Hello BG. Long time lurk, etc etc.
Got a neat little story here.
I moved into my current place at the end of June, for the year prior to that, I've been fed up with my roommate, some trashbag waste of space guy who does nothing but tries to pick up girls over the internet all day or glorify the freemasons/navy.
We've known each other since preschool, and we USED to be great friends. Either way, he paid the electricity/internet/phone bill and part of rent, and I made the rest in rent... This was sort of a stupid habit I guess but I dismissed it because his job at the least popular bar in town as a bartender pays absolute crap, so he could hardly afford enough to fully pay half the rent.
Anyways, after I moved to the new place, I went up to the phone/internet provider to notify them of my change of address. Now for about 4 months the roommate has been paying it and telling me "don't worry I took care of it" everytime I'd bring it up, and he'd show me the receipts too, so I figured today would be no different.
They slapped me in the face with a $300 bill of long distance calls, all under MY name and MY name only. I figured "Okay, he didnt pay last month's, no problem." and told her to hold it, but cancel the line till my payday, the following wednesday. She said she'd have the full current bill for me by then.
Fast forward to that wednesday, I come up, this time my dad decides to come raise hell because I don't make long distance calls, I just use my phone for work, etc. Some kid is at the counter, I ask him to bring up my bill(I'm expecting something between 400-600 here) and he says "Um.. total comes to $1,753.32."
Both my dad and I just sat there for about 5 minutes, wondering wtf he just said.
Turns out my roommate has been calling AUSTRALIA from a basic $15 land line every day when I'd be at work, on my account. He even somehow got them to change my phone number without my consent, because some drunk Aussie guy kept calling him back, something about his ex-girlfriend, etc.
Yeah, so I file a lawsuit on his ass, I take him to court. He doesn't show,and I automatically win. Which would be great if it wasn't for two things:
1) I got a surprise SECOND bill adding about $1,100 to the total, meaning he rang up damn near $3k in long distance alone in the span of a month. Judge couldn't do anything about it, said I'd have to refile the lawsuit.
2) The reason he wasn't a no-show? The douchebag got the notice, tried to steal $2500 from his own mother(who takes care of her ailing mother and granddaughter), abandoned his cat in his car at the local Wal-Mart, and hopped a plane to Australia.
So now I'm sitting here, and I can't afford to pay this bill. I'm not sure what I can do about it, either. Any suggestions BG?
Also, the phone operator said he changed my phone number overnight, she doesn't remember the conversation, but is covering her ass by saying "I'd definately have asked for a social security number, so he must have taken that from you." Which is odd, seeing as how I've painstakingly made sure he never got it from me.
tl;dr notes: Roommate rang up almost 3k in phone bills under my name then fled the country, wtf do I do?