18 Sept, 2022
I've mentioned my cousin a few times in these blogs, and she was very supportive when I was having my breakdown. This I do acknowledge, and I will always be thankful for. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here now and I'll never forget this. My cousin meant the world to me and I confided more to her than I had ever done to anyone else. I trusted her like I had never trusted before and she was my rock. As I have mentioned, I run a business and at my lowest time she offered to help (being paid to do it) to which I accepted. On one occasion I made a passing comment about her coming on board within my business. It was bought up again by her, at her house as she stood by her doorway and said that if she paid some money for shares I could get myself out of debt, she said she would do the training etc., so would add value to my business. Like I said I trusted her. Fast forward to 2021, right around the time I heard from CPS, right about the time I was extremely low she arranged an Accountant to produce the share certificates, they valued my business extremely low and before I knew it 50% of my business belonged to her. She didn't at one point thank me or give me a penny. Move forward a few months she became less involved, was too busy being what I call a del boy. Ducking and diving in lots of different things to get other sources of income. In the meantime I was so stressed with my workload, it didn't sit right with me that she was earning exactly the same as I was yet doing very little. Now she would dismiss this comment as she truly believes that what she did warranted her pay, but I can honestly say it didn't and she can't deny what she said to me about paying money for the shares or to do the training. During the time my cousin was a Director was the first time I had ever made a loss on my business, so I analysed the accounts (I usually left this to her) and then I wanted to speak with her in person. I drove to her house, felt completely unwelcomed and she decided the do a personal attack on me. I was so stunned and shocked, I actually couldn't respond not until a few days later. A few months later nothing had improved so I decided to find out exactly what she was doing for the business so I accessed her emails to discover she had deleted emails from the deleted box, I restored them and looked through each and every one of them I was absolutely mortified to find out how little she was doing. I think I only came across a dozen emails that related to the business, the rest were her company accounts for her other business, purchase of a property they were investing in, business plans for the property investment, personal pension withdrawals, business coaching by someone that has multiple failed businesses, promoting an unregulated ponzi scheme and so much more. Because of what I discovered and her attack on me that day I asked her to leave the business. I could no longer work with someone that thought so little of me. Now when I asked her to leave all she was interested in was money, now bearing in mind the year she was a director I made a massive loss, but she still asked for money for the shares she had not paid for, £30k!, yep you read it right £30k. Of course she didn't stop there and between her and her husband they became quite spiteful, redundancy, computer, membership to networking (which she actually didn't continue to do) . She knew full well how much the business meant to me, I had built it up from nothing by myself and sacrificing a lot. I was so scared she was going to sell the shares to someone else I ended up paying and getting myself back into debt. To this day I can't understand how anyone can treat another like this, obviously money rules her and her husbands head. It's all about status with them, they want to portray themselves as being more superior than others. All I can say is crack on, it won't necessarily make you happy. In total over the duration of 4 years she had approx. £145k from me, I was sad enough to add it all up. I'll never forgive her for what she has done, what they did is a pretty vile act. A lot of people have said she took full advantage of me when I was in a bad place and a huge amount of people are not impressed. I ended up moving the business completely away from near my cousin, which meant I had to let the staff go there. They walked the day I told them even though I was giving them notice, no fighting for their job, nothing. I saw them exit my cousins office, so again she probably influenced them and thought I wouldn't be able to cope, but what she forgets is I built this business up from nothing, I know it inside and out, plus nothing gets past me. It was completely the right thing to do and was made a lot easier after I discovered something which shocked me, a few words were said to me which were actually quite personal, but quite laughable.