I have been wanting to post this to help work past some of my anxiety around the Karen in the story, it’s been years and this all still gets to me.

I am terrible with grammar and spelling. So I am sorry In advance for mistakes.

I am on mobile.

I am not sure this is the right subreddit for this. I may cross post.

Some of this I was told by family, I will put everything I know down.

Sorry it’s so long there is a lot to cover.

Lastly, I have changed some details because the Karen of this story is nuts. It also has been years since this happened.

So here is some back story- Karen has 4 kids. 3 girls and a boy. The oldest is a girl named Sasha who is around 15 at the time of this. Second oldest is a girl named Cathy. She was 12 1/2-13. Her third child is Josie who was 11. Last is her “perfect angel” Alex. Alex was 7ish.

The kids all have different fathers, she was only married to the last one’s dad and they had recently divorced due to her lying. This only plays a small part in this.

Karen and my Aunt met while at elementary drop off years before our story. Karen was constantly switching her kids’ schools and moving to try and avoid getting in trouble for how little her kids went to school. The year this happened I was 15 years old and going to school with Karen’s oldest two and my brother went to school with her younger two. My aunt picked us up from school often to help my parents out, she saw Karen and they exchanged numbers. Over the next few weeks they reconnect and Karen became more of a family friend. I told my mom that I didn’t trust her I got a weird vibe from her and her kids would lie about weird stuff. I asked Sasha to sleep over at my house because I had slept at her house three times and Sasha said “oh I can’t” and I asked why? Thinking she would say her mom is strict or something. She said “I have ptsd from the last sleep over I went to. My friend and I fell asleep and I woke up to blood next to me and found my friend dead in her tub. Her dad killed her.” I knew it was a lie but I thought maybe she was just not comfortable sleeping over. Karen was extremely over the top and would lie about weird stuff too. One day Karen kept Alex home from school and when his dad called and asked why he was home Karen said he was sick. The father asked to talk to Alex. Karen covered the phone leaned over whispered something to Alex then gave him the phone his voice was completely different and he told his dad that his tummy hurt and fake whined. Karen is a huge liar and manipulator.

Now on to it- My family owned a small gas station. Karen needed a job. (She was living off of child support from the kids’ dads even tho she told the kids none of them paid child support and money from her church. That we found out later thought she had cancer.) Karen asked my mom if there were any openings at the gas station. Even though we didn’t need anyone because the family all worked it, my mom hired Karen. Karen was incredibly lazy, she would do anything to avoid actual work, she would bring her kids with her to work when she decided not to send them to school which would turn into whomever was home (mom or aunt) watching her kids all day. One day Karen was hanging at the gas station after work as usual when she “tripped”. Karen filed a claim with our business insurance stating she had an ankle injury that happened on the clock. Karen conveniently tripped just out of the cameras view. There was only a small blind spot in the whole store. The business insurance closed the case because there wasn’t enough proof. She provided an OBGYN’s number to them as the doctor treating her ankle. And they could proof she was off the clock. After that my family was becoming more wary of her but still didn’t want to fire a single mom. A bit down the road Karen was off the clock but hanging around the gas station when Karen started telling my mom (who was working the register) and myself while I was sitting in the little backroom with the door open that sometimes Sasha gets in a cleaning mood. Sasha was organizing papers and stuff behind the counter. To me it seemed more like she was just shifting stuff around. My mom asked me to come up to work the second register because we had just gotten a rush. After the rush passed I went to go back into the small room and I see Sasha is in there “cleaning”. I said “hey you aren’t suppose to be in there that’s where all the important papers are” Karen spoke before Sasha could “oh sorry! We better be heading home anyway” about 2-3 weeks go by and my mom has been a bit pissy for a week or so now. That Sunday evening while the store was closed my family and Karen’s family were all at my house. At one point My mom says there was an issue with her business account being double charged on a check. Karen said “oh I have had that happen it’s ridiculous” the convo shifted away quickly after that. 20-30 mins later My mom asked me to come to her room. My mom showed me papers of two checks both written to Karen but in two different handwritings. My mom would always misspell Karen’s last name. On the first check Karen’s last name was misspelled but on the second check her last name was spelled correctly. Karen could see slightly into my parents room from the kitchen table and yelled “what is the issue?” My mom said “just talking to OP about some issues she has been having” my mom then quietly said “I think Karen took one of my payroll checks and cashed it after cashing her actually payroll check Please don’t say anything yet.” We came out and Karen was on edge the entire night but tried to act normal. She left mad after picking a fight with my aunt over something extremely small. My mom and dad talked a lot and decided to fire Karen with two weeks pay and explained that if this is just a mistake they would hire her back. Karen screamed at them “I am gonna report you to the labor board your fucking pieces of shit” and left. She did file a claim for wrongful termination and claiming that she was owed a full month’s pay on top of what they gave her. This was later thrown out as well. My parents filed a police report and started working with the bank to figure out what exactly happened. Both of the checks were cashed at the bank my parents used. They pulled camera footage from when the check with the correct spelling of Karen’s last name was cashed. There stood Karen and Sasha. Karen had her oversized tinker bell purse and was in the middle and Sasha was off to the side. My parents wanted to call and ask Karen why she stole from them but decide to wait a few days. The next day there was a knock on the door and it was Karen and Sasha. (At this time Karen had no idea my parents had seen the still frames of her at the bank) Karen says “Tell them what you told me” and Sasha stares at the floor and says “I stole the check, forged it, and cashed it” before my parents can say anything Karen Slaps Sasha hard across the face. Karen then angrily says “you forgot something.” Sasha who is crying quietly says “I am sorry I will find a way to pay you back please don’t send me to jail!” My parents were stunned and just stared for a second. My dad said “thank you for telling us the truth.” Then Karen said “well I just wanted you to hear it from her. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive her and not involve the police but I understand if you do.” Then they left. My parents were pissed! She just made her child take the blame for her theft and hit her. My parents went down to speak with the detective assigned to our case about a week later. (The police had contacted Karen about the case and got a statement from her) the detective gives my parents a copy of Karen’s statement to read. It was along the lines of “The second check was waiting for me in the bin were my paycheck is every week, I grabbed it because I saw my name and that days date on it. I assumed it was a bonus Check. If they had come to me I would of given the money back immediately but instead they fired me and involved you guys. They are harassing my family. My kids are scared for their lives. I want to take out a restraining order if this craziness doesn’t stop.” My mom and dad are floored again! My mom told the cops about Karen coming over with Sasha, blaming her, and Smacking her across the face. They talked about the video of Karen cashing the check. The detective tells my parents that he doesn’t think they have enough to prove it wasn’t just an honest mistake. My mom said “I don’t want to drop it after what she did to her innocent child.” The detective steps out and comes back quicker than my parents excepted he says “Karen is here right now. I am gonna try something. I will come back and tell you what happens”. My parents sit for about an hour. Finally the detective walks back in. He says “I went in there and pushed telling her about the video saying we knew she wrote the check. After going back and forth with her showing her the stills from the video she confessed.” Her confession was along the lines of- OP’s parents weren’t paying me enough and I got into a really bad place so I wrote the second check. I wish I hadn’t but I was trying to take care of my kids. My parents took her to small claims court and won a judgement against her. (That still hasn’t been paid back to this day.) My parents didn’t follow what happened when she plead guilty to her charges but years later we found out that she served one day in jail and was given probation as well as told to seek mental health help. She has done things like this many times before us and after us. Oh and the day Sasha was in a “cleaning” mood was the day Karen stole the blank Check and then made Sasha clean so my family wouldn’t notice it and just think Sasha moved it while cleaning. I wish she had gotten a better punishment. What I know of her now is she is married to a sex offender, her kids all lie like her, she has been arrested 5-6 times, and seems to be a miserable person.

This was way longer than I excepted but there are a lot of details. I am sure some are gonna think this is fake but it’s true.

Lastly if you want to hear more about Karen’s craziness let me know. I have a few smaller stories that happened before she stole the check and a few with Sasha when I reached out to her last year because I felt bad for how she grew up and thought that she was a good person to spite her mom and I was soooooo wrong.