Chapter 11 - The Forgery Charges and David’s True Face
In early December, the long arm of the law finally caught up with David Vance.
David had spent two months hiding out at his parents’ country club estate in New Albany, refusing to respond to civil court summonses and foolishly believing his father’s high-priced corporate attorneys could sweep the bank fraud under the rug.
He was wrong.
On a frosty Tuesday morning, two detectives from the Franklin County Financial Crimes Unit, accompanied by a uniformed sheriff's deputy, arrived at Richard Vance’s gated residence with an active felony arrest warrant.
David was handcuffed in his parents’ marble foyer and escorted out to a marked cruiser, charged with two counts of Fourth-Degree Felony Identity Fraud and one count of Grand Theft by Deception.
When Richard Vance attempted to intervene, threatening to call the county prosecutor, Detective Miller bluntly informed him that if he attempted to tamper with bank witnesses or hide David’s offshore digital assets, he would be charged as an accessory after the fact.
David spent three nights in the Franklin County Corrections Center before his parents reluctantly posted his $50,000 cash bail.
When he was released, David immediately drove to my house in a desperate, final attempt to intimidate Sarah into dropping the charges.
I was in the kitchen baking holiday gingerbread with Leo when the front doorbell rang aggressively.
Sarah walked to the front entryway, opened the door, but left the locked steel security screen in place.
David stood on the porch, looking haggard, unshaven, and wild-eyed, his designer jacket wrinkled and stained.
“Sarah!” David hissed through the mesh screen. “You have to tell your mother to sign the affidavit withdrawing the fraud claim! If this goes to a grand jury indictment, I could serve three to five years in Marion Correctional! Do you want your son’s father to be a convicted felon?”
Sarah stood completely still. Her posture was erect, her shoulders squared, and her voice steady as iron.
“You forged my mother’s name to steal twenty-five thousand dollars, David,” Sarah said, looking him dead in the eye without a trace of fear. “You left Leo and me with an empty bank account and no car. You made your choices, and now you have to answer to the State of Ohio.”
“I did it for our family!” David yelled, slamming his hand against the doorframe. “I did it to give you the life you wanted!”
“No,” Sarah replied coldly. “You did it for your own bloated ego. You used my mother, you used me, and you used our son. You will never set foot on this property again. My attorney will see you at the divorce hearing on the fourteenth.”
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Sarah closed the heavy oak door and turned the deadbolt with a solid, resounding click.
David stood on the porch for ten seconds, cursing violently under his breath, before slumping his shoulders and trudging away down the sidewalk, a broken, powerless man stripped of all his grand illusions.
