Stolen by Daniel Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

before the rep could say good-bye. Time was running short. Ruby would be coming home, and I needed to make more calls. The next five calls yielded the same results as my attempt at being Greg Johnson. I spoofed numbers from Delaware, New Jersey, two from California, and one from Anchorage, because the Michelle Shocked song of the same name came up in my iTunes shuffle. Ruby kept such an eclectic collection of music.
    I kept on calling. I got closer on my twenty-fourth call to UniSol Health. William Spader, thanks and praises, was an actual UniSol customer. Unfortunately, Spader wasn’t the ideal customer.
    “Could you tell me if this policy covers my wife?” I asked.
    “I’m sorry,” the representative said after much finger tapping. “But according to our records, you’re not married.”
    “Oh well,” I said. “Sorry about that. Thanks for your time.”
    I picked the next name from my list. Spoofing a Massachusetts exchange, I called again. This time, I was Elliot Uretsky. I was traveling on business and needed to look up my prescription coverage. Dang it, but go figure—I left my cards at home. So naturally, I provided my home address upon request. I verified Elliot’s mother’s maiden name, Askovitch, which was one of the security questions I stored in my database—oops, not encrypted—for password retrieval purposes. It was also one of the security questions UniSol asked before they’d give me any of Uretsky’s account information. I found out that my policy (I mean Elliot’s) covered my wife (I mean his). The rep gave me the account numbers, which I jotted down in a spiral-bound notebook.
    And I picked up an interesting tidbit. It seemed that Elliot last filed a claim four months ago. He was also behind on making his payments. In my mind, that was a plus. To pull off this scam—lifesaving scam, that is—I intended to change his mailing address with UniSol so that he wouldn’t be receiving any of Ruby’s bills in the mail. Given that Uretsky didn’t seem very interested in keeping his health insurance coverage in good standing, I suspected he was also a guy who wouldn’t be looking for his bills.
    Still, I decided to keep fishing, made ten more calls, got lucky twice, two names that would fulfill my purposes: Chuck Trent and Racine Romaguera. Both were in the UniSol network; both were married; both spouses were covered by hubby’s insurance policy. Trent was the healthiest of the lot—he hadn’t had any claims filed in the last nine months. Romaguera beat Uretsky by some, as he’d last seen a doctor six months ago.
    I decided to learn a bit more about these men before I made my selection. I checked them out first on Facebook. I couldn’t tell what Uretsky looked like from his profile pic, unless Uretsky and Mario from Super Mario Bros. were related by blood. That was because the picture Uretsky used for his Facebook profile was a screen grab from the video game.
    Romaguera was a bald, good-looking, outdoorsy type.
    Trent’s picture showed him sunbathing on a towel. Clearly, this was a guy who thought chest hair and aviator glasses made him sexy. Their profiles were otherwise set to private, so I couldn’t glean much useful data.
    LinkedIn provided me with some more basic information. All three kept profiles on the world’s largest professional network. Trent was in sales, which sort of explained his Facebook profile picture. Nothing says, “Trust me,” quite like a half-naked, oiled-up body. Romaguera was employed by Fidelity. Uretsky was a contract computer programmer with a passion for start-up companies. Maybe he was too busy developing software to realize that he’d fallen behind on his health insurance premiums. On the downside, Uretsky lived in Malden, and I wasn’t too keen on him residing so close to my home.
    But the way I saw it, Uretsky was the least likely to become suspicious. When the bills stopped coming, he wasn’t going to notice. That was my thinking.
    I had found my