A Thief Opened a $250,000 Credit Line in My Name. The Bank Said My Co-Signer Was a Woman I’d Never Met

Her ex-husband’s name was Lamont Gatlin.

He’d sold equipment financing for twenty years. Tractors, dental chairs, anything with a loan attached. And for four months, in 2019, he had worked at my dealership, until my finance manager caught him padding contracts and I fired him myself.

“He kept copies of everything,” Noreen said. “Every application he ever touched. I used to find the files in the garage and wonder why.”

She was sitting across from me at the same diner booth, three days later. She hadn’t touched her coffee.

“I’m so sorry, Julius,” she said. It was the first time she’d used my first name. “He did this to you because of me. Because I left him. And because you fired him. He put us together on purpose.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“I married him.”

“And I hired him.”

She looked up. For the first time since I’d met her, she smiled.

The detectives in Tifton picked Lamont up on a Thursday. He confessed in twenty minutes, mostly, Noreen said, because he wanted to brag.

But the bank still wanted its two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Until the court cleared us, we were both on the hook. Our lawyers filed affidavits. The bank’s lawyers requested a meeting. In person. Both of us, together, in Atlanta.

“They want proof we’re not married,” Noreen said, laughing in spite of herself. “How do you prove a thing like that?”

We drove up together in my truck.

Somewhere around Macon, she went quiet. She was turning her coffee cup around and around in her hands.

“Julius,” she said. “There’s something I should tell you before we walk into that bank.”

“What’s that?”

“Lamont told the police the truth about one thing. He said he picked you because he knew I’d been wanting to meet you.”

I nearly missed the exit.