I lived with the identity thief who ruined my family — and didn’t realize until it was too late By Stefanie Cohen October 12, 2019 | 12:04pm | Updated Enlarge Image Axton Betz-Hamilton (center) proudly holds an award in 2012 she received for research on identity fraud while flanked by her parents. MORE ON: IDENTITY THEFT Cashier allegedly used photographic memory to steal credit card info Chinese 'deepfake' app sparks concerns over identity theft Netflix and bilk: Man duped investors out of $14M with phony film deal, feds say Astronaut accused of stealing estranged wife's identity — from space In the summer of 2012, Axton Betz-Hamilton was given an award for her research on childhood identity theft. As a kid, she and her family had been the victims of an identity thief, and Betz-Hamilton, a professor at Eastern Illinois University, had made a career of trying to find out who was responsible. That day, as she proudly posed for photos and held up her award, her parents beamed by her side. A few months later she got a call from her father. He had found an old credit-card statement of hers at the house and was dismayed that his daughter had run up such a huge bill when she was just 18. Betz-Hamilton’s blood ran cold. “Set everything aside, Dad,” she said, knowing he had found the vital clue to the culprit. In “The Less People Know About Us,” (Grand Central Publishing), out Tuesday, Betz-Hamilton recounts the story of her strange childhood on a farm in rural Portland, Ind., and her hunt to find the person who turned their lives into a claustrophobic nightmare where no one was trusted. When Betz-Hamilton was about 11, her father’s copies of The Brayer — a magazine devoted to donkey raising — stopped arriving despite regular payments. Soon Betz-Hamilton’s pen-pal letters from the 4-H club — her only social lifeline — were cut off, too. Next, the phone bills disappeared. Enlarge Image Worst of all, she found that while her father had been giving her mother $11,000 a semester for her schooling, Pam had been pocketing most of it, leaving her with over $100,000 in school loans to pay. In the end, Betz-Hamilton found that her mom had defrauded her father, herself and her father’s father to the tune of $500,000, but it’s still not clear what she spent it on. “That’s what’s so weird,” she says. “The majority of it just vanished into thin air.” Betz-Hamilton believes that her mother probably was a psychopath. She points to the photo of her mother, smiling widely next to her on the day she won her award, as evidence. “There isn’t a hint of any guilt on her face…and she had to have known what we were going to find out,” Betz-Hamilton tells The Post. “To lie seamlessly for so many years and be such a master manipulator, that’s the only thing I can think of.” Her father, stunned by the news, at first didn’t believe it. For years, he had blindly handed cash over to Pam, assuming she was paying the family’s bills. But as his daughter’s investigation wore on, he couldn’t deny the mounting proof. At 65, he now looks at his marriage to Pam as a closed chapter, says his daughter. He still works as a produce manager, has liens on his vehicles because Pam didn’t pay taxes for years, his retirement fund is slashed and his credit is terrible. But he also has a long-term girlfriend and is happier than he’s ever been, Betz-Hamilton says. Meanwhile, Betz-Hamilton, now 37 and a professor at South Dakota State University, has restored her credit and she keeps her mother’s ashes on her mantelpiece, just as she wished. But, next to the urn, she has placed a copy of her book. Exposing her mom, piecing her life together, and becoming a success makes her feel good. And she wants to make sure her mom knows it. “I can see now that treating my mother’s unthinkable sins as if I were a CSI technician and not her only child might have been a bit of deflection on my part. Academia had long been my therapy,” she writes. “But I can forgive myself for that,” she adds. “Knowledge, I’ve found, will not betray you the way people will.” https://nypost.com/2019/10/12/i-liv...mily-and-didnt-realize-until-it-was-too-late/
well you will be a lot more suspicious, devious and paranoid going forward. so some good has come from it at least.