People get away with things all the time. When it’s something small, we don’t really think about it. However, when what they’re doing is harmful to others, we can only hope that justice—or karma—will prevail. Sadly, that isn’t always the case. Here Redditors share their stories of truly awful people who faced zero consequences for their actions.
1. Bad Blood
My next-door neighbor was a wonderful person. She had a foster daughter for years, and eventually decided to adopt her. What happened next was legal, but horrible. The biological mother heard about the adoption and decided she suddenly wanted her kid back. After a few parenting classes and drug tests, the courts forcibly removed this little girl from my neighbor and put her back into her biological mother’s care. This woman hadn’t seen her child for over two years and had previous cases with Child Protective Services.
About a month later, the biological mom’s boyfriend took that little girl's life. She was this close to living a wonderful, happy life with my neighbor, then her mother ripped it all away.
2. Cashed Out
$25,000 was lawfully taken from my grandfather, who had Alzheimer’s but wasn’t diagnosed at the time. He couldn’t tell the authorities why he had that much money on him because he had forgotten. It was to buy a new truck. The officers just took the money and left without any charges being filed.
We didn’t find out until a year later when the authorities sent a receipt of the seizure to his house, and we found it when we were cleaning. But it was already too late. There was nothing we could do about it because the department had already spent the money. I'm still furious about it to this day.
3. Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied
My best friend had two kids with his wife, who then left him for her very rich boss. But that was just the start of the nightmare. She and the boss wanted custody of the children. So, they used his wealth to bankrupt my friend in court battles. Every time the court was leaning towards a joint custody ruling, they would introduce some new “evidence” or delaying tactic.
They knew if they just kept dragging it out repeatedly, he would run out of money and give up, which was what happened. As a result, he had very limited access to his own kids, and the access he had was routinely denied or ignored by his ex-wife. Her response was, "What are you going to do about it? You want a battle like last time?"
4. I Couldn’t Lay This One To Rest
This woman—a serial suer—was at her best friend's funeral driving in the funeral procession when she suddenly stopped her car. The parents of the recently deceased were in the car behind her and bumped her bumper from behind. The procession was obviously going extremely slow. The woman sued the parents for back and neck injuries and won.
The last postcard we got from this woman was a picture of her dancing it up in Greece. Her family wouldn’t even let her come to visit them on their properties anymore for fear she would fall and sue them. She was a real piece of work.
5. The Customer Is Not Always Right
We were a small business making super specialty products. We almost lost everything for the stupidest reason. We had a customer put down $30K, take delivery of our product, then decide, "I think it will be cheaper just to sue you than to pay you the remaining $30K." I thought this was impossible as we had all the signed paperwork and everything, but three months later, he got to keep our product without paying us.
Due to all the attorney fees which we had to carry and the fact that down payments go to suppliers, my partners and I had to open up our personal bank accounts to keep the company afloat. All of our employees got paid, but we, the owners, had to forego salaries until it was settled.
6. The Executioner
When I was eight years old, I saw a real-life nightmare. I watched a man get his head cut off—and it was completely legal. It was a judicial execution in Saudi Arabia, done by a sword. My father and I had been out in the desert that day. On the way back to the compound, we saw a big crowd of people. So, my dad grabbed his camera and we went to see what was going on.
There was a scaffold with two severed hands and a foot hanging from earlier use (typically the punishment for theft). Then, a man was brought out and forced to lay on the ground. Then he was executed. I don't think my 8-year-old brain processed this. I asked my dad about it, and he said that Saudi law was very strict and there was nothing that Americans could do about it.
7. Facebook Fiasco
A girl in high school had a mad ex-boyfriend decide to post the racy pictures she had sent him on her Facebook page and tag the entire school on the posts. She went to the authorities about it, and they told her that while they could prosecute the guy, but she would also be prosecuted for producing and distributing illicit photographs of a minor (her). They scared her off, and the guy got off scot-free.
8. The Price Paid For An Education
One of my friends owed almost $50K in student loans that he didn’t remember taking out. The reason he didn’t remember taking them out was because his school—which was a for-profit college that had since closed—convinced him to sign a document when he first enrolled—at age 17—which essentially gave them the right to take out loans on his behalf in order to pay his tuition. They used that to ruin his life.
They didn't explain to him what the document was. They just got him to sign it amongst a flurry of paperwork. The school then took out several private loans with an exorbitant interest rate, and my friend just started getting letters out of the blue the year after he graduated. When he was in school, whenever those loans would show up on his student portal, they were just given a code number and classified as "financial aid."
Therefore, he thought he was getting education grants. Apparently, this has happened to a lot of people, but he was told that there's nothing he can do about it, especially since the school had closed. He contacted multiple entities to discuss the issue, and all of them said there was nothing he could do because he signed the contract willingly.
9. The State Of Mental Health
My ex had a long list of mental health issues. That only made what they did to her even more cruel. In the three years we were together, she tried to take her life twice. Her parents admitted her into a local clinic. She spent three days there. I was so shocked at what qualified as "help." The place was more like glorified babysitting. She came out feeling no better and was then hit with a $15,000 bill.
The $15K covered three days of supervised TV and reading, with a mere two sessions with a psychiatrist to evaluate her. It didn’t include the overnight stay at the hospital and ambulance. After her stay, the doctor prescribed her medication which cost $3,000 for her prescription. We thought the pharmacist had made a mistake. She ended up going to a different doctor, who, thankfully, helped her out.
10. I Was Delivered Some Bad News
I received a phone call one day from my father. He had the most solemn, sad, monotone voice I had ever heard come out of him. I immediately knew something was wrong. He informed me that my grandmother was finally succumbing to her aneurysm, and there wasn't much time left for me to visit her and say my goodbyes. I was delivering pizzas and decided to call into work so I could go see her.
We were way overstaffed for the night, and I called in a few hours before my shift. There was honestly no reason at all why it shouldn't have been a simple, easy, completely justified call-in, especially after I explained to the manager directly what the dire situation happened to be. Much to my dismay, the man terminated me before he hung up on me.
Even worse, when I went in the next day—after seeing my grandmother in a heartbreakingly shriveled and ill state—in order to plead my case—he got in my face and asked, "Yo grandmother dead yet?" in a thug-like manner. I almost lost my cool and hit him, but I didn't. To this day am completely appalled by his actions and lack of empathy.
11. He Landed In Debt
I used to work for Qwest, which was bought out by Century Link. A guy bought a no-frills landline for about $10. There was no long distance, no caller ID, nothing. It was just a landline for dial-up internet. He called his ISP from his modem and left it on for an entire month. As it turned out, it was a long-distance number, but he didn't know. He soon realized what a horrible mistake he'd made.
He ended up with a $25K phone bill. He was an average guy working a regular job who had a tiny home. He had worked the extra ten bucks into his budget so that he could have internet. However, after that, he was drowning. He made two payments of $500 to try and take care of his bill, but he would never be able to pay the whole thing. He called me, begging and even crying, for help.
How the system worked was whoever waived anything took a penalty. It didn't matter if it was a mistake or legit; waiving anything gave the employee waiving it a penalty, and it was a sales job. Not to mention, that $25K couldn't be waived by anyone but upper management. I took it to my bosses, but their response was infuriating. Nobody was willing to waive his bill, even though he had already paid a grand towards it.
The fact was that the company wasn't out anything. The infrastructure was already in place. They would have made a profit on just his paying his monthly bill, but they didn’t care. The way the corporation saw it was that he owed the money, and therefore, no matter how it would destroy his life, he had to pay it back. However, that wasn't the main motivation.
The company can write off that loss as a loss, and as such, his defaulting on his debt was more valuable.
12. I Didn’t Bank On This
I used to run a software company. I had a digital agency hire me to work on a banking contract they had and were losing due to their offshore development team. I had no idea this job would ruin me. I went onsite to the bank to save the contract, finish, and deliver the software. It took more than three months to do. Over that time, the agency kept dragging out my invoices, paying small bits and pieces, always saying they would pay tomorrow.
After the contract was done, they declared bankruptcy, didn’t pay me, and bought the rights to trade that bank contract off to the debt collection agency. They then started a new company and using that contract. Since I spent three months working for free, it sank my business, and I had to close it. Meanwhile, the "new" company just kept on like nothing had happened.
13. Under The Knife
A good friend of mine had trouble keeping work due to his mental illness. He had very mild autism and was fully competent but couldn’t navigate the politics of most jobs. He was on unemployment while between jobs, and he really relied on it. As part of that, he had to attend regular appointments, talk about what interviews he had, etc. One day, he missed an appointment because he was rushed to the hospital.
At the time of the appointment, he was lying on a table having surgery. He called the unemployment office to try and explain the situation—but the person there couldn't care less. They told him that since he hadn't given two days' notice that he was going to miss an appointment, he was cut off for good. Meanwhile, two days earlier, he wasn’t aware of any issues, let alone ones that needed surgery!
14. Highway Robbery!
A buddy of mine had a court case. I showed up for moral support and saw the most prejudiced nonsense I had ever seen. An officer pulled over two young Black guys for no reason. He pulled his piece on them and yelled at them to get out of the car and walk backward toward his. He put them in cuffs in the back of his car. He searched their vehicle and found nothing.
So, he wrote them tickets for walking on the highway. That's what they were in court for. The men explained to the judge, "He FORCED us to walk on the highway! He was armed!" The judge found them guilty. I'm angry just remembering that day, and I'm not even the one who got screwed.
15. She Was A Golddigger
A decently attractive woman I used to work with started dating another coworker. He was a kind of dorky-looking guy, but he was super nice, really smart, and—most importantly—had a very high-paying position. Eventually, they got married, and he thought life was perfect. He couldn't have been more wrong. In the first year, he bought her whatever she wanted—a huge new house, a nice sports car.
He even paid for her to get some plastic surgery, including implants. Within 18 months of marriage, it came out that she had been cheating on him with multiple men, including men from work. No one hid it. Over the next several months, as the divorce came and went, she continued to sleep with many coworkers. She even had several open relationships, literally and figuratively.
It was clear she only married the poor guy for his money. On top of that, she needlessly flaunted her infidelity and rubbed his face in all her post-marriage flings. Then one day, the guy didn't show up to work, and no one could get in touch with him. After a few days, his manager called the authorities requesting a wellness check. They found that he had taken his life over the weekend.
16. Pay Day
I worked for a Porsche racing team, and one of our competitors always had STUPID amounts of luxurious stuff at the track. They basically constructed a hotel everywhere they went so that the owner got a premium experience. We found out this guy was the original payday loan guy. For all intents and purposes, he started it in the US.
As he acquired wealth doing this, many people were getting frustrated that they had to spend $900 to repay a $100 loan. So lawmakers made it against the law to charge the interest rates he was. Instead, he put his company headquarters on a reservation so he could continue doing just that. My co-workers were looking on his website and reading through the terms and fees and found the cheapest way to repay a $100 loan was $960.
As one can imagine, it became near impossible to climb out of debt. The terrible part was that if someone missed or could not make a payment, the company would immediately seize their vehicle and sell it. Thousands of families lost their homes and cars to this guy. Fortunately, he was convicted of racketeering for other shady things in his business. He's behind bars now where he belongs.
17. Cleaned Out
My father had started a cleaning business that was taking off. He would clean carpets and do janitor work in large industrial buildings. One of his biggest clients didn't pay him for a while and ended up owing him upwards of $80K. My father then stopped working for them and kept insisting on getting his money. But he didn't realize who he was dealing with. That became very clear when a guy showed up at his door and pointed a Glock in his face.
Apparently, the building belonged to the mafia. The guy threatened to off my dad if he kept coming after the money he was owed—but he didn't know my dad. My father proceeded to sue him. Of course, the bad guys ended up winning after a lengthy court battle because they had the resources to afford amazing lawyers. My father then had to declare bankruptcy, sell the house, and start from scratch again.
18. A Holy Terror
My company cleaned up a church after it flooded. We dried it out, working directly with the insurance company on billing. All the work was complete; their contents were all boxed nicely, cleaned, and returned. The insurance company cut the check to the pastor. The pastor had a check for around $30K sitting in his lap...and suddenly didn’t feel like paying us.
He tried to negotiate, but we wouldn’t accept that, as we had already negotiated with the insurance company. What he said next blew my mind: "I guess I'll just keep the money. What are you going to do, sue a church? We'll make it a PR nightmare."
19. Backroom Blitz
I was working at a very fancy hotel in Europe. There was a big conference going on with all the biggest asset management firms—Wells Fargo, BlackRock, etc. They booked out a whole floor and had backroom meetings. Five to eight important guys from the different companies would sit together in a locked, emptied-out hotel room for 30 minutes and "do business."
Meanwhile, these were all supposed to be competitors. When one meeting was over, they would mix it up again and meet in another room to talk. This was happening in 20 rooms simultaneously for three days. They also had lots of ominous packages delivered to their rooms. Whatever was going on was totally shady.
20. She Hit Us Like A Ton Of Bricks
My dad owned a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It was modeled after an old western town in South Dakota. It was built "rustic style" with a lot of dimly lit and uneven areas. Some old lady was shuffling over a brick walkway we had—in the middle of broad daylight—and tripped over her own feet. She sued us and won because the walkway had a few bricks poking up in a few places that were blatantly obvious.
We had to pay out $30,000 because she tripped over her own feet and sprained her ankle. Now, whenever I walk anywhere and see a puddle of water with no "wet floor" sign or a really bad crack in a sidewalk with no marking or tape keeping you away, or any other thing that could remotely cause a fall, I see a $30,000 lawsuit and a gigantic waste of time and money.
21. They Left Us With An Axel To Grind
I sold car parts. I was a very small player in a relatively niche market that contained a couple of other small players and two big players. One of the big players collapsed, owing a lot of people money. It was very unfortunate, but it happens. Administrators were called in, and the owner issued an emotional message on Facebook, saying how sorry he was, that there was a sickness in the family, etc., but not to worry.
He said the business had $400K in new stock on the shelf, and the administrators would sort it all out. But it was all a lie. It turned out that he knew he was about to fold. He continued taking people's money, even though he had zero intention or capability of supplying them. He transferred the secondhand parts side of the business into a new company that his father opened under the same name at the same address.
The new business also scored the website. He somehow worked out a deal with the administrators whereby the $400K in new stock was purchased by the new company for only $14.5K because the new business would not give the administrators access to the website to identify any of the specialty parts. Everyone he owed money to were going to get pennies on the dollar.
22. Out Of My Domain
I worked for an internet hosting company, and my customers have gotten letters from iDNS saying their DNS would soon expire and that they would need to pay to get the DNS renewed. The letter is worded carefully to potentially indicate that it is a solicitation but is structured and worded to look like a renewal notice bill.
They would charge you to renew and transfer your domain name. You would pay them, and they wouldn’t do anything for you unless you completed the process. Otherwise, they would just keep your money to renew a domain they would never renew. They would charge $80 for two years, which was OUTRAGEOUS! Several of my customers reported them to the FTC.
23. A Case Of Self-Defense
My brother was shot by his best friend of 15 years four times with a 12-gauge after they had been hanging out and drinking for hours. Because his friend claimed he asked him to leave and he wouldn't, he was able to claim self-defense since my brother refusing to leave then made him a burglar. My brother was unarmed, and no scuffle took place.
Not only that, but the supposed best friend was having an affair with my brother’s fiancé. He walked free because of misused self-defense rights.
24. Happy Father’s Day
I had a friend who was married for years. They had two kids, one with a disability. Having children can be difficult on a marriage, but having a child with a disability can be even more stressful. They were making it work and fixing up their house. Everything seemed to be going well, then one Father’s Day, she told him she was leaving him and taking the children.
She broke the news to him out of nowhere...in a Father’s Day card. I couldn’t think of a more horrible thing to do to someone. And yet, there was absolutely nothing he could do.
25. The Government Couldn’t Care Less
I was the registered care provider for both of my parents for twenty years, since I was 14. Eventually, both of them passed. We lived in a council property, which was UK government housing. A week after my father passed, I was given 28 days to vacate the house I had lived in my entire life. The government was under absolutely no obligation to rehouse me, and the extent of the help they could offer was the number of homeless shelter charities.
When my mom passed, I attempted to update the tenancy to my name, but my dad took ill before I could file the paperwork. I was told I needed to file different paperwork to account for his illness. The fact that I had lived here for my entire life meant nothing. All because I had the nerve to care for my parents but not list myself as a tenant.
26. The Gambler
A company I used to work for went bust because the owner drank heavily and gambled all the money away. He came in one Monday morning and told everybody to pack up their personal stuff and leave. I had given my notice a couple of months earlier and actually received my vacation pay and final paycheck. However, nobody else got a dime.
Meanwhile, my boss took all the money left in the company and ran. His employees lost everything, and he made out like a bandit.
27. No Rest For The Wicked
I was a nurse. I walked into a hospice patient's room full of family arguing about inheritances and the will, right over their ailing relative. One of the visitors called me back into the room. What they asked me made my blood boil. They wanted to know if there was any way to speed the "process" along. She asked if "things" would go faster if they put a magnet over the patient's pacemaker in an effort to deactivate the device.
She went on to explain that they were from out of town, had bought tickets to a live show, and were worried about missing it. Basically, it was taking too long for their family member to pass, and it was ruining their evening. All of this was within the earshot of my super sweet patient.
28. They Showed Their True Colors
I was in a restaurant. A gentle old man of color couldn’t see very well and was taking some time deciding, so they told him to go to the back of the line. When he tried to order, they tried to throw him out for cutting the line. He didn't understand and thought he needed to pay, so he put his card down. Meanwhile, the cashier began a discriminatory rant toward him. She then came around, GRABBED HIM, took him outside, then called the authorities.
He tried to get his debit card back from the cashier, slipped and fell, and was tased by the officers as he attempted to get up. I told the manager what happened and the authorities, but they still took him in for "resisting arrest." I testified in the lawsuit against the cashier, manager, and officers. The old man received over $120K from the business but none from the officers or the city. It STILL gets my blood boiling.
29. Hospital Horror
A friend of mine had an ectopic pregnancy. Her insurance only allowed her to go to a Catholic hospital without having to pay a substantial out-of-network fee. That decision immediately came back to haunt her. Instead of giving her methotrexate, which would induce miscarriage, save her life, and protect her fertility, they maimed her by removing her fallopian tube, permanently altering her fertility.
They called the previous method an "indirect abortion." This was standard policy in Catholic hospitals. She has been unable to get pregnant in the years since.
30. Scrooged!
There was this restaurant owner my parents knew. He owned a pretty fancy restaurant, and around Christmas time, he started selling gift cards. They were basically $20 gift cards that bought you $40 worth of food. He ended up selling an insane amount of these gift cards...and then closed the restaurant two days later. It was evil, ingenious, and he got off scot-free.
31. Severance Day
I worked at a small, privately owned chain of stores. The owner decided to buy a factory that made products for his stores which his wife now ran. After a few years, they only wanted to manufacture and leave the retail side. If they had closed, they would have had to pay some staff severance packages costing a fair amount of money.
They decided to consolidate the bookkeepers to the manufacturing site, and the stores stopped paying the manufacturing company. After a year of that, they went to the courts and declared the stores bankrupt as they owed the manufacturing company a significant amount. Some of the staff had worked there for more than 15 years and found out they had been disowned with no severance.
The owners were real jerks. They could have foregone a single luxury vacation and given those staff what they morally owed them.
32. They Left A Bad Taste In Town
A popular local family-owned restaurant drove all the nearby competition right out of business. Then, one day about a month before Christmas, it was gone. The sign was down, and the doors were locked. The staff had no idea until they got to the door to start their shifts for the day. The owners were interviewed and explained that they were getting older and couldn't keep running the place.
They said they didn't have any management staff that could take over for them. A month went by without any kind of sale sign. Everyone was wondering how long it would take before some sales signs went up and a corporate joint like Red Lobster would come in. A couple of months later, a new sign saying “Bernie’s” went up.
It was the exact same food served in the exact same format, with a new coat of "formal" style on top to justify a doubled price tag. The whole town was convinced it was the exact same owners. Most of the town didn’t care that the price was higher. They were angry the owners screwed 50 hard-working employees.
33. Homeless Bound
I had a good friend who moved in with her great aunt and uncle to nurse them while they were battling cancer. She was 22, worked full time, and looked after them in the evenings and overnight. She did that for almost two years before they passed. The aunt and uncle changed their will and gave their house to my friend. It was worth about $90,000. It was a wonderful gift—and it destroyed her life.
The executor of the will was also a lawyer. On "behalf" of the aunt and uncle, the lawyer sued my friend for supposedly taking advantage of these poor sick people and conning them into a will change. As executor AND attorney, the lawyer got executor fees, legal fees, and court costs paid out of the estate. He just sued until the money was gone and then dropped it. My friend got nothing.
34. You Gotta Fight For Your Rights
My mom's friend was a real estate agent and lived with her significant other for six years. They had put money into a house together and were fixing it up. My mom's friend developed brain cancer, and the SO decided she wanted out of the house they had built and wanted it sold immediately. My mom's friend was dealing with the payments for her treatment but did not want to sell.
The SO said that because she owned a larger percentage of the property, she had every right to sell. Doing so would have kicked my mom’s friend out on the street after she left the hospital. An arbitrator had to be brought in—and that's when things got cruel. The SO tried to claim that they were not, in fact, a couple and just business partners. It was crushing for my mom's friend because she really loved that woman. Her cancer metastasized and moved to her lungs. Things were looking pretty grim, but she somehow survived and continued fighting for the rights to the house.
35. Loan Crusher
My dad knew a guy who would occasionally rent out some of the offices in the same building he worked in. He would create companies and employ a load of teenagers straight out of high school as proof that he had people working for him and paid them peanuts. He would then request a loan from the government, fire all his "workers," and close down the company, making off with tens of thousands of dollars. When he passed, my dad told me that most people’s reactions were: “Good!”
36. Monster Ram
My uncle rammed into a woman and her husband at 70 mph. The girl lost her life, and the husband was severely injured. By all accounts, he should have been sentenced to 20 years, but he took a plea bargain and got out in three months. He is in his 40s, and all he does all day is mooch off of his parents and generally just make a nuisance of himself.
37. DNA Did Him In
A friend of mine was in a visitation/custody battle with his daughter’s mother when her lawyer suddenly requested a DNA test. This was strange because they had both been living together for over two years, raising the child, and she had never mentioned any concerns over his paternity. It was pretty obvious he was the dad, too, as the kid looked exactly like him.
The court then forced him to pay for the DNA test for both of them. He took it immediately, but the mother did not, and her attorney helped her drag her heels for so long that it allowed her to establish residence in another state. Then my friend had to drive nine hours to see his kid because of a DNA test he never asked for—that he paid for—and that she intentionally ignored.
38. Up In Smoke
One of my dad's friends sold his business to a larger chain for a good bit of money. He was planning to use the proceeds from the sale to retire and was supposed to be paid out over five years. Not long after the sale, the buyer declared bankruptcy, got to keep my dad's friend’s business, building, etc., and write off the debt. They then reopened the old business under a different name, and my dad's friend had to go back to work since his retirement went up in smoke.
39. Pension Headache
My ex-husband married a woman who conveniently forgot to tell him he was her sixth or seventh husband. Many of the men were on a pension retirement plan that required a notary to change the beneficiary. She talked him into marriage without a prenup and ended up on his house title and his pension. He liquidated a 401K to get her off the house.
However, she was still on his pension and at least four others. She almost snagged husband number eight, but someone sent him a stack of her marriage and divorce records from the local courthouse. That lucky guy bailed on her before it was too late.
40. All Worked Up
I was helping my boyfriend with his business in his country. He had a nice shop, and sometimes, when he was busy, I would stay there for a few hours. If I'd known what was coming, I'd have gotten the heck out of there. The immigration inspectors showed up, and I got busted. They were rude and wouldn’t listen to anything. My boyfriend nor I couldn’t convince them that I wasn’t an undocumented worker.
They packed me up and took me to an actual prison 120km away from the city they “caught” me in. It was my first time in that country. I was a legitimate tourist with a return ticket, and I never intended to disobey the law and work in a country I didn’t even like. I had my departure scheduled. Nevertheless, they held me for a week with others who had worked without permission for YEARS.
The authorities distorted my testimony. Luckily, my boyfriend did everything to get me out of trouble and hired an attorney who exposed the wrong protocol. Despite the fact I was released and permitted to leave the country on the day I had planned, I got a black mark on my passport and couldn’t get in for the next year. My boyfriend (now husband) and I saw each other only four times throughout that year.
41. Badge Of Dishonor
A fairly large used car dealer where I lived got caught swapping the badges on some of the cars they sold. They would take a base model car with the lower trim package, scrape the badge off, and replace it with the badge for the deluxe trim. They would then sell the vehicle for an extra few thousand bucks. They got indicted on charges, the two lots closed, all the employees were laid off, and all the cars were taken to a storage lot.
A few months later, the dealer re-opened with the same vehicles and the same employees but under a different name. It was then "owned" by the wives of the former owners since their dealer’s licenses were revoked.
42. On The Prowl
I was a dispatcher, and we had an officer who would stalk the bars to ticket people for driving under the influence. After somebody left, he would follow them. If they didn't swerve or something, he would bust them in their driveway when they got home. He used to brag about how he had more busts than any other officer and more than the entire Sheriff’s department combined. He also was the last one to go into a dangerous situation or do actual police work.
43. Taken
A good friend of mine lost her husband to a car accident. She was then told she could not have custody of his children—who she raised as her own for over ten years—simply because she was just their stepmother and not their biological mother. She fought hard to keep custody of them, and the kids even said they wanted to stay with her, but nope. The court ruled that they were better off with their "real family," so this family took them, and she was told that she would probably never see them again. She took her life not long after that.
44. A Slip Of The Disk
A previous employer used the information I disclosed on a new-hire physical against me on day two of my employment. I had a slipped disk, and although I generally avoided lifting anything beyond 20lbs if I didn’t have to, it didn’t mean I couldn’t. Lifting was not a primary portion of the job, yet she fired me. She said she would hire me back after providing proof from an MD, even though my chiropractor had set the restriction.
I provided proof, and yet nothing. She called my chiropractor, attempting to obtain medical information, none of which she had asked me permission for or was given any authorization to do. Then, my ex-boss even denied I was an employee there at all when I applied for unemployment.
45. Messed Up!
When I was 14 and first starting to like girls, some cute girl was talking to me online. I got her number, and we talked every night for about a month. I eventually asked her out. She started giggling and said, "That's so sweet." Shortly after, her friend saw me in school and told me it was all a joke. She got her friend to do all that just to mess with me. I’ve had trust issues ever since.
46. Karma To The Rescue
My ex-girlfriend was talking/flirting with this guy she met on an app while living with me without me knowing. She told me she didn’t know if she wanted to be with me. She went to visit her mom across the country to “get some space” and ended up meeting that guy she was talking to on the app. She even invited him over to her mom’s house.
I found out by going onto her live video on the app and saw the guy in the video. I confronted her about it, and she told me she wanted to take a “break” and left me at OUR apartment after being together for four years. I ended up moving out of that apartment. A year later, she had his kid, they broke up, he moved to a different state, and she ended up struggling. I hope karma isn’t done with her.
47. Rent Packing
A neighbor got evicted for not paying her rent for one month...while she was in a coma in the hospital. The apartment had a very strict policy that you had to pay by the fifth of the month. If the company didn't receive payment by the 13th, including fees, they would start the eviction process by having lawyers draw up the papers. Then, if everything, including any lawyer fees, wasn't paid by the 17th, documents were submitted to the court, and you were out.
48. Reunification Gone Wrong
I used to be involved in a local nonprofit that placed newborns and infants taken from their mothers into foster homes with families qualified to adopt. "Family reunification" was always the goal in dependency court, but 75% of the time, the birth mother's demons were too strong, and she would lose parental rights. The baby would then get adopted by the foster parents.
Twenty-five percent of the time, the mom was able to overcome addiction and get her baby back. It was crushing for the foster parents, but understandable that if the mom was stable, she should be able to raise her own child. Sometimes the story didn't end there. Sometimes things took a dark turn. One of our couples raised a baby girl from two days old.
After four years of court hearings, rotating social workers, supervised visits, and family therapy with the child and birth mom, the court eventually decided to reunify the birth mom and the child permanently. But that wasn't even the worst part. Unfortunately, she was removed again from her birth mom's custody within a year, but our foster parents couldn't get her back.
She ended up in a foster home with strangers who mistreated her so horrifically that she lost her life within months of placement. It was terrible watching it play out—yet it was totally constitutional. Everyone who works in dependency has a story like this. The real lawful evil is how badly we, as a society, treat the most vulnerable people in our population, over and over.
49. A House Divided
My uncle did some carpentry work for my sister and her partner. He botched the whole lot because when the building inspectors came, they instantly had to condemn the building until the work was done properly. This forced my sister’s partner to sell his house at an insanely reduced price because of the state it was in—condemned.
He nearly made my sister and her partner homeless—but that was just the beginning. His defense was that they asked him to do “what would be the cheapest quick fix until they had enough money to renovate to how they wanted it.” They signed the contract, so he had no legitimate fallout for what he did. He also had the nerve to charge them more than he quoted because the job was “tricky.”
He still got paid because he took liberties with their lack of knowledge. Then, he decided to do some “renovations” to a house that my mom and aunt co-owned. He ripped down all the walls that weren’t load bearing, removed the ENTIRE floor, so nothing but the concrete footings remained, and removed the kitchen and the stairs. The house was not in any habitable state.
Nine months later, he proceeded to invoice my mom for work he had done, despite not being asked to, nor them agreeing to use him for the work. After a few back and forth e-mails, my aunt decided to start proper proceedings to reclaim the £11,000 in lost rent and owed wages for the work. Both my aunt and uncle KNEW my mom couldn’t afford the fees since she was living rent-free in a house I owned because she had just lost her full-time job.
My mom went to a lawyer. The attorney told her that because they had invoices proving what was owed, my mom only had about a 20% chance of winning a constitutional battle despite being in the right. So, not only did my mom lose her job and house, she lost her ONLY RETIREMENT SECURITY as she was forced to sign over her half of the house for payment.
50. Dr. Doom
A doctor, who was inebriated at the time, botched a routine surgery on an infant. The consequences were devastating. The child became a complete vegetable and was dependent on family and public benefits. The hospital’s insurance and high-brow attorneys destroyed any chance of the family—who were immigrants—from receiving anything substantial.
The mother was slowly working herself to oblivion, the dad had lost everything, and their other children suffered like no children I have ever known. The doctor went to rehab and was then back practicing like nothing happened.
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