by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Kathie Lee Menninger, a site agent with ICI Homes in Julington Creek, thought she was safe.
But, when she was pressured by a customer to go upstairs to show the second floor and leave another customer below, she lost more than her valuables.
She lost her sense of security.
“On the afternoon of Aug. 4, I was working in my model when two women came in,” said Menninger, who has been with ICI since February. “I was on the phone with a customer at the time and they started asking a lot of questions while I was on the phone. I told them to go on through the model and I would be with them in a minute.”
The two women came back through and started asking more questions while Menninger was still on the phone.
“I got off the phone and joined them. One of the women wanted to know all the options in the home,” she said. “I told her I would give her a sheet of them because I can’t remember all of them.
“She went through the downstairs asking ‘Is this an option? If not, what would it be? She then asked if I would go upstairs with her and do the same thing. She was very insistent and I was lulled into the security because it was two women I was dealing with.
“The other lady was standing right next to us, but she didn’t come upstairs with us.”
When she came down from showing the upstairs, the second lady was waiting by the entrance. Menninger didn’t think anything of it.
They left and she went on about her day.
“Because it was two women, I felt safe,” said Menninger. “Had it been two men, I would have a different posture.”
The next day, she opened her purse to use her credit card and first noticed her driver’s license was missing. Then, she realized her credit cards, debit/credit card and social security card were all missing.
She had been robbed.
“My purse had been on the floor under my desk, so they had enough time to go find it. It was not locked up,” she said. “I was lucky I didn’t get hurt, but if they hadn’t found what they were looking for it could have turned violent.”
She racked her brain trying to think when it could of happened and then she remembered the woman and how she said she was shopping for her mother and wouldn’t give her name or fill out any information on herself. Also, after her bombardment of questions, she didn’t take any information about the house with her when she left, which Menninger thought was strange.
She also realized it was the only time that day that she had left a customer downstairs while she went upstairs with the other.
“I first called my husband because I needed to get the 800 numbers to call the companies to report the cards stolen,” she said. “The incident happened between 1 and 2 p.m. and they were already using my cards by 2:30 p.m. The credit card companies could tell me the date, time and zip code that charges were made. The first charge was in St. Augustine where they charged gasoline to fill up two cars. They then went to Red Lobster and spent $200 on my American Express card. Then they went to Disney World.”
To clean up this mess was not an easy task. Menninger had to fill out a fraud report for each card explaining which charges weren’t hers; one of the cards even charged her $50 deductible. Her bank account had been flagged as stolen, but not closed. A teller failed to see the flag and allowed the criminals to cash a $1,200 check out of Menninger’s account. The bank soon realized the error and fixed it, but she then had to completely close the account to keep it from happening again.
Menninger called the police and filled out a report and then started calling site agents to tell them what happened and for them to watch out.
“I told them to call four or five more agents to spread the word,” she said. “I think people would be astounded at the number of site agents who keep their purse right near them. They need to put it in a locked place if they have one or leave it in their car.
“The two women who entered the model asked questions that were appropriate and knew what they were doing. Marge VanDeBoe saw them at Pablo Bay the day before they came to Julington Creek.
“They are professionals, and they’re pros in an area that we aren’t.”