This Lady seems like a con artist. My advice would be to write it off.

I have been taken advantage of many times myself. Most recently by a man who didn't pay me any rent when I rented a room out to him. When I finally got the nerve to kick him out, I had to have two other friends with me. We were also all armed with walking sticks. When I told him to leave, he refused. Then he tried to start a fight with all three of us. None of us fought with him. When the Police arrived, this man started crying and tried to tell the Police that my two friends and I had beaten him up. Of course, since he had no bruises, black eyes, bloody nose, etc. The cops didn't believe him. To my surprise, this didn't stop HIM from filing a false (private) charge against me for 'forcible confinement' (telling him to leave) and 'Assault with a weapon' (blocking his sucker punch to my jaw with my cane that I walk with.) This would have meant eighteen months in jail if I had been found guilty.

Fortunately (?) I was unemployed and destitute at the time this happened, which means that I qualified for legal aide. This saved me THOUSANDS of dollars in legal fees. However it did take a year out of my life and cost me my best friend. She was also charged along with me, and this court case was far too stressful for her to endure as it triggered flashbacks of traumatic events from her childhood.

My experience with such people is that 'you can't get blood from a stone'. These people WON'T repay you, even if you point a gun to their heads.

There is also the expression 'Good money after bad'. How much money, time and effort (the 'good' money) are you willing to invest in order to try and get your $15,000 back from this skinflint?

This is especially true if they have bad credit. I have heard of numerous cases where con artists that have been ordered to make repayments by the court simply balked, declaring bankruptcy (Get out of debt card) themselves or simply paying back a minimum of $20 a month. Not an 'easy twenty' either, but one that you would have to go well out of your way and crawl through broken glass to get. The entertainment value these people will get out of watching you jump through THEIR hoops of fire will be well worth the $20 that they are willing to give as a token gesture once a month. You'll be playing telephone tag, running around town, doing 'little favors' for them, having to endure their smirks and the occasional insult, and spending $40 in gas just to pick up your monthly $20. You may even hear 'Oh, sorry I couldn't give you your $20 this month. Money has been tight around here lately."

There is also the matter of legality. Do you have any signatures that say 'I promise to repay?" Is there any way to legally prove that these things were NOT gifts, but loans? The reason she has bad credit is because she defaulted on a promise to repay her creditors. That's a legal debt. She is still not paying these people back, even though they have her signature saying 'I promise to repay'.

If you were a creditor such as VISA or Mastercard then you could easily take this woman to collections and get at least SOME of your money back. If she owes you $15,000 you might be able to sell your debt to a collection agency for say $10,000 or so. Then THEY would be the ones to hassle her night and day to repay the money, taking her to court if necessary.

When you say "I have a suitcase of negatives and pictures from 30 years of her life. I can hold as ransom. Of course most of the ones she really wanted are already in Scrapbooks." I would be extremely careful with this. That seems to be venturing towards extortion and blackmail which are both serious criminal charges.

Even though these people are criminals themselves, they have no scruples and will thus bring criminal charges down against you in a heartbeat. I had intended to hold the Man and his girlfriend's suitcases (containing passports) as ransom until they paid me the $720 they owed me. I found out that this was illegal to do in Ontario. If they had chosen to have me charged with doing this, then their court case would have been successful and I would now have a criminal record. Fortunately for me, they chose to make it into a big drama, attempting to have me charged with 'Extortion' and 'Kidnapping', until they bumped it down a notch and decided that 'Forcible confinement' and 'Assault with a weapon' were a more believable story.

I'll tell you what I am doing about it though. Since I have pictures of these two 'nickle-and-dime' con artists that tried so hard to make my life miserable, I decided to make a comic book about it. I can write and draw, so it's pretty easy for me to do. This is a pretty common story too, one that most people can relate to.

You could do something similar, taking your horrible experiences with this woman and making a movie about it for example. This might range from showing pictures of her on YouTube with you and a Handi-Cam, to a feature film detailing exactly what happened in your life. How she took advantage, etc. You could hire college students to help with the writing, do the acting, directing and camera work for you. I know in Canada that making a movie is tax deductible, even if you are an American citizen. So, whatever money you spend on making a film you will get back in the form of a cheque from the government. There is a good book about making films for cheap, called 'Feature Film-making at used car prices.'