Love Letters

[1st person, Rosary's POV]

I used to be majored in political science, and during the start of the fall semester, our professor told us about an assignment that we were to work on for the rest of the semester. 

Everyone in the lecture hall was excited and she didn't even need the projector to have everyone pay attention to the board. The few words written in the board were enough to gather the attention of all forty students in that room.

The professor got permission from the director of the university, and with additional permission from the city prison, we were able to work with the inmates deemed safe enough to interact with. Each student was to choose an inmate and ask questions about their crimes, their stories, and their times in prison. It was essentially half psychological project, half learning about how their life choices, the laws, and the prison system affected them. 

I remember being very, unmotivated with my studies lately. I used to like studying law and majored in political science, not because I wanted to become a lawyer, but simply because I liked organizing. It sounds like a small goal, and not very ambitious, but I had used to want to work for city hall, and that prestige felt like enough for me to keep going even though I felt like I was losing interest. 

However, as I sat in that classroom between other classmates, being handed a stack of papers, taking one and passing the rest along, I brushed the thought off at first. Buried it with a new thought and idea that I thought might reinvigorate my passion for studying law, as I looked at the paper that had a list of names and inmate numbers.

The professor was telling us that we would need to write ten-page research paper to turn in at the end of the semester, and I remembered that I could only write a ton of whatever interested me a lot.

Around me, I heard other students talking about picking those who committed break-ins, or got arrested for self defense framed as violence. The typically interesting ones.

"Ooh! This guy got arrested for drunk-driving!"

"Katherine, take a look at this one. She was arrested for stabbing her boyfriend, there's definitely a story there." 

I heard them all chattering away easily.

One of my old classmates was talking about wanting to write to this guy who was labeled a sociopath, and another wanted to writer her paper on this guy who was a doctor that committed a lot of malpractice. 

On her laptop, she already doing a bunch of research. Everyone else was looking for all the inmates with the cool backstories and interesting crimes, searching up the names from the list of inmates that had not been picked yet. But me? I wanted to do something a little different. I felt like if I did something that was different from everyone else, then I would feel, awake again. 

On my own laptop, I began searching through the list inmates for whoever committed a crime that was not the usual crime people think of. That of course was white collar crimes. Tax-evasion, money-laundering, fraud, identity theft, embezzlement, etc. 

If you're wondering whether Titus was on this list? No, actually, he wasn't. 

"Mrs. Henderson? May I try someone not on the list?" 

As all the other students were at their seats or moved to sit next to friends, having already made there picks, I had to go up and ask my professor if there were any inmates with white collar crimes that we could choose from. 

"All the other students will be writing to prisoners who committed the usual crimes that you read about online, but I would like to do research about white collar crimes. I believe that the men who commit white collar crimes, which are typically revolved around money, tend to have a different psychology and a far different view and experience of the law. I believe if I do my research correctly and write my paper out properly, there's a lot of new things I can learn from a criminal who likely has had a different experience from the others." 

My case was made to the professor, hoping that if there were none available prior, that I could convince her to give me permission to choose an inmate outside of the list. 

She praised me for thinking outside the box compared to my other classmates. 

That part isn't important, just a small win I can't help but think about sometimes. 

She allowed me to choose an inmate outside the list of ones that were pre-screened and deemed safe to interact with. The condition was that I had to let her know about who I picked, that way she could go talk to the warden and have the inmate I chose, screened, to test whether they were safe. 

It actually took me a whole day to pick one, because, something I was taught about those who committed white-collar crimes, specifically about the men, is that they were arrogant. The men who committed crimes related to a breech in trust when it comes to money were said to be arrogant and possibly condescending. They could be charming and polite to the ones who they think they can use or get something from, then become rude and look down upon whoever they deem pointless. 

So, if I were to write to one of them, they could be pre-screened in advance and deemed safe to be around, but then they could try to rope me into some pyramid scheme that their buddy from the outside was working on. The guy would or could do this with just his words, trick me into trusting them using their charm, lie, or ridicule me. 

As you can tell, I'm, a rather short woman, and I look pretty, dainty, since I like to wear dresses with corsets, and I'm pretty girly in other aspects. My professor was worried that if I ended up with an inmate who managed to trick everyone else into believing he's on his best behavior, he would try to manipulate me. 

This is because aside from the letters, we were to meet with them at least once to ask questions in person. Get a feel for them and write a section in our papers about how we depicted the inmates, from the letters they wrote, and compare it to how they seemed in person in our eyes. 

She was worried that the wrong guy would look down at me and either talk down to me or try to use me as soon as he met me in person. 

Thankfully, to my luck or perhaps by fate, after a whole day of researching, I saw a profile in the prison system's website about a guy in his late twenties, Titus Feremore, who I thought I could trust. Why? Because in the system, it said he was put in jail for running an illegal gambling website, but he was only given six years. I used to just call him Mr. Feremore at first, because well, I didn't know if he would be arrogant and condescending, so I wanted to be prepared. 

After a bit more of my own research on his profile and the website, I learned that the illegal gambling website was actually just a website where people could play games online. 

I'm not sure if you or any of the family knew, Ma'am, or just avoided it after just seeing the words that he got arrested.

The catch with the website was just that every game was locked behind a pay wall. After digging deeper when reading about that, I learned that each of the online games were made by some of his friends who were in computer science. Titus had multiple friends in computer science. He was trying to support them by creating a website where they could upload their indie games, and they could get paid however much depending on who bought their games and based on the ad revenue. 

It was fine at first, but then the issue came when users would pay the fee, and instead of choosing the game they wanted, the website would randomly assign a game to them. 

That was the first thing that qualified it as an illegal gambling website. The next was that minors were attracted to the website, since, video games. Then, there was the fact that whichever user paid the most each month, would receive a prize in their email inbox. It was typically some art of whichever game they played the most. 

Even when reading information from the court case that was allowed to the public, it said that Titus and his friends genuinely didn't know, and that Titus took the blame for all of it. He didn't put up a fight, agreed with the judge, and even when his parents offered to bribe the judge in advance, Titus refused. Or at least, that's what the article told me.

Maybe it was just my easily soft heart, or something else, but after reading about his court case, I felt like, even if he was secretly arrogant, I felt like I would be fine with him. And he was only six years older than me, having been arrested when he was in college, and I thought 'I'm a college student, he's probably mentally the same age as me.'

And so I chose him. 

I emailed the name and the basic info on his profile to my professor, and she went to ask whether he was safe for a college student to be a pen pal with and who was willing to cooperate for her research paper. 

Funny enough, I got a response back the next day, with my professor telling me that when she asked about the inmate, Titus Feremore, she was told that the guy was a well-behaved albeit boring inmate. 

'He's 28, has been in jail for 4 years, no recent contacts with anyone, and still has two years left on his sentence. I did the work to have him screened and he's been deemed safe for you to work with. But still, even though he seems young and not malicious, stay on your toes.' 

Was what she wrote back in her email. 

I could've laughed, and I still would laugh, because it seemed like such a surprising yet reassuring description of him. Especially if I knew that the person sitting next to me in the present would be someone very charming and entertaining, and had zero malicious bone in his body. 

It took a whole day to get all my questions ready, and then another day for me to gather the nerve to write and send my first letter to him. 

'Hello, Mr. Feremore' I wrote, because like I said earlier, I was still nervous in case he may have been harmless, but still judgemental. 

...

'Dear Mr. Feremore, I am a student at Bowie State university.

I am currently working on a research paper that requires me to write to an inmate in prison as part of my research. If I may, I'd like to have you as my pen pal, if that is alright with you.

Most of my letters will be filled with questions revolving your crime, what led you to commit crime, your perspective on the law and your experience with it, along with your time in jail. 

If you aren't comfortable answering such questions, that's alright, you don't have to respond then. I'll try someone else. But if you are willing to be my pen pal and answer my questions, then please respond.

Thank you, 

Rosary Paloma'

...

That letter was sent on a Monday, and I got a reply on Friday. It was my first time using snail mail, and while I was familiar with receiving physical mail, I was pretty anxious and honestly nearly thought he wouldn't reply. I even already had backup options to pick from, but my professor told me to give it at least a week, since snail mail can be unpredictable. 

The first ever response letter I received from Titus, I was nervous to open. I remember being in my dorm room by myself, sitting at my desk, in front of my laptop, envelope right there in front of me. 

My roommate left as she had a class in the evening to get to, and so there was no one to see my reaction as I opened that letter alone at my desk, reading it under a lamp because it made me feel warm and helped ease my nerves. 

It was actually very polite, and far more open than I expected. 

Titus responded to my nervous letter with what I now know, was also a nervous letter. I could tell it must've been a while since anyone reached out to speak with him. I supposed his roommate in that jail cell was probably not very talkative but I've never asked. 

"Dear Mrs. Paloma." He wrote back. 

Either to copy the way I referred to him by his surname, or that's what he thought I deemed as polite. 

He agreed to be my pen pal, and was open to answering whatever questions I had. Then he wrote an apology, saying that it's been awhile since he wrote letters, so he apologized in advance if his writing didn't come off as neat or courteous as mine. 

I have to admit, that part made me feel a little flustered and I was even more glad my roommate was out. 

You may think me easily blushing for this but in that letter, he complimented my handwriting, the way I wrote my sentences spaced out- looking back now, I think that was the first thing that first got me interested and I still feel giddy. Especially since his handwriting also seemed pretty neat, and the way he wrote was a bit clunky, but he was still a good writer. 

My thoughts were swirling between thinking he may be a decent person, and that he was just acting very humble about his writing, like the fake kind of bashful. What a strange little whiplash it felt like to know the truth years later. 

My professor strictly told me to be careful of writing to white-collar criminals, to be wary of their words and to stay strong if they tried to charm me. And I really did try to keep my composure!

I'm not currently with Titus now because I fell for him after the first letter, this was just the beginning. 

The next letter I sent was me trying as politely as I could to quickly dive into the questions because as charmed as I was at how polite he seemed, I did have to stay on my toes. And with the whole snail mail system that our professor insisted we use, I didn't know how much time I would have with how long it took for each letter to be sent and to receive a reply. 

I was worried about being rude, curt, and abrupt, but I had to cram in an many questions as I could to get as much answers as I could to work with. 

It made me worry that with each reply, Titus's letters would slowly bleed with his annoyance, or irritation that I started out so polite in the beginning, only to change the attitude of my writing by bombarding him with questions. As if I tricked him into thinking I was polite, only to drop the kind facade what he agreed to cooperate, and ended up being used by me. 

With this fear in my mind, I always made sure that between the questions that were needed for my project, there would also be questions about him in general. Each paper ended up being jam packed with words because of that, and I would soon lose the ability to add neat spaces between my sentences.

Poor Titus would also end up doing the same with his replies. That or he had to penny-pinch the amount of paper he used when responding to my letters? I'm still not sure but I never want to pry for information.

Sometimes his answers to my questions would be long enough that they spread to the back. It almost felt like he rambled at some answers. That's how I learned of a lot of his background, along with his story of how he ended up committing his crime. 

What he committed was a pure accident. I at first tried not to believe it, and he likely knew I would believe it at first, but I had a soft heart then, much softer than the one I have now. And so began some extra research done on the side to sate my curiosity and whether he could honestly be trusted because honestly? 

His letters really did make me slowly start to read him as a decent guy.

...

'Dear Mrs. Paloma, 

To follow with your question about more details of my crime, let me begin by saying you probably won't believe me, you might think that I'm only saying this as a sleazy way to make someone think I'm innocent, but that's not my intention. 

When I created that website, it genuinely was at first, and always was, just a way for me to help support my friends. We were just a bunch of dumb college boys wanting to find an easy way out of making some money and also fulfilling dreams. My friends were computer nerds who knew how to make their own video games, small ones, the graphics were the traditional pixel, but they had interesting plot. 

I was some cocky, laidback, naive guy in business who thought he knew everything about running business, and I wanted to create a business where I could earn passive income, and my friends could get some money for the little games they created. I also wanted them to feel encouraged, and that's when the issues started. 

The first feature of our website, was the games, and then I had it where ever game was locked behind a pay wall. The users would have to make an account that just required an email, that way when the website updated with new games, the users would know, and they could also comment and leave reviews for each one so that my friends could get feedback. The first issue was tied to this, where I may have worried that the users would enjoy some games more than others. 

Since I was the 'boss', I would look over the status of the website like the amount of users and the amount of times someone paid to play a game. I noticed some games got picked a lot, but then there were a few that,,, never got bought at all. And that worried me, because, yeah, not all of the games were that cool, but I didn't want my friends who still worked hard as they created every little game, to make such a sad face when seeing that there was hardly any interest one some of the video games they made. 

And so, with my buddy who coded the website, I suggested adding in the feature that each game would be the same price, and then when a user wanted to pay to play, they would simply, pay, and then the website would select a random game for them. I made sure that each game had an equal chance of getting selected, and that each month, all of the games would have all had an equal amount of people who paid to play them. 

That, I would soon learn, was the first thing that made the website categorized as illegal gambling, but that wasn't what got the police alerted about it.'

...

'Dear Mrs. Paloma, '

Sorry my previous letter ended on a cliffhanger, and thank you for understanding. It was very clear in your current letter that I have beside me, that you understood I still had more to say. 

It was also very kind of you to send me a lot of blank paper. I promise, I'll use them sparingly and only for the purpose of answering your questions diligently. 

Now back to the topic, the next feature that would end categorizing our website as an illegal gambling one, was another that I suggested and genuinely thought was alright. Where each month, I would look through the results and find the top three users who paid the most amount of money to play our games, and with the emails used for their accounts, they would each be sent a little prize, or a thank you gift, for their support. 

Aside from creating video games, some of my buddies were also pretty good artists, and so the prizes for the top three spenders would each get free art from the creators of the games they enjoyed the most. It seemed friendly at first, but in hindsight, it did only encourage more spending which was bad since the users didn't even get to choose the games they wanted to play.

But that still isn't exactly what alerted the police, it was actually something none of us considered, which was the dangers of a child having access to the internet, and somehow knowing the numbers to their parents credit cards. 

I know that the little games uploaded to the website were kinda silly, but somehow, I didn't think about adding in an age restriction at the time, because I completely forgot that little kids could easily use computers. And the types of games we had online, may have seemed dumb to some more grown up people, but were very entertaining to young minds. 

And so, after adding in the feature with the free art for the top spenders, that's when the police were alerted about our website. Because one user was a kid who was using his parent's email to play our games, a kid whose parents at first didn't mind letting him spend some money online, but they likely also were the type to not check their bank statements very often. Some free art got sent that month, but of course the kid didn't check because the email inbox didn't belong to him. His dad saw it, got confused, and then must've gotten concerned when the message in the email said 

"Congratulations! You are one of our top three users who spent the most amount of money on our games! Here is your prize!"

I don't completely remember what happened, mainly because this is all just a guess but all I know is that kids were playing on our website, their parents found out, got concerned, and called the police. 

I'm sure there's an article online about my court case, but to summarize, our website got investigated, and we got taken by the police one morning, and I mean all of us because while each game had a cool creator name for each of my computer friends, all of our names and a business contact info could be found at the bottom of our website.'

...

'I remember feeling scared, embarrassed, shocked, and also worried. How could I have not realized the features of our website could pretty much be categorized as gambling? And because we didn't know and didn't get it licensed, it became labeled as illegal gambling. 

For your other question, wondering why I'm the only one who got arrested, and why all of my other friends got off free- they did not betray me. They did not throw me under the bus to save themselves. Let me make this clear. My friends are not bad people, and I could not let them be seen as bad people. They just wanted to fulfill their dreams of making video games for a living, and I wanted to fulfill my more lavish dream of having a passive income business. 

But what they needed was freedom to work and a good leader that knew better how to properly monetize and advertise their games. But because of my arrogance, they were about to get a mark on their clean records, so, I did something that, even now, I sort of felt was kinda dumb but it felt right and I panicked. 

While we were being interrogated, each one taking turns in the interrogation room, I made sure to tell each of my friends that whatever questions the police asked, I wanted them to pretend to be clueless, and to just say it was all me. Because it was true. I told the police that I was the owner of the website, the game creators were my employees, I paid them, and I was the one who decided each feature that ended up turning the simple, fun website for games, into a gambling website. 

To my luck, I guess, since it was my first offense, and I pleaded guilty, cooperated, and made the whole court case get concluded pretty quickly, I only got six years. My parents offered to bribe the judge before the court date, and then they'd have to do some PR to make sure there were no articles that talked about the incident, but some thought I had made me want to choose the honest, yet also dumb, decision, to just let myself pay the price. They never spoke to me after that. 

Please don't read that as me trying to gain sympathy and make myself seem like a sort of good guy, I'm not. I almost got all of my buddies in trouble, and when I get out, I'm gonna make sure I don't make the same mistake. 

...

Admittedly, after reading all that, I felt so conflicted afterwards. He seemed genuinely remorseful, and regretful, and honestly trying to express to me that the crime he committed genuinely was an accident. Was this like a very clever, long term, manipulation thing? But if it was, wouldn't he try to ask something of me? What could he possibly ask of a college students. 

Of course, I'd soon learn that none of it was manipulation. He genuinely was just a decent guy who made a dumb decision because he wasn't completely aware of all the laws. 

And, his whole experience was also a very unique one to me! A guy who didn't know he broke the law, and he lived a relatively normal life before, but because he wasn't taught enough about laws regarding websites and online games before making one, his life completely changed. 

It was both insightful and also a great research for my paper, and he was the complete opposite of what I feared a white-collar criminal to be. Or more, he was the opposite of a white-collar criminal in general. 

My research paper ended up having a lot of material to work with, that I had to hold back from exceeding the ten page limit when getting it all written out.

I wish I could go into more detail, but I don't know how much small details you are willing to listen to, Miss Josephine, that could help me clearly explain how or why I ended up falling in love with a guy in prison. And I fear I may have already been testing your patience with my long story. 

I just really love Titus, and I cherish all of the memories I have of when I first met him, even though it was first in letter form, and even though my feelings didn't actually start until after I offered to let him move in with me. 

That part, is also a long story of it's own.