Growing up, and even into my early adult years, I continued to play Diablo II because I liked it. At the time, and for the longest time, Diablo III wasn’t out (splitting hairs, 2? 3?), so it really was the newest Diablo game out. I’m pretty sure that it was here that I mentioned that I could blog about some of the more… colorful experiences that I’ve had as a result of the game, much as I like it, and much as I like Diablo II: Resurrected. Almost all of them came about as a result of one person who I had entered into a long-distance relationship with, actually met, and realized not long after that this person was not someone that I needed to be around. The relationship did not last far beyond that point, for which I continue to be thankful leading up to this day.

One of the experiences that I describe is the fact that I had to turn this man’s mother in to their home state for food stamp fraud. For some reason, she felt like she “trusted” me enough to tell me how she was literally getting one over on the system — having friends of hers tell the state or provide documentation to the state about them allegedly giving her money or helping her pay her bills because she had been telling the state that her children’s father (whom she still shared minor children with) was not in their lives and was not providing them with any support when he was out of the house for weeks at a time due to his job, not telling the state that she still had a joint bank account with him that his pay was deposited into, not declaring his income anywhere on her application and getting the maximum amount of food stamps for her family size.

I sought out counsel as to how I would go about informing their home state of this, which I did not take lightly because of the simple fact that I did not want to do it. I literally wish it hadn’t been happening. But it was, and I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to continue to live with myself if I didn’t report it, because had she been honest about her husband’s income and her access to it she would not have been eligible for the food stamps that she had been getting at all. I mean, this isn’t exactly something that you plan for. But it got reported, and I gave their home state all the information that I myself had been given. Someone working the investigation made contact with me to let me know that one had indeed been started based on that information, and that apparently she’d moved out of the state within days of this. She packed up that fast.

I mean, I can only imagine what he must actually have come home to, as he’d had no idea about any of this.

And peculiarly, events with this one family were the only outliers in otherwise good experiences that I’ve had playing the Blizzard games that I play, let alone Diablo II. The rest of my experiences have been pretty great.