witnessed the cut-throat industry avarice firsthand.

Did I mention it was grossly incompetent cut-throat avarice? Extremely confused and grossly incompetent cut-throat avarice?
Agents would tell me that they had the customers verbal consent and could I just please close the loan now so they could get their commission before the next quarter? They'll FedEx the signed copy real soon... my standard reply: " I'm a temp and I get twelve bucks an hour and I don't give a damn about your commission- I need a signature."
I saw a lot of loans closed that shouldn't have been- but I kept my shit clean- I don't want my name attached to real estate fraud charges in any way, even as a temp. The Bank should never had used untrained temps to process and review contracts anyway- I had a pretty good aptitude for it, but it was very, very hard and a lot of the temps could not keep up . I became accustomed to young women leaving in tears- it happened all the time.
I didn't cry. I was stronger than that.
I drank myself into Intensive Care instead.

My first day at the Bank, the Boss pointed out a cheerful sign- This Month's Customer Satisfaction Rating Is 74%! My first thought was: that's a pretty fucking dismal satisfaction rating for people who are the business of financing something as important as a person's home - but I was told that 74% was actually considered good. Very good.
Dick would have fit right in at the Bank- that place was full of Dicks.

What a mess...as one partner said ,"It looks like a hand grenade went off in Dick's office."

I haven't seen a Dick fuck up this badly since Watergate.

I'm trying to figure out the legal aspects of two parties believing that a home deal has been closed, when in fact it hasn't- who pays the taxes, for instance? The insurance problems alone seem nearly infinite... I'm surprised someone hasn't already tried to sell one of the homes - doing the Title work would reveal that the ownership was questionable at best and fraudulent at worst.
Maybe that's how Dick got caught.


I wonder where Dick is?
Maybe he's hanging out in Costa Rica with the conveniently dead Kenneth Lay.