Do you trust the people around you? How do you know that your friends or people that you have dealings with are who they appear to be? It seems to be very common to hear about serial killers, kidnappers and thieves who led perfectly ordinary lives. Even their closest friends had no idea that they had a life on the other side of the law. How can you protect yourself from people like that?



Elle and Jack are a typical couple with busy lives living in the suburbs. They don't have the time to do all the little odd jobs about the place that they want to do so they looked for someone reliable that they could pay do do it for them. When they saw the work that Mick was doing on a neighbors property they were very interested. They were impressed by the quality of work and their neighbor told them that Mick was a reliable worker. Elle and Jack asked Mick to do a small repair job on their property as a sort of test before giving him more work.

Mick did the job later that week. He was efficient and the work was of a good standard. Both Elle and Jack liked Mick a lot because he was a very likeable and sociable person as well as being good at his job. They saw no reason why they shouldn't give Mick a more substantial list of projects to undertake. They were so taken by Mick that Elle and Jack sidn't think twice about giving Mick a set of keys to the property so that he good proceed with the work while they were out at work.

It took Mick a little longer to complete the list of work that he originally expected but Jack and Elle were happy to pay Mick for his extra time because they were so happy with the job that he had done. Mick asked for cash payment which is a common request for some reason.

Mick left the area and then the problems began

Elle and Jack were very pleased with the job that Mick had done for them. He had accomplished a whole load of things that they had been planning to do for years. They thought the world of Mick. That is until they started to notice some things that were not quite right.

There were some things that they didn't use very often like power tools and jewelry but when they did look for them they were not to be found. Elle and Jack just thought that they had misplaced them and that they would turn up sometime.

Then they noticed some transactions that they didn't recognize on their credit cards. They were all small and Elle and Jack never usually pay much attention to their statements so it went unnoticed for a while. When they added it all up it came to tens of thousands of dollars and Mick was the prime suspect.

This doesn't have to happen to you

This story never happened but this kind of thing does happen for real all the time. It never occurred to Elle and Jack that Mick could be a serial thief with a criminal record but they could have checked had they wanted to. They could have done a background check on Mick to find criminal records and if they had they might well have changed their minds about hiring him in the first place. They could have saved themselves a lot of money and stress.