From Beautifully Cruel (the story of Tracey Richter-Roberts):
[after she had divorced the physician Tracey met] a dentist, Robert Kellner (pseudonym), was a Loyola alumnus. He’d done a one-year residency there, with four and a half years of surgical training at that same well-respected Chicago hospital where Tracey’s friend worked. A board-certified dentist, Dr. Kellner was qualified to conduct oral and maxillofacial (trauma, reconstruction, and cosmetic) surgeries. “If you ever need any help around your office,” Tracey told Dr. Kellner after the introduction, “I am available. I can help.” It’s important to note that many sources from this period of Tracey’s life claim she wore revealing clothing, especially her blouses, which often showed more than a respectable amount of cleavage, accentuating her rather large breast implants. Many said that Tracey dressed to show off what she had.
“And she started by reprinting some of my forms, my consent forms and stuff like that,” Dr. Kellner recalled later during a court proceeding. “You’ll need a new computer,” Tracey told her new boss one day. “So get one,” he said. He handed Tracey the business credit card. Tracey ordered the computer, but had it delivered to her house. “I need to configure it,” she explained when the dentist and his assistant, weeks afterward, asked where the computer was.
At first, Tracey was great. Any issues with the computers, she was able to fix. Dr. Kellner said at this time they had a great working relationship. As time moved forward, an attraction mounting, perhaps against his better judgment, Robert Kellner began taking Tracey out on dates.
Tracey made a few bizarre moves here and there, but she seemed to be helping out. She had even convinced Dr. Kellner that she had devised some sort of program in the company’s computer system to generate invoices and letters on his stationery head easily, without having to bother the doctor all the time with paperwork. All the local practices were doing it, Tracey explained. “We need a fine-point, a medium-point, and a felt-tip” pen, Tracey said. She came into the office with papers in her hand. “I want you to sign your name and see what looks like the best [signature], and I am going to scan it into the computer so the girls can just use your signature on your doctor’s letters.”
It wasn’t long, however, before Tracey, according to the doctor’s testimony during a court proceeding, began making fraudulent charges on the business credit cards, using that signature-signing device to facilitate her crimes. One charge was a trip to Australia (no doubt that first time she flew out and married Michael Roberts—this, mind you, at the same time she was also having sex with Robert Kellner). Then she charged a continuing-education course and a weekend getaway at an expensive resort. Dr. Kellner called the travel agency when he found out that a trip to Australia had been charged to his account. He was furious. “I’m not paying for this,” he said. “I’m disputing these charges.” The agency explained that Tracey Roberts had charged the trip under what was his clear authority. He had signed off on the charge, literally. How could she do this? he asked. “We have a fax here,” the travel agent clarified, “with a contract that says you agreed to the trip.” Tracey had taken his office stationery/letterhead and, along with his computerized signature, she produced letters, contracts, and other documents with his signature, one of which gave her the authority to charge any trips she wanted.
Given that signatures, however obtained, can easily be scanned and applied to new documents with the simplest PC programs, why does anyone still accept a signed document as evidence that a person signed it? Why isn’t there, for example, at a minimum some sort of video required showing the person actually signing? In the smartphone and webcam age, it wouldn’t be tough to gather these videos.
There is a bit more in the book about these two and the scanned signature…
It was after the travel agency/fraud fiasco and the $18,000 loan he had given her.
When [Tracey] got there, his assistant was at the front desk, … “When you leaving?” Tracey asked the woman as she waited for him to finish up what he was doing in the back office. “I need to talk to him alone.” … “Hey, she’s dressed like she’s going out and she smells like a French whore,” the assistant told Dr. Kellner.
When the assistant left, Tracey went back to see Dr. Kellner. “Look, I’m sorry for everything,” she said, … “I have this fantasy,” Tracey explained further, “and I want to make love to you while we’re under nitrous oxide.”
Tracey had Robert Kellner go first. He sat in the chair, put the mask on, and inhaled.
Inside the room, the dentist had a tackle box of meds he used during surgeries. … Tracey mentioned that maybe she should start an IV of something in order to get him to that special place sooner. They had not done anything sexual by this point. He allowed Tracey to “start an IV in my arm and give me a little Versed.” … Versed is also a drug said to “cause forgetfulness of the surgery or procedure.” … One of the last things Dr. Kellner remembered, when later asked in court what happened next, was Tracey walking toward him with the tackle box in her hand. Yet, as he watched her approach, he realized she had a “napkin wrapped around the handle” of the box—so as not to, he later guessed, leave any fingerprints behind.
Next thing the dentist recalled, he was waking up at four o’clock the next morning. Tracey was gone.
The letter, in the form of a “contractual agreement,” was written on the doctor’s letterhead and generated by his office. Dr. Kellner had signed it—and so had Tracey: This agreement between [Dr. Kellner] and Tracey Richter Roberts—which meant she was married to Michael when the sexual escapade in the office took place—a patient and occasional contracted employee of [Dr. Kellner], is entered into [in August 1997]. … Whereas, Dr. [Kellner] admits to willfully misrepresenting his ability to resolve TMJ pain that Mrs. Tracey Roberts began to experience, the contractual agreement continued, with the sole intention of getting [her] to consent to a “fictional” procedure that would require conscious sedation. … [Kellner] secretly intended to remove and replace articles of Tracey Roberts’ clothing, fondle her breasts and genitals, take photographs of her, and make subliminal suggestions. It went on to say he admitted to having an “addictive personality . . . from deviant sexual behavior to pharmacological.” … The “contract” went on to describe the incident in graphic detail. It claimed Tracey had awoken after the anesthesia mask accidentally slipped off her face during the TMJ surgery to find herself “clad in red thigh-high stockings, no panties, and stiletto heeled pumps that were too small.” It also said her dress had been pulled down below her neckline to expose her breasts and that the dentist was straddling her, one of her legs up on his shoulder. He was “masturbating onto her chest,” the contract said. … Dr. Kellner offered to “reach a mutual agreement” with Tracey that might “spare” her the “embarrassment, humiliation, and stress” of pressing charges against him. … Beyond a settlement fee of $150,000, Dr. Kellner was to pay Tracey’s way to a conference and annual meeting, hotel, air fare, expenses, “and purchase two round trip tickets for Mr. and Mrs. Roberts to travel to Australia this Christmas.”
When Tracey realized the doctor was not going to pay her shakedown, she turned around and filed a civil lawsuit against him. In it, she claimed the supposed sexual assault was malpractice.
The litigation keeps attorneys busy for a while, but let’s circle back to why a signature has any value at all! If not notarized, why?
More: Read Beautifully Cruel
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