Money Can Never Buy Happiness

Have you ever met someone, only to realize they aren’t the person that you thought they were?

About two years ago I was home on break and my family informed me of something that shook my heart. They told me that my next door neighbor was stealing money from his company.

HE STOLE OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

I thought they were joking.

Unfortunately, they weren’t.

This is not just some random person. They became my next door neighbors when my mom was 6 months pregnant with me. I’ve literally known him and his family my entire life. I used to go to their house for dinner, he would support my brother’s high school wrestling matches, he and his wife always came over with cookies and yummy desserts, we used to have pool parties at their house all the time, my siblings and I used to babysit their kids.

I thought the family was just really well off and he had an excellent accounting job because he definitely showed off the money he was stealing. He gave his son and daughter over the top, elaborate bar and bat mitzvahs. He bought a new Saab convertible for his wife. He put an expansion on the house and completely refurnished, repainted, retiled and redecorated it. He bought a boat to cruise along the intercostal. He paid a landscaper to come to their house 4-5 times a week to upkeep their brand new, beautifully landscaped front and backyard. He air-conditioned their garage so that his wife wouldn’t sweat while doing the laundry or while the kids were playing on their new air hockey table.

But his paradise turned into Hell once his company found out about his mischievous operation. The cops were sent directly to his house and handcuffed him in front of his wife and children. The wife ran to our house crying and from there things continued to get worse.

First he was sent to jail where he was bailed out and put on house arrest. He was on house arrest for about two years and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

And did I mention he has a mentally unstable son?

His son has ADD, ADHD, Depression, ect. This kid is a piece of shit. He is the rudest, most socially awkward, pathologically lying, misbehaved, manipulative human being I have ever met.

To say the least, he went out of control once his father went to the slammer. The mom went from being a stay at home mom to working 50+ hours a week. She lost control of the son and the younger sister wants nothing to do with him.

By the grace of God he graduated high school this past year with a 2.0 gpa and spent his entire summer jerking around. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd and now he smokes pot and drinks. My parents said they would come home from work and hear him and his hoodlum friends in their backyard lighting up. He told me he’s ‘the coordinator’ in his gang...I call bullshit.

And to top it all off, he spent all of his money the first weekend at college and got a tattoo.

Honestly, it’s a really sad story. Within a few years my next door neighbors went from looking like they had it all to literally having nothing. The father is in prison until 2020 and the son is on a destructive path towards prison, homelessness or death...