Читать книгу Stolen Identity - Carmen María Montiel - Страница 10

My daughter told me to be careful with my lawyer. I asked her which one because I had a lawyer for every possible specialty. She said my criminal attorney was a friend of her dad’s criminal lawyer.

“Baby, they are all friends,” I told her. “They all know each other. They work together in those courts.”

“This is different, Mami,” she replied.

Alejandro had hired an attorney known for representing serial killers, murderers and psychopaths, many of them well known in the community, and saving them based on technicalities. However, it was his female associate who handled Alejandro’s case for him, the same woman that year and a half before had told me to get out of that relationship. Is not that a conflict of interest? She should have not been able to represent Alejandro and actively help him destroy his wife. But nobody cared.

What my daughter saw or heard I do not know. But time will prove that something wrong happened. This warning and my suspicion later saved me.

Alejandro had moved to the Four Seasons Hotel when the court ordered him out of the house. Alexandra said his female attorney came there to talk to her. What else Alexandra saw or heard during that time, she never told me. But her warning stayed ever present with me.

In reality, these attorneys should not have represented Alejandro, because they represented both of us before. I was so scared and confused I did not realize it at the time. But my lawyers should have. I told them about it. They should have tried to get his legal team disqualified.

As time passed and I healed, I not only saw things clearer, but also realized how all these attorneys took advantage of me.

I am brushing my hair while looking at the mirror. I am finally able to see myself in it. I am tall enough now. My very excited sister María Eugenia came running to get me because the New Year is almost here. My family is in the living room, Mom, Dad, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. I know them; they are all familiar to me. I did not know what they are talking about, but suddenly everyone starts hugging and kissing each other Happy New Year. They are eating grapes so fast. I do not understand how they can manage to kiss, hug, eat and drink champagne all at the same time. But this is who we are!

I am suddenly awakened from my daydream when I heard that my lawyer was ready for me. But he wanted to see my daughter first.

My lawyers want to talk to my second child because she was the only one of my children on that flight when the incident occurred. Kamee is still wearing her school uniform, which makes her legs look ever so long. I had picked her up at school and headed downtown to my lawyers’ office. She does not like to miss school, not even for ten minutes, so I arranged this meeting for after school. I kept waiting outside.

My mind lately often goes back to the beautiful years of my childhood and teenage time. Suddenly, I remember the day Alberto gave me a ride on his motorcycle.

Caracas is a valley, so beautiful and green with mountains everywhere. The day was clear and blue, a perfect day for a motorcycle ride. There I am holding Alberto’s waist and feeling free, enjoying the view while we were going up the mountain to my house when suddenly I see my dad’s car coming down.

“No! My dad!”

“So what?” Alberto asks.

“He forbids all of us to ride motorcycles.”

“Well, he is leaving.”

“But he saw me and tonight I will hear about it. I am in so much trouble!”

As soon as we stopped in front of my house, my dad was right behind us.

We could hear his car running. I was petrified. Should I get off? My father is already walking up to us.

“Alberto, I would much appreciate it if you do not get my daughter on a motorcycle. They are very dangerous.”

My dad looked serious and worried. He meant what he said.

We were pale and scared, but Alberto managed to say yes to my father.

“Mami, you can go in now!” Kamee said.

This woke me up from the half dream I was having.

“Well, Carmen, her story is just like yours. This is good,” my attorney said.

The judge had forbidden me to talk about the case with potential witnesses, so, I did not know what my daughter was going to say. At the time it happened, we never talked about it. She was mad at her dad as I was and had the same reaction toward him that I had. That is why I never wondered about it. But once I was charged, I started to wonder about the conversation we never had.

“It is the exact same story,” he continued. “Your husband kept on calling the flight attendant for no reason.”

The trial was set for October. However, they informed me it would be moved, which was good because we needed more time to investigate.

“It will be moved to January, which is also good, because guess what? The prosecutor is retiring and this case will be assigned to another. Nobody loves his children more than their own parents. This case is becoming a foster child case.”

“What do you mean?”

“People do not like to inherit cases,” he replied. “Especially this one when the consensus in the Federal Building is that if your husband gave you his shoulder, none of this ever would have happened. Plus, the prosecutor that is taking the case is my friend. I saw him at the grocery store the other day, and he told me to talk to him after the first of the year. He sounded not at all happy about this case.”

I was starting to realize how important whom you hire was in this process. It was all about who you know. It was all about negotiations. However, this could also backfire. Lawyers even negotiate among themselves and owe each other favors.

“I have been doing my research and we need to request the flight log and the black box,” I told my attorney. “This is important for the case. Plus, I think we also need the manual for the airline’s personnel. The flight attendant must have broken all the rules that night.”

“All of that has been ordered,” he said. “Now we will have more time to get it. My investigator has already spoken with the female police officer and will do more interviews. Now, Carmen, you know that comes at an extra charge! But I guess all of this will be solved in the temporary orders hearing.”

Another one of my attorneys asked: “What is it that you were fighting for on the airplane—peanuts?”

“Who did you hear that from?” I asked.

Alejandro was the one who was fighting for peanuts. But no one heard that. He wanted my peanuts, and I told him to eat his food. That was it! This happened a lot of times before the incident.

No one heard this. Unless they were talking with Alejandro. Were they?

In the meantime, we were getting ready to go to the temporary orders hearing where they set the spousal support and child support payments that Alejandro has to make while the divorce is pending, along with who pays what within the estate. There are credit cards, mortgages, loans, etc.

My legal team is expecting that Alejandro’s lawyers are going to play hard ball on the plane situation and they do not want me testifying under oath about this issue before trial. As a matter of fact, according to the research I had been doing, it is always recommended that the person accused not testify. One friend told me, “If you talk, you don’t walk!” That reminded me of OJ Simpson’s famous trial for his wife’s murder, when he did not testify.

Everything in my life was so scary now. I pray every day! God, why? Why did you allow this to happen? If I had never come to this country, this never would have happened. I wished to be back home, in my home country! Until one day while praying a thought came to my mind: “If you were in Venezuela, you would be dead.”

Oh My God! That is true. In Venezuela, the situation had gotten so bad that over 25,000 people a year are killed in robberies that go unsolved. People are so desperate for money; they sell themselves for very little as long as they can feed their families. It would have been so easy for my husband to have me killed as another victim of crime in Venezuela, just another statistic.

A few months later, Mónica Spears, Miss Venezuela 2004, was killed just like that in a robbery with her daughter and her ex-husband. Her infant daughter survived the assault.

When I heard the news, it was not only heartbreaking, but also a close call for me.

The emotional outpouring and protesting in my country were enormous. People were asking for violence and crime to stop in Venezuela. But all I kept thinking was: “It could have been me first!”

A day before the hearing, we all met at my family lawyers’ office. They had been working on who to get as witnesses for the hearing. The first thing I asked was whether they had talked with the female police officer who was in the back of the airplane when the whole thing happened. When I was taken back, she offered to help. My lawyers’ investigator interviewed her before the indictment, when she reported what happened exactly as my daughter and I had said.

“Carmen, she changed her story! What she’s telling us now has nothing to do with what our investigator’s report says.”

“God! How can people lie and destroy someone’s life? But the investigator has a recording of the conversation; we will get her lying under oath.”

“We better not use her,” my lawyer said.

“Why not? We have evidence and a recording of what she originally said.”

It was as if I was talking to the wall about very good evidence my own lawyer was dismissing. Incredible! That was not good. Apparently in family court, people can lie and create evidence. Anything plays there.

While we were there, Alejandro’s lawyers withdrew the motion to take over the house and my children. I was thankful that I did not need my friends to help me with that after all. The friends I had asked had refused to testify in my favor—my friends who knew the whole story, who knew I was both mother and father to my children, who themselves said, “He is not the Father of the Year. He never has been.” But I was tainted now and they wanted nothing to do with me.

We went to court and the female police officer was there with the prosecutor. My family lawyer said it was Alejandro who subpoenaed her. Years later, Alejandro said it was my lawyer. What I learned at this time of my life was that no one was telling the truth. I learned to never trust anybody. That feeling started once I realized my husband had been lying to me for years, and now in the courts with all the lawyers and judges, I confirmed that I was better off not trusting anybody.

Through the morning, my family lawyer scared me with the plane thing: “Carmen, people are gathering outside. It must be everybody from the plane.”

I felt this was good, so they could tell the court that they heard and saw nothing. They could tell the truth. The truth is: nothing happened and the other passengers were mad that this incident stopped their flight. In time, I learned that it was related to bad weather in Bogota.

Once again in my life, I was in the hands of a bully… my family lawyer. He negotiated for me the worst temporary orders in history. He should have known that Alejandro was not only going to destroy my credit, but also let every service be disconnected under this agreement. For the first time in my life, I lost control of all my finances, which were given to Alejandro, who had never written a check.

My family lawyer had negotiated the same type of agreement for another famous person in town, the wife of the late hand doctor and my former neighbor.

I was given the standard Texas child support of $2,500 a month for two kids, when Alejandro makes over a million dollars a year. He claimed my oldest daughter and $2,500 for my support. After working for him for almost twenty years, he fired me two days after he was kicked out of the house by the court.

Alejandro had to pay all utility bills, mortgages and charge cards. The charge cards were all in my name. He failed to pay all the bills as ordered, my credit was ruined within months, and all the charge cards were lost. I had no means to access money. I could not afford the maid that I needed to help me take care of my children. I was spending a lot of time in court with my lawyers, plus we had a house of over 18,000 square feet with terraces, patio and pool space that needed to be cared for.

However, my attorney walked out of court acting like he got the deal of the year, while Alejandro was high fiving his lawyers outside. This was my lawyers’ second failure. The first was when they withdrew the protective order that the judge granted me on July 23, 2013.

I had hired supposedly the best attorney in town. However, he brought another lawyer into the case because he and the judge assigned to hear my case hated each other. My attorney needed to take a step back, so his presence would not negatively affect the outcome of the case. The second attorney had left on vacation when we had to go to the protective order hearing on August 6 in another court, the domestic violence court. This was a big ace in our hand because it was going on Alejandro’s record and would give us the upper hand. However, my attorney withdrew the protective order a day before the hearing without my authorization or a signed agreement. He said the deal he negotiated was much better than any granted in court.

However, he agreed to let Alejandro in the house the day we were supposed to be in court in order for him to pack his possessions—something he did not do when the court ordered him to leave. By my maid’s account, he only packed enough for two weeks because he said: “She is just mad; she will get over this in two weeks maximum. I am coming back.”

Once the pressure from the protective order was gone, Alejandro felt secure that he was back on top of the situation.

He came home with the Suburban. He had crashed his Mercedes CL63 Turbo driving while drunk, but of course paid off or reached an agreement with the other person not to call the police. Later, he ended up in a punching fight with the owner of the Ferrari since insurance did not cover the car’s full repair because the insurance had already paid a total loss for his car in January 2013, for another drunk driving accident by himself. Alejandro showed up with two of his employees from the office with each driving a pickup truck. They came to ransack the house. What Alejandro was not counting on was that my lawyers had put a 6’5” tall bodyguard inside the house.

Alejandro came in all confident, but stopped and went pale once he saw the bodyguard. Obviously, his plan changed when he saw that I was protected.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the bodyguard said.

“Good afternoon, Carmen María Montiel,” Alejandro said without a word to the bodyguard, like calling me by my unmarried name was a way to hurt me.

In fact, I was looking forward to gaining my name back. I had asked for it in the divorce lawsuit.

He went straight to the study to get papers. The bodyguard advised him: “Sir, you are here to pack your clothes. That is it.”

Alejandro’s face told it all. He was not accustomed for anybody to tell him what to do. He always does as he pleases.

He went to where I put the mail.

“Sir, again, you cannot take anything but your clothes.”

Once again, he was furious this was happening in front of his employees. I can only imagine how he planned this with them… and now he has been humiliated in front of them. The Boss!

His employees looked at him like they were waiting for an order. It was not possible that he brought his office employees to pack his underwear. Alejandro was agitated and furious. He was perspiring and very pale. His Middle Eastern coloring had disappeared from his face.

“I only have two hours. How can I pack in such a short time?”

“That is why, sir, you should not waste time on things you cannot take, and pack your clothes,” the bodyguard said.

I walked out of the room and advised the guard I had outside the house ever since Alejandro left not to let anybody put anything in those three vehicles that I had not approved first.

Alejandro had never packed before. He asked for luggage. I sent his secretary to get the bags in the attic. He packed his underwear and socks with his secretary and billing specialist. When he went downstairs, so did I. His billing specialist said he needed the computer.

“Sir, please do not address her,” the bodyguard said. “You are here to get the doctor’s clothes and that is it.”

Alejandro left in less than an hour without most of his clothes still. It is obvious he came for something else and, once he could not get it, he left angry.

This irresponsible move from my lawyers messed up the temporary injunction orders that freeze all the financials. Every time I left town, Alejandro broke into the house with the excuse that he did not have all of his things. It took a court order in his criminal case for assault charges to stop that in January 2014.

Alejandro had a falling out with his first lawyer, the one during my deposition who paid a lot of attention when I started talking about the physical abuse. He changed from being relaxed, lying back in the chair, to an upright position. He believed me!

Months later, a friend of mine interviewed this lawyer for her divorce. She was married to another Middle Eastern man, and he told her: “I know the ways of these men.”

The attorney in charge of Alejandro’s divorce case filed a motion to postpone the divorce trial from January to March, and another to move it from March to later in the year. After taking all the money I had, my family lawyer fired me, forcing me to find a lawyer in an emergency move. I hired an African American woman. I liked the idea of getting someone who was not part of the “Good All Boys Club,” a wild card.

I did not know at the time the game that was played in family court. As soon as Alejandro’s attorney knew about my change of lawyers, he did not want to move the trial further out. He was blocking his own motion. He called my new lawyer and tried to sweet talk her into a bad, I mean really bad, settlement. Her answer was: “Give me the discovery and we settle.”

By the time I got a new attorney, I had already hired a forensic accountant to look into Alejandro’s financials after the separation. Because of Alejandro’s extreme mishandling of his financials, she got suspicious and referred me to a bank investigator that could find any bank account Alejandro had by himself or with any entity. And bingo! We found several.

Since they did not want to move forward with the trial date change, my lawyer agreed to go to mediation. I was mad, because how can you have a real mediation when we are missing so many parts of this puzzle? But we went.

On the day of the mediation, it was the women against the men. Alejandro, his lawyer and the mediator were all men. The mediator was from Cuba, or at least his parents were. He came and told me that Alejandro was talking about all of my supposed issues.

“Really?” I said. “Has he mentioned his? Because he has assault charges, anger management therapy, double identity in Venezuela and more. We can sit here all day and talk about it, along with prostitutes or dead patients, for example.”

“No,” he said. “But I told him that you do not do what he did. Getting his wife in trouble. You don’t call the police on your wife. I can see the picture.”

I do not know if he meant it or it was a way to make me believe he was on my side. The day came and went. At around 6 p.m. or later, the mediator came with a settlement proposal. Of course, when we were all tired!

I could not believe what I was reading! At what point had Alejandro decided I was an idiot, dumb and stupid? I was the one who ran all of our business in the office and for us personally, and suddenly he thought I was going to fall for a trick.

The mediator presented me with an offer in which Alejandro was to keep 100% of his medical practice and our commercial building, which was way over 50% of our estate. From the rest, I was to get 60%, about 20% of our estate in reality for me.

“I know my math,” I said. “Why am I going to get 20% when the law gives me 50%?”

However, I wanted to end it and asked the mediator if I could make changes to it. As I started to work on my changes, the mediator came back and said Alejandro had left!

Alejandro always cheated people out of money. Why was I expecting any difference? He cheated a woman that invested in Sleep Labs out of over $200,000 when they got together to do sleep studies in Dallas. She did not have the license. Alejandro flew there every Thursday and read the studies, and our office did the billing. When she wanted to end the deal, he never paid her what he owed her.

The same thing happened when we took back the billing from a vendor to which we owed money. Alejandro never paid it. It always amazed me how none of them ever sued him—maybe because it was going to be dirty for both. Alejandro walked away with a lot of money that belonged to other people. His excuse: I am tired of people taking advantage of me!

So, we went to court on March 28, 2014, for the final trial for divorce. We walked into the courtroom and the associate judge was there, the same one that allowed my children to keep having visitation with Alejandro after all the testimony and the one accused of campaign fraud. I knew Alejandro had something to do with this since she was always going in his favor.

After my lawyers showed proof of why we needed more time, the associate judge ruled we were to be divorced that day. Alejandro high fived his lawyers. I had no idea what they were planning, but it must have been something where I was ending up very badly. Alejandro wanted me to be broken and penniless in jail or prison if possible.

We were supposed to be back in court at 1:30 p.m. I cried! What was going to happen to me? I went to the cathedral and prayed at lunchtime.

When we got back, the sitting judge was there, not the associate judge. She reviewed the evidence, including inventories where Alejandro had changed the numbers in the millions of dollars and bank accounts not put in any discovery.

“Millions are added and subtracted. What is this?” the judge said.

The judge ruled to delay the trial and Alejandro stormed out the courtroom, insulting my lawyer, his lawyer and me. He also accused me of opening his bank accounts. Like I am some kind of idiot opening bank accounts to hide money and hiring an investigator to find them, then turning them over to the court.

That victory gave my lawyers an opportunity to file a motion for a change of temporary orders to increase my support. Twice we went to court and expended two full days in cross-examination, but the judge did not rule. She was retiring and it looked as if she did not want to mess with it, or she was bought out? By whom?

Two years later, Alejandro said his friend, the car salesman nobody liked, introduced him to a judge that helped him. Was that for the hearing about the drugs or the spousal support? Was that real or did he just not want to say he paid for it? Four years later, in an interview, he said he had dinner with a judge and that same judge connected him with my family lawyer.

After two hearings about the change of spousal support that ended with no decision, his lawyer fired Alejandro. Like me, he was looking for a lawyer at the last minute and got a man with no scruples in the summer of 2014.

With the new lawyer, Alejandro did not show up in court ever, and it was impossible to enforce anything on him. He should have been thrown in jail many times. But what happened with the system? Well… the law only applies to poor men. Rich people, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, etc., have a different set of rules that no one knows. They are the breadwinners of the family and are treated differently by the court even if it means leaving their families starving.

By summer 2014 I had a third lawyer. The situation with Alejandro and his new attorney got worse. He was not paying anything. My credit was ruined and I had no money. It was so bad that my lawyers decided to request a receiver, which was granted. But the judge changed our choice from an unknown receiver to one that worked at the same building where Alejandro’s lawyer had an office.

The idea was to freeze Alejandro’s business account and make sure the children and I got paid.

Along with this battle, I was scheduled to go to trial in federal court every three months. And every three months, the trial was rescheduled. I did not meet with my criminal lawyers more often than every three months when the trial was close and we had to go to court. There was always an excuse from the prosecutor or my lawyer to move the trial.

Every three months I asked about the flight log, flight attendant manual and everything else. The answer was always the same: It is coming.

Time passed and the case was not getting dropped. I learned that Alejandro’s female criminal attorney was at the Federal Building often, making sure this case did not go away.

In January 2014, I had my first court appearance with the new prosecutor. Of course, he requested to move the trial again. I appeared in court with my lawyer and the new prosecutor did not show up. Another prosecutor took his place while the first one was in another trial. This prosecutor was inclined to drop the case, but he did not prosecute it at the end. One more of those last-minute things that makes you wonder.

After the hearing, the three of us—the prosecutor, my lawyer and I—waited for the elevator when the prosecutor asked my attorney: “So, has this been the H. prosecutor’s case all along?”

“No,” he replied. “It was the D. prosecutor’s case.”

His face showed disapproval and he added: “So, D. did this? Unbelievable!”

I could feel this seemed to be the sentiment in that Federal Building. My attorney said the new prosecutor was not interested in this silly case either; after all, he was dealing with bank robbers. That was his specialty.

By October 2014, over a year after the indictment, I was not feeling confident about my case. And my daughter’s words kept ringing in my mind: “Be careful, Mommy. He is a close friend with Dad’s lawyers.”

It felt as if my lawyer had lost interest in the case. At first, he was all pumped up and ready to go with ideas of what to do, how to do my defense, who should be interviewed, and what needed to be requested. But now he looked as if he was not interested. He had no more ideas, and I felt he was just going with the flow. And all documents requested never arrived at his office. That was the most uncomfortable point for me. It felt as if he was ready to let me go, as if I was being presented as a sacrificial prey.

Around that time, I met this incredibly beautiful young Houston native. She is someone who knows everybody in town. We were talking about mishaps in life. Suddenly I felt comfortable enough to tell her what was happening to me.

After I finished my story, she acted very normal (to my surprise) and asked who my lawyer was. When I told her, she said: “Oh, no, no, no. You need to change your lawyer. After his daughter died, he is just not interested.”

That is something I hated to hear. That meant more money, a lot more? Is it really necessary? But a voice inside of me was telling me that not only was it necessary. It was imperative.

It was now September and even though I was supposed to go to trial in October, I had already been informed that was not going to happen.