My Wife CHEATED And Was Giving My Money To Her AP!

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]All right, gang. Here we go. Another sad story. My ex-wife lost a whole company, and I don't feel bad about it. Before you judge me, let me tell you what happened and what she did. I met her in 2017.

[00:00:15]I was 38. [music] She was 33. We both lived up in Rockland, Maine, mid-coast working harbor. I run a family lobster business out of Spruce Head. My brother Mark holds his own license.

[00:00:29]My son Cole holds his own license, too.

[00:00:32]Three boats, eight crew, one company. We fish under our lobster company. She was doing bookkeeping for a small accounting practice in town. We met at the Maine Lobster Festival vendor row. I saw her across the booths, and I was done. We dated for about 2 years, got married in 2019 at the courthouse in Rockland. She came on as our company bookkeeper a month later. We are not stupid up here. You bring someone into a family business, you put it on paper. She signed two documents the week before the wedding.

[00:01:09]The first was a premarital agreement under Maine title 19A. That one kept my pre-marriage equity carved out from the marital estate.

[00:01:19]The second was an LLC operating agreement under title 31. The second one is what mattered later. Her name went on the books as a 30% LLC member. Her stake was conditioned on two things: no infidelity, no embezzlement. If she breached either one, the family bought her stake back >> [music] >> at 20% of fair market value, not a dollar. A fair number, but a painful one. She had her own attorney for both documents, a woman out of Portland, 20 years on family law work. That attorney sat her down for two hours before she ever signed. She walked her through every clause line by line. She made her initial every page. [music] She made her sign a separate acknowledgement of independent counsel. She knew exactly what she was agreeing to. I didn't force her. For about 3 years, it was good. We bought a shingle cape near the harbor.

[00:02:20]She handled the books, paid the crew, ran the office. I ran my boat in the dock. Mark ran his boat. Cole ran his.

[00:02:29]Combined, we were grossing a little over a million a year after fuel, bait, sternman cut, dock fees, payments, we netted enough. Nobody up here gets rich on lobster, but the kids ate, the trucks ran, and the boat stayed in the water.

[00:02:47]Then late 2022 came around. I wasn't even looking for anything. I was filing receipts in the company expense binder one morning. A hotel folio fell out of the company expense file. Not a marina hotel, a Bangor place 2 [music] hours inland from our dock. A weekday stay she had charged to the company card. She had told me she was at a co-op manager's training that week. I was a little taken aback by what I saw. I didn't say anything to her at first. I needed to know more first, so I started paying attention. She was on her phone constantly that fall. Let me interrupt for a second. Guys, I know it always starts with the phone. She kept the screen turned away from me. She started taking long lunch breaks during co-op vendor meetings. She was vague about who she was meeting and where. I started pulling the company truck logs at night.

[00:03:45]Her work mileage was double what it should have been. I checked the company card statement against her calendar. Two more hotel charges showed up that I had not seen. I sat down with her on the porch [music] in early 2023.

[00:04:00]I told her what I had. She broke down.

[00:04:04]She admitted to an emotional affair. The guy's name was Wayne, the buying agent at our co-op. He bought every pound of lobster off all three of our boats.

[00:04:14]He had been to our house for cookouts.

[00:04:17]He had been at our wedding. He was her oldest contact in the industry. [music] I asked her if it had turned physical.

[00:04:24]She said no. I told her she had two choices. She could move out and we would file or we would do counseling hard for a year. I told her the operating agreement stayed in force either way.

[00:04:39]She picked the counseling. We did 6 months with the therapist in Portland. I tried to rebuild the trust. [music] I went to the sessions. I did the homework. I gave her a second chance because I thought we could come back from it. That is on me. Things looked clean for a while. She stopped taking the long lunches. Wayne got moved to a different territory at the co-op. I thought we were past it. For about 18 months, I thought we were solid. Then the numbers started to feel off. Our quarterly tax bill came in higher than the year before. That made no sense. Our gross was flat. If anything, fuel had eaten more of our margin that year. I asked her about it. She said our boat supply line had run hot. She showed me a spreadsheet, Coastal Marine Supply, line item after line item. 6 grand, 8 grand, 5 grand, month after month. I had never bought anything from that supply company in my life. I drove down to the dock and asked the crew. Mark had not bought from them. Cole had not bought from them. Our usual supplier in Stonington [music] had not heard of them. That was the moment I knew. I did not tell her. I called my CPA in Portland that night from the truck.

[00:06:01]>> [music] >> I told him what I had seen. He told me to stop touching anything in QuickBooks.

[00:06:07]He told me to lock down access from her first thing in the morning. He told me to call a forensic accountant in the morning. I called reputable company first thing the next morning, a forensic CPA out of Portland. She had a CFE on top of her CPA. She had a CFF on top of that. 22 years on fraud cases in Maine.

[00:06:30]She had handled bookkeeper fraud at three other family shops up here. She told me what the engagement would look like, a targeted vendor master review, two to six weeks, a flat retainer of 15,000 to start. She told me to keep my mouth shut and act normal at home. She started the review the next week. I changed the QuickBooks password through the CPA, not through my wife. I told her our IT guy was patching something on the system. She seemed to buy it. Three weeks later, the forensic CPA called me.

[00:07:05]She asked me to come down to her office that afternoon. I drove down from the dock that same day. She had a binder on her desk 3 in thick. She had it. The supply company was a phantom vendor. It had been added by my wife's login on a date my wife was offsite. The address was a PO box in Owls Head. The checks routed to a credit union account up in Belfast. The signature on the back of the checks was Wayne's name. The CPA had the cleared check images already pulled.

[00:07:38]She had cross-matched the vendor address against employee records. It was not a real address. There was no W-9 on file.

[00:07:48]There was no EIN. There was no purchase order on any of the invoices. There were no receiving signatures from anyone at the dock. There was no insurance certificate on file. Every invoice was a round number. Every invoice came in from a Gmail address, not a business domain.

[00:08:08]Every invoice number was sequential as if the vendor had no other clients. The invoices were always paid within 7 days of being entered. She had been the one entering them and approving them. She had been the one reconciling the bank account at month-end. That is a textbook one-person fraud setup. The total over 22 months came to 153,000.

[00:08:35]That is 153,000 routed out of my family company to my wife's AP while we were in counseling.

[00:08:43]She had been booking it as boat supplies and subcontractor services. I sat in my truck and read the report multiple times. I was stunned. Then I called my brother. I told him what was in the report. He didn't say a word for a bit.

[00:09:00]>> [music] >> I asked him if he was still on the line.

[00:09:03]He said, "Yes, just in shock." Then I called my son. Cole was offshore that day on his own boat. I had to wait for him to get back to the harbor and call me back. We all met at the dock that night after the boats came in. I showed them the report. Mark stopped reading halfway through and walked outside. Cole did not say anything for 10 minutes.

[00:09:27]Then he said, "She was at his birthday party last August." Nobody slept that night. The forensic CPA had also flagged a second pattern.

[00:09:37]>> [music] >> She had pulled the co-op weight tickets going back two years. Wayne had been writing our boat tickets >> [music] >> at 6:50 a pound. The actual co-op board price that month was 5.85.

[00:09:51]The 65-cent gap on our poundage kicked back to the shell vendor.

[00:09:56]>> [music] >> The co-op paid at the higher price. The company pocketed the gap. Then the supply company was billing my family company for fake supplies. She was watching the kickback through our own books. It was the lobster 207 case in miniature. Real Maine lobster fraud.

[00:10:14]Real Maine ledger trick. She had read about it in a Down East article in 2021.

[00:10:21]I know because I found a printout in her desk drawer. The forensic CPA also walked me through the parking lot piece.

[00:10:29]She had someone pull the dockyard CCTV at the co-op buyer station. She had asked the harbormaster for the same week the last check cleared. His truck was parked next to my wife's truck three nights in a row.

[00:10:43]>> [music] >> 23 minutes one night. 41 minutes another. An hour and 7 minutes the third. The CCTV was on a city dock on the city's hard drive. She did not know it existed. The CPA had the file ready for the state attorney. That same week I called a divorce attorney in Camden. A man in his early 60s. 30 years on the panhandle bar. He looked at the operating agreement and the premarital agreement. He looked at the forensic report. He told me the operating agreement made this easier than a divorce alone. He cited Hutchinson versus Gomez 2026 ME 40. The most recent Maine ruling. That case held business interests carved out by contract stay separate, including any increases in value during the marriage. She had no claim to the family company under that agreement. She had no claim to my brother's stake or my son's stake. She had her own 30% LLC stake. That stake was now in breach under both clauses.

[00:11:52]Infidelity clause breached. Embezzlement clause breached. The operating agreement triggered the buyout. 20% of fair market value paid out over 36 months. Her stake would have sold for around 360,000 at market. The buyout came to 72,000 on paper, less the restitution she owed for the embezzlement, less her share of the legal fees. Net to her was going to be close to zero. There was a criminal piece on top of that. My attorney walked me through Maine Title 17-A. Section 353 covers theft by unauthorized taking. The statute expressly covers what used to be called embezzlement. 153,000 is well over the class B felony threshold. That is up to 10 years in state prison [music] and a $20,000 fine. Section 703 covers forgery. Each forged endorsement on a Coastal Marine check is a separate count. That is a class C felony, 5 years each. The forensic CPA had counted 47 forged checks. Section 57 covers accomplice liability. That brought Wayne in as a principal on the same class B count. Section 151 covers conspiracy as a backup charge. Section [music] 352 paragraph 5 lets the state aggregate it into one count. That kept it to one class B felony instead of 47 class D counts.

[00:13:29]The math on her side was about to get very ugly. Class B in Maine sits two notches below murder on the sentencing grid. It is the same class as armed robbery and burglary of a dwelling.

[00:13:43]That is not a slap on the wrist. That is hard time on a felony record forever. My attorney filed for divorce one morning.

[00:13:51]He filed the LLC breach action the same afternoon. He sent the forensic report to the Knox County DA that same night.

[00:14:00]Then he served her at our house through a process server. She read the petition over coffee at the kitchen table. She did not say a word. She called Wayne from the porch. His phone went straight to voicemail. He had figured out something was coming the day before. He had already cleared out his desk at the co-op. She called her sister in Bangor that afternoon. Her sister did not pick up. She slept in the guest room that night. She was gone the next day.

[00:14:31]The criminal track moved faster than I expected. A detective from Knox County called me back inside 72 hours. He had the forensic CPA report in front of him.

[00:14:43]He had already pulled the City Dock CCTV.

[00:14:46]He had already pulled the credit union records in Belfast. He took my statement in person at the firm. He took the forensic CPA statement the next day.

[00:14:57]The state attorney filed direct charges nine days later. Direct information, no grand jury required in [music] Maine for a class B. One count of theft by unauthorized taking aggregated. [music] 47 counts of forgery. One count of conspiracy as backup. Wayne was charged the same day as a principal under section 57. She was arraigned the following [music] month. She pleaded not guilty at the arraignment. Her attorney moved to suppress the QuickBooks audit log at the hearing. The judge denied the motion in open court. The audit log was not protected work product. She pleaded out 3 months in, 18 months at the Maine Correctional Center, 3 years of probation after release, 153,000 restitution garnished out of her buyout, a permanent felony on her record. Wayne pleaded out 2 weeks later. He took 2 years on the conspiracy and accomplice counts. He lost his commercial fishing buyer license. The co-op banned him from every dock on the mid-coast. His own wife had filed for divorce on him the week he was charged. She had her own kids to think about. Wayne had nowhere to live and no industry left to work in.

[00:16:20]The civil case wrapped up about 4 months after the criminal pleas. The court enforced the operating agreement under Title 31, Section 1521.

[00:16:31]Section 1521 is permissive on operating agreements between members. The conduct-based equity buyout held up clean. The court cited Hutchinson versus Gomez in the written order. Her 30% stake reverted to the family at the contract buyout price. The buyout proceeds were applied directly against her restitution balance. She walked away with nothing in equity and a balance still owed. The court also issued findings of fact on the embezzlement piece. Those findings followed her into the criminal sentencing. My attorney requested findings under the active management doctrine. That was the only argument she had left, [music] and the court denied it cleanly. The premarital agreement's appreciation waiver was explicit. Hutchinson made that kind of waiver enforceable under Maine law. Our family insurance carrier paid the employee [music] dishonesty bond claim.

[00:17:31]I had bought the bond 5 years back as part of our business package. It covered up to 100,000 on internal theft. The claim adjuster came up to the dock and took our statement on site. That covered 80,000 of the loss within 30 days. The carrier subrogated the rest against her separately. That added another 73,000 to her personal judgment. She did not have it and she will not have it for a long time. I keep the company, Mark keeps his boat, Cole keeps his, the way it was supposed to be.

[00:18:06]>> [music] >> Wayne is living with his mother somewhere outside Augusta. My ex-wife is doing 18 months at the Maine Correctional Center. She is working laundry there for 48 cents an hour. When she gets out, she is going back to her sister's place in Bangor. There is a permanent felony on her record. There is a six-figure restitution balance she will be [music] paying for a decade. She is 41 years old. She had 30% of a family company 18 months ago. She had a husband, a house near the harbor, and a clean life. A few of my friends have asked me if I feel guilty. I don't. I gave her a second chance after that hotel folio. I went to counseling for 6 months. I tried to rebuild the trust.

[00:18:54]She signed that operating agreement before we ever got married. I didn't force her. She had her own attorney. She knew exactly what she was agreeing to.

[00:19:04]And then she went and did it anyway. She thought she would not get caught. She thought the rules did not apply to her.

[00:19:11]She was wrong. I protected myself. That is not revenge. That is just common sense. If there is one thing I want you to take from this, it is this. Trust your gut. Document everything.

[00:19:25]>> [music] >> If you bring someone into your business, put it on paper first. Use a real attorney, not a courthouse form off the internet. Pay the retainer. Pay the forensic CPA when something feels off.

[00:19:39]Pay the dockyard bill if you have to. If something in the books smells wrong, it is wrong. Round numbers month after month are not normal. In some cases, Gmail addresses may be suspicious on vendor invoices. A vendor that nobody at the dock has ever seen is not a vendor.

[00:20:00]A spreadsheet your bookkeeper hands you instead of the raw file is suspect. Pull the raw file yourself. Pull the bank statement straight from the bank, not from her email. Match every cleared check to a real invoice and a real signature. If she gets nervous when you ask, that is the answer. That is when you call a forensic CPA, not your wife's brother. That is when you change the password through the CPA, not through her. That is when you keep your mouth shut and act normal at all times. Most embezzlement gets caught when the spouse stops being polite. Some people don't change. They just get better at hiding it. In my opinion, she was a sloppy cheater and a sloppy thief. That is all I will say about that. She got caught.

[00:20:51]Now she is suffering the consequences.

[00:20:54]Men, just pay attention to the books. If your spouse is the only one looking at the ledger, that is a problem. A second set of eyes is not paranoia. It is just how a real family business runs. Get a CPA who is not your spouse to look at the year-end numbers. Get a fidelity bond on whoever is touching the checks.

[00:21:17]Run a vendor master report once a quarter. If there is a name on that list you do not know, that is the answer. A real family business runs on trust, but it survives on documentation. Thanks for tuning in. I will see you in the next one.