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Inside, there’s a PDF file and a subfolder entitled “Attorney.” I click on the PDF and find it’s a legal form from the State of Washington, King County, entitled “Petition of Protection Order” that’s dated about two and a half years ago. Hannah’s name has been filled in as Petitioner, while “Greg Smith aka Angus Wellborn” is identified as Respondent.
In the body of the form, there are several possible boxes to check. According to the ones marked by Hannah, she was seeking protection from an “intimate partner” who’d committed “unlawful harassment” in the form of a “single act/threat of violence, including a malicious and intentional threat causing substantial emotional distress.” In the space provided for a brief explanation, Hannah typed in the following:
“My supposed ex-boyfriend of two months, whom I knew as Angus Wellborn but later found out is Greg Smith, is a con artist/scammer who preys on vulnerable women for financial gain. Angus pursued me enthusiastically on a dating app during a vulnerable time in my life and pretended to fall head over heels in love with me, even going so far as to propose to me. By doing so, he quickly charmed me out of half the small inheritance I’d recently received from my late grandmother. Also, unbeknownst to me at the time, Angus stole my confidential information and used it to take out a loan and several credit cards in my name.
“Before I realized what he was up to, I glimpsed a long list of names and numbers on his laptop screen, when he didn’t realize I’d entered the room. The formatting of the numbers looked like social security and credit card numbers to me. I was so freaked out, I quickly left the room and peeked in his wallet to see what credit cards were in there, and that’s when I found out his real name. At that point, I was so freaked out, I pretended to leave for the store and never came back. When I got home, I did some research and discovered there’d been tons of new financial activity under my name, none of it initiated by me and all of it in the two months since Angus had come into my life. Needless to say, I was heartbroken, humiliated, and furious.
“When I confronted Angus, I did it over the phone. That turned out to be a lucky thing, because he morphed into a totally different person during that confrontation. He screamed and threatened to come after me and ‘shut me up forever’ if I told the police anything about what I’d seen. I should mention he’s a large, strong, athletic man who works as a personal trainer, so I didn’t doubt he could make good on his threats.
“After several sleepless nights, I eventually decided to do the right thing and go to the police to report everything, if only to stop him from doing the same thing to the next woman, but they told me it was a ‘he said/she said’ situation, since I didn’t think to document what I’d seen before running out. I did show them the loans and credit cards that had been taken out in my name, but they said there was zero proof it was Angus who did all that. It’s now been a week since I went to the police and nobody has contacted me as part of an investigation, so I don’t think they’re doing anything. But now I’m terrified Angus will somehow find out I went to the police and come after me or my loved ones. I’m doing what I can to feel safe: looking for a new job and apartment and also shopping at a new grocery store. But I’d feel safer knowing he’s not legally allowed to come near me, ever again. Please help me.”
I close my eyes and try to contain the firestorm swirling inside me. The thumping urge inside my veins to destroy this terrorizer of Hannah and menace to society. Did the police ever bother to investigate him? Did Hannah get her requested protective order? I scroll down and note the space at the bottom of the form for Hannah’s signature is empty. Also, there’s no signature or stamp by the court in issuance of an order. Is there a fully signed version of this form and protective order on file somewhere, or is this unsigned draft as far as Hannah got in the process?
I click on the subfolder labeled “Attorney.” Inside, there’s a series of emails between Hannah and an attorney from a Seattle-based legal aid organization. Hannah’s initial email is a “To Whom It May Concern” missive that requests someone please look over the paperwork she’s filled out and is planning to file, in order to confirm she did everything right. The attorney who replied asks some questions about Hannah’s vulnerable state upon meeting Angus, which prompts Hannah to write: “In the month prior, my beloved grandmother died, and my sister was in a horrible car crash. In retrospect, I think Angus targeted me specifically because I’d posted a tribute to my grandmother on Instagram. I think he hoped, correctly, that she’d left me some money.”
