There was and may still be a con man in or near our community with the name
or alias of James Barnes that has conned several people. He may still be active
in this area.
Let me explain (please excuse the editing and other possible errors):
Me and my mother had all of out belongings including family photo albums,
musical instruments, money, jewelry, clothes and Cocktail and parakeets all
stolen on June, 28th, 2000, in Justice, IL by a man from The Pennysaver we
had hired by the name of James Barnes, a White male age 38-46 with a bald head,
2 young sons that may or may not have attended school in the district and an odd
hobby of making a living by riding parrots he owned on remote control cars with
perches mounted on them at the time.
He would drive us in an older van circa 1980-1995 around after we sold our car
in 1999 and could not aford cabs.
We knew him for apx. 3 months.
He offered when we were moving in June to store all of our belongings
in his garage, he lived in a 2 story house by the Justice Trailer Park and supposedly
had cousins there.
When we came to claim our belongings, they were all gone from his garage and house.
The authorities in Justice did nothing to help us. We were homeless for 2 weeks
as our money was stolen and we could not pay our security deposit at our apt building,
the remainder of it,.
Catholic Charities helped us out for 2 weeks, we then stayed with friends for a month
in Midlothian, IL before moving into an apartment several blocks away.
I was 15 at the time, my mother around 54, I am now 30 years old, my mother around 69.
I have type 1 diabetes, stage 3 CKD and Aspergers.My mother has Lupus and other ailments,
Around $3,000 was also stolen out of our bank account at the time.
He had transferred all of our stuff to a nearby Public Storage facility and we had tracked him down,
the manager had told us our stuff would be safe until morning but he had hightailed a car into the storage
facility.
Too late. We had also already paid him to store our stuff. The Justice Police could not do anything for us.
The mayor's son had ran away, he could or rather did not want to do anything either,
I wanted to, again, bring this con artist to your attention.
James Barnes may not even be his real name but a Polish or Greek last name
with between 8-012 letters.
All of our belongings were never recovered.
There is no justice in Justice.
Thank you for your time and patience in reading this
R.K.
