Part 3Trouble from a Mispaid Phone Bill

When my food arrived, I forced myself to put the whole incident out of my mind. I put on my favorite show on my tablet and settled in for a nice, relaxing lunch.

After eating, I watched a bit of a new series with my favorite actor, did some laundry, and tidied up the apartment. The day slipped away quietly.

I was just about to head to the supermarket to pick up some groceries for a nice home-cooked dinner when my phone rang again.

It was my main number this time.

I thought it might be my parents or a friend.

But when I saw the number on the screen, I froze. It was the police.

They told me someone had filed a report, claiming I had defrauded them of two thousand dollars, and that I needed to come down to the precinct immediately.

I gritted my teeth, a fresh wave of anger rising in me.

Was this ever going to end?

I looked up the address the officer gave me. It wasn't far, about a twenty-minute cab ride. I sighed in frustration. So much for my nice dinner. I might as well get this over with. The constant harassment was ruining my only day off.

Half an hour later, I arrived at the precinct.

As soon as I gave my name at the front desk, a man and a woman lunged at me, pointing and shouting.

"So you're the deadbeat bitch from the phone?"

"Officer, arrest her! She should be executed!"

"So young and already a damn criminal. Doing things that'll make her ancestors turn in their graves."

"Scamming people out of two thousand dollars? Are you that desperate?"

An officer quickly stepped in to restrain them.

"What do you think you're doing? This is a police station, not your living room. If you're so tough, why did you call us in the first place?"

The man gritted his teeth, clearly defiant. "Officer, you can't just let her off the hook because she's pretty. She's a con artist."

The officer shot him a glare. "You want to wear this uniform and do my job?"

Seeing the officer was serious, the man reluctantly shut his mouth.

The officer gestured for me to sit down. "Alright, tell me what happened."

I calmly and objectively recounted the events of the day.

The officer looked at the couple, his expression one of sheer disbelief. "This is what you call getting defrauded out of two thousand dollars?"

The man's face flushed with anger. "Of course it is! That two thousand dollars is ill-gotten gains, isn't it? If she doesn't give it back, that's illegal possession of property. In other words, it's fraud."

The officer frowned. "You're the ones who made the mistake. What does that have to do with her? Besides, she already told you to contact customer service or go to a store to get the money back. How is that illegal possession?"

The woman started arguing illogically. "I did call them! But the customer service agent said because the amount was so large, we had to go to a store in person with our IDs to handle it. And even then, it would take at least a week to get the refund. It took one second for my money to go in, why should it take a week to come out?"

"Even if that's the case, what does it have to do with this young woman?" the officer reasoned. "If you have a problem, take it up with the phone company."

"The credit went to her number! All she has to do is transfer the money to me, and it's over. Why make it so complicated? It would save everyone a lot of trouble. We've been arguing about this all day. I think she just wants to keep the money for herself. So young, and already so rotten."

The officer shook his head, looking exhausted. "It saves you trouble, but it dumps all the risk onto her. You send two thousand dollars of credit to someone on a ten-dollar-a-month plan? If it were me, I'd suspect you were trying to launder money."

The woman shot the officer a dirty look and then plopped down in the chair across from me.

"Are you going to transfer the money or not?" she demanded.