h is for (w)hore
and helen.

helen was the manageress of the estate agency where i used to work. she was one of those women than men swoon over, but is attractive because she has a beautiful haircut and good makeup rather than because she is a natural stunner. and she was very very flirtatious, low cut transparent shirts, tight trousers, short skirts and stacks, that kind of thing.

with the girls, she was cliquey, demanding and sometimes downright bitchy. those on the inner circle, which included me, thought that she was funny and clever and charming. those on the outside, i know now, saw a spoiled manipulative bitch. so much so that one colleague who was out of favour once wrote out a fake joblist for helen that included "tango-up face with chanel" and "fuck stephen [the inhouse electrician, also her husband] in the basement".

then she realised she had printed it on the cheques printer by mistake. the tenant who got the last entry "talk to anyone who will listen about my conservatory" across the top of her cheque was very perplexed. she drove out every single girl she didn't like, starting with comments like "i only hire people who aren't better looking than i am" and worse, and she crucified the poor little office junior.

i think, deep down, we all knew she was up to Something. she was very flirty with the managing director, for instance kneeling right next to him to go through the post, and we all knew he was smitten with her. she never let anybody else do her husband's company credit card bill, and her own property accounts were locked away. but we liked her and she was great fun, so we squashed our misgivings. i guess if conmen weren't charming, they wouldn't get very far with their conning.

anyway, matters all came to a head one day when she was on holiday. and we couldn't balance the cash till. this was the start of a thread that unravelled to a multi-million pound theft going back the 11 years she had worked there. she had put everybody else's names on the fraudulent cheques, covering her tracks by making fake notes and withdrawals in their names. she had spent all this time and effort stealing from a man who had treated her like family since she was 22 years old.

she used all that money to buy properties of her own, and now has a multi multi million pound property portfolio worth ten times what she paid for it.

the worst thing is, despite the evidence and her losing the civil case, the police wouldn't prosecute her. so she is free to run her own estate agency in manchester, dealing with customers and public money, day in, day out. if you rent in the most popular village in south manchester, you may even have used her.

ok, so she's more of a bitch than a bastard, but this is one case where crime has truly paid, and it makes my blood boil, the deceitful cow.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 28 Jan 2008, 21:24, 9 replies)

Yeowch!
Makes my ex-colleague seem like a saint in comparison. Well, if Leanne Battersby could be seen as a saint...
( jim_bob can herd cats., Mon 28 Jan 2008, 22:11, closed)

"talk to anyone who will listen about my conservatory"
I can just see the tenant's face. Made me giggle.
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 0:28, closed)

Hmmm...
So i'm now going to be sat in a pub in didsbury with my mates on friday night playing "Guess the estate agents"!

(nothing much to go on mind, they are all con artists round here)
(Kaine, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 1:28, closed)

well....
didsbury was where i worked. her actual office is somewhere just slightly further down the (cough barlow cough moor ahem road) that almost sounds like [bobby] charlton...
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 9:26, closed)

Nice writing!
I hate her already

*clicks*
( Firkinfedup last shat on your wife's tits at, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 9:35, closed)

The police won't prosecute?
Whyever not? Is she "entertaining" the chief constable or something?
(Big D, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 10:31, closed)

there is a website
all about it which the managing director posted after she had had him arrested for sexual harassment (she also took him to an employment tribunal, where the chairman said pointedly amongst lots of other criticisms for wasting his time that she was in a very unsuitable outfit for someone claiming to have been victimised, and threw out her claim). i'll post a link if anyone cares - it is just unbelievable that she got away with it though.

the official line is something like, "because she settled the civil case, we can't prosecute her". which is total bullshit. settling the civil case is further evidence! who pays back hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds if it was a mistake, as she claimed, and they hadn't taken it in the first place? argh!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 10:38, closed)

!
Great story. The one happy aspect for the owner of the estate agency is that presumably, having won the civil action, he is the new owner of a large portfolio of houses. Suddenly having a few extra million quid would ease the pain a bit. Its almost like she was putting some money in savings for him!
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 11:47, closed)

sadly not
he could only sue her for what he could prove he had lost, which was limited to the missing hours when her husband had been working on their houses but charging the company as if he'd been working on theirs (for example, 3 days to repair a chimney. on a house that didn't HAVE a chimney), and the fraudulent cheques. which totalled around £750k.

he couldn't trace the money into the properties, the law doesn't work like that. but realistically, (i) she couldn't have bought them without his stolen cash and (ii) she was a director and so had an obligation to act in the best interests of the company, which would have been to get the company to buy these amazing deals, NOT her greedy self! so if you add up what it's cost the company, it totals millions and millions, but you can't sue for that because the loss is too remote to prove. infuriating.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 12:24, closed)