91. Never Brag About Your Crimes
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I started renting a house about 5 years ago. I had always lived in apartments, and I was excited to finally have some space and privacy. This was ruined within the first week by my jerk neighbor, who made my 4 years at that house miserable.
He’s in his late 40s or early 50s, and despite seeming like a fully functional adult, he has never lived outside of his parents’ home. He spends every possible minute cleaning or admiring his truck, so he practically lives in the driveway.
When he isn’t bragging about some dumb move that he just pulled on someone, he is hitting on the wives and daughters of anyone on the street.
I moved in during the winter and started noticing footsteps in my yard in the morning. I found out that he was walking into my yard to look in my windows and see what I was watching/playing at night.
I bought a simple security system and put a few cameras up, and this stopped. Then he started mowing my side yard. He would mow it the day after I did.
I asked my landlord about this and was told that Mike (the creepy neighbor) considered it his property and kept arguing about the property line. It’s just grass, so I let it go. If I had guests over, he would stare at them and sometimes make comments when I wasn’t around to hear him.
If I was in the backyard, he would have a reason to be in his backyard. If I was in the house or the front yard, he was in his driveway, where he could see into my living room. It came to a head when I caught him sending his dog into my front yard one morning instead of letting it out into his fenced-in backyard like he normally would.
I told him to stay on his side of the property line, and he said that he was going to break into my house and smash my cameras and computer. Cops were called, and he got off with a warning. Last fall, I told my landlord that I was going to move out.
During the conversation, I found out that Mike was on workers comp for an “injury” that he got at work and that he was now bragging about how he was using his workers’ comp checks to set up his own under-the-table landscaping business.
I waited for a day when he had his new work truck and trailer, with his name and number on the door, and I made a video of him working on his yard and carrying 50 bags of mulch and climbing ladders. I sent videos and pictures to the fraud department of the workers’ comp office.
Today I just found out that he was found guilty of fraud, ordered to pay back every dollar, and may end up in jail. I am happily living in a new place that has a lot of land between me and the neighbors.
