Reddit Stories - BETRAYAL in the BOARDROOM_ When Trust is SHATTERED by Greed_

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #betrayal #boardroom #trust #shattered #greedSummary:Discover real-life stories of betrayal in the boardroom where trust is shattered by greed. Dive into the dramatic narratives shared on Reddit, exploring the consequences of deceit and backstabbing in professional settings.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, betrayal, boardroom, trust, shattered, greed, stories, workplace, corporate, deception, backstabbing, business, drama, relationships, real-life, consequencesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Established a business with my closest companion, and subsequently had to terminate my sibling for embezzling from us. However, it emerged that our guardians coerced him into doing so. Was giving them all the money. Hi, so I, 33F, run a company of my own with a friend of mine. We deal in wooden furniture and have a fairly successful business. We started this business eight years ago from scratch when the two of us were just

25 and quit our jobs together to start something of our own. That turned out to be pretty much the best idea of our lives and we are very proud of what we have accomplished. My friend, Patty, and I both went to business school, and while she had her parents take care of her tuition, I had to make my own way, because my parents had always made it very clear to me that they could only support me. A high school was over, but after that, I was on my own. My mom was a kindergarten teacher and my dad was a car mechanic, so it wasn't exactly like we were rich, but they did their best. From a very young age, it had been drilled into my head that I had to be successful, and I had to make my own money because that was the most important thing.

So I worked very hard and thankfully, I managed to get a scholarship before college, so 75% of my tuition was waived off and what I actually had to pay. I took out a student loan to get it covered and recently finished paying it off a couple of years ago. My brother also followed in my footsteps and went to the same business school a few months after I had graduated. My brother, Finn, 29M, unfortunately, did not get a scholarship so he had to rely entirely on student loans and racked up a much bigger debt than I did. Lucky for him, though, by the time he graduated, Patty and I had already started on our business journey, and we invited him to work with us. For a year or two, we were struggling for

financially, and it was difficult for us to not give up, but then all of a sudden our sales started shooting up because one of our products had gone viral on social media. So we finally became profitable and started expanding our range. Finn was responsible for handling our finances because he was great at math, much better than the two of us and we also trusted him because he was family. We were doing great, and everything was going well for a certain period of time, but then, I started noticing discrepancies in financial books that Finn would show me, and he would pretend it was not there until I pointed it out, and then he would claim that it was just a mistake, and he would have it corrected immediately. But I knew he didn't make mistakes.

I started suspecting that something was going on, so I decided to go through the books myself, and I found out that somebody had been stealing money from the company. I talked to Patty about it and she said that she had also noticed the same, but had been scared to bring it up with me because it was not something nice that she was going to be saying, about my brother, but she suspected that it was him. It almost felt like my bolt had been turned upside down when we came to that realization because Finn and I were incredibly close, and I couldn't believe that my baby brother was stealing from me. Patty and I worked really late one night and ran through the financial accounts with a fine-toothed comb and found that he had been guilty of

misallocation of funds and had been getting away with it for a few months, and there was no denying it anymore. I was disheartened, and I almost pressed charges against him because I was so disappointed in him, But Patty was the one who talked me out of it and told me that regardless of what he had done, he was still my brother. So she told me that I would regret pressing charges against him in the long run or suing him, and there was no need for it at all. We could just deal with it ourselves and have him fired while making sure it's all hush-hush. I decided to go with that because she was right. I loved Finn and I didn't want to hurt him in a way that would be irreversible, but I knew that I had to cut ties with him because this was just unacceptable behavior.

The next day, we confronted him about it, and to my surprise, he didn't even try to deny it. He just accepted it all and said that he would resign himself. He didn't have to fire him. When I asked him why he had stolen from the company, he refused to give me an answer and just walked away. That was the last time I spoke to him after that, I pretty much cut him out of my life entirely. He had broken my heart and betrayed my trust, and I couldn't forgive him for it. I already let him off the hook easily by not suing him for what he had done. That's the most that I could do for him. I couldn't forgive him, because that was not something I thought that he deserved

because he had not even given me an answer as to why he had done it in the first place. He had apologized, but it was not enough for me. I did talk to my parents about it as well, and they said that they were shocked by his conduct. They said that they had known about it, and had they known anything, they would have cut ties with him long ago. They said that they found the entire affair quite shocking because Finn was not the kind of guy to be dishonest or steal but they said that maybe he was just struggling with money and couldn't bring himself to ask me because I was. Already so successful and he was working for me anyway, so his pride didn't allow him to fall

even further. At the time, I thought it might have been a legitimate theory but with time, it started seeming more and more unlikely. Because Finn and I had a great relationship, and he never envied me. He always just asked me for whatever he needed and even when he needed a job when he had graduated, I was the first person that he approached. We didn't have any competition or rivalry going on and even I didn't look down on him for any reason. But that was the only theory that I had at the time, so I never questioned it,

and it was better than not knowing why he did it at all. So for years, I believed that he had been stealing from the company because he was too proud to ask me for help. He got paid a handsome salary but it's never enough for anyone. and maybe he just got greedy. That's what I kept telling myself for yours until a few days ago, when Finn reached out to me, after almost five years of not speaking to each other.

I hadn't heard from him after he was let go from the company and since then, we have grown exponentially, and we're doing quite well now. The last that I had heard, he was working in a much smaller law firm and had moved away from everyone, and was living in the suburbs. He didn't keep in touch with anybody,

not even our parents, and it was hurtful because I thought that my brother and I were really close and he would never do anything to ruin our relationship, but I was wrong. For a long time, I held a grudge against him because I couldn't come to terms with the fact that he had wronged me so badly. But then, he sent me an email a couple of days ago and that explained everything. In that email, he mentioned that he had stayed away and kept secret for five long years, but now that things have changed for him significantly and he is about to get married, he wants me to be there for him and doesn't think that he can continue this act anymore. I was confused by what that meant until I read the rest of the email.

He went on to tell me that not only had my parents been in on the fact that he had been stealing from the company, but he had, in fact, been stealing for their sake. I couldn't make sense of what he was saying, and I thought that he was lying, but then he attached proof of him, sending large amounts of money from his bank account to my mom's account and they had all the right dates and looked legit enough. Besides, five years had already passed, and there was no reason for him to be lying about anything now because he didn't stand against this.

He told me that a couple of months before he had started stealing, my mom had come to him and said that they needed his help because they were struggling financially, and my dad's car repair business wasn't doing too well because now, people just relied on bigger names, and the locals like him had been forgotten for the most part. and my mother was also considering quitting her job because she was too old to continue running around after little kids for very little money. But they still had bills to pay and food that they needed

to eat to sustain themselves, so they were asking my brother for help. They could have just asked me directly, but they were asking for such a huge amount of money that they were afraid of asking me because they felt like I would say no. They lied to my brother and manipulated him into thinking that they had apparently already asked me for help a couple of times before they had come to him, and I had said no to even making any little contributions, and that is why they were asking him for help now. They had lied to him and made up a lot of stories about me, about how arrogant I had become and how I had refused to help them out several times, and even insulted them when they asked and called them beggars. I had not done any of those things and I never would

because it's just not me, but I guess my parents were the ones who were too proud to ask me for help and they thought that manipulating my brother to steal from the company was a much better idea than just coming to me for help directly and requesting me to take care of their expenses. And my brother, bless his heart, as smart as he is with numbers, he's just as stupid when it comes to matters of personal life. It was all our parents' idea for him to be dishonest while working for him, and even though he felt guilty about it, he continued to do it because he believed that he was going to return the money to me eventually anyway, and was going to make sure that he got the means to return all the money to me and come clean to me before it all went too far. He was just about to

tell me the truth because he wasn't comfortable stealing from us anymore when we found out on our own, and he was fired. He couldn't bring himself to expose our parents because they had made him promise not to ever say a word about this to me. He figured that he had been fired, he would go to our parents and tell them about it and they would fix the situation by telling me the truth, but instead, they threw him under the bus, and said that they had nothing to do with this anymore. They did a complete 180 and said that if he said anything to me, they were just going to deny everything and say that it was his idea, and then it would just be his word against theirs. He fought with them a lot, but they were not ready to take responsibility and he was so depressed at the time that he didn't

even think it was worth it to go back to me and tell me the truth because he had lost faith in everything. So, instead of coming to me with the truth, he just decided to disappear from us. He found out later that I was still in touch with our parents and I was still supporting them financially but now, the only difference was that the middleman had been cut out, and they were taking money from me directly because now, they were not too proud anymore. He had been very disappointed in several times, he had wished to tell me what had actually happened years ago, but then he figured out that what I didn't know could never hurt me, and so, he kept his mouth shut for my sake, because he knew that family meant everything to me, and had already been

betrayed by my brother. I would probably find it a lot more difficult to deal with. I found out that my parents were in on it as well. I thought his logic was very flawed, because if anything, if he had actually told me the truth, then I would have forgiven him because it really did seem very out of character for him to do something so dishonest. But he is an emotional fool, which is how he got caught up with my parents and their reckless plan in the first place, and then he stayed silent about it for ages because he knew that my parents needed the help, and if he turned me against them, then they would be completely on their own and would end up broken homeless. So he sort of became the sacrificial lamb and continued to suffer in silence so that nobody

else would have to. I found myself very emotional when I read that email and he had attached his phone number at the bottom so I could call him if I wanted to reconcile with him and as soon as I was done reading it, I called him up immediately. And he answered, it was a very emotional conversation for both of us, but we did manage to put it in the past, and he invited me to his wedding. We also decided to meet in a couple of days so that we could actually discuss everything that had happened because it was just crazy to me that he had been suffering for so long and had allowed himself to become a doormat for our parents, who turned out to be pretty much the worst people on this earth. We haven't met yet, but I have already confronted my parents about

what I found out through that email. I visited them that very evening and showed them that email and asked them what that was all about. For a few minutes, they started to deny everything, but then I told them that this was their one, an only chance to be honest with me, and if they didn't tell me the truth this time, then there would be dire consequences. And they had to take my threats seriously because they depend on me for everything and I'm essentially the one who has been taking care of them for the last few years. As it turns out, I had been the one taking care of them anyway before that as well, I just didn't know about it. When I told them that there were consequences, they finally dropped the act and told me that everything that my brother had said had been true,

and had indeed been manipulated into taking money from me and being dishonest with me. And their reason was just as stupid as what they had done. They told me that my dad's business had been struggling, and my mom was too tired to continue working, so they really needed the money to fall back on. But my dad was too proud to ask me for help and so, my mother had the plan that she eventually put into action. She manipulated Finn, and she knew that it would be easy for her to do so

because he was quite innocent and naive. Once that was done, it continued for a few months before my dad found out about the truth. My mother had been telling him that they were still getting money from her savings that she had put aside a couple of years ago, but later on, he realized that there was no way she had saved up such a huge amount of money because her salary wasn't high enough. And secondly, she was much too much of A to be able to save up that much so she had to come clean to him. For some reason, while my father was too proud to actually ask me for money, he didn't have any qualms about living off of stolen money.

He told me that by that time, he had accepted the fact that desperate times call for desperate measures and was ready to do whatever it took to keep surviving. And he also felt that he had a huge role to play in my success. He was the one who had paid for everything whenever was a kid, so now it was my turn to pay him back for everything. In his eyes, he justified everything by believing that he was just taking back the money that I owed him.

So my parents made their peace with it by believing that I owed them money anyway, and they were just taking back what was rightfully theirs so they had nothing to feel sorry about or feel ashamed of. They changed their minds but never felt that it was important to tell me the truth so that I could make things right with my brother, and just continued to shamelessly take money from me after they had thrown Finn under the bus and ruined my relationship with him, accusing him of stealing, and claiming that they knew nothing about it. Was furious when I found out the truth, and I decided immediately that I was going to cut my parents out of my life because they had no right to be part of it anymore.

They had betrayed me in the worst way possible, and they had done something that they were never going to be able to fix. I would never get back those five years with my brother, and I was never going to be able to forgive them for that. So I told them that I was done with them and they could stop counting on me for help. I told them that what they had done was just not okay and I just couldn't accept it and let it go. They tried to tell me that it had been five years since then and acknowledged that they had been very stupid in dealing with their problems, and were way too egoistic for their own good but at the end of the day, I was still their daughter, and it was my duty to help them out when they needed it. But the thing, though, it might have been duty

had they been good parents to me, which they had clearly not been. What kind of parent ruins the relationship between two of her kids just for their own selfish gain? And it wasn't even as though any of the things that they did made any sense. They were just doing things to protect their own false sense of pride when it suited them, and when it didn't, they had no issue, changing their minds about it. But the only people who suffered because of all of this were me and my brother, and that was not fine with me anymore. A line had to be done somewhere and I was the one who was going to draw a boundary with them. They kept insisting that I was making a big deal out of nothing and now that things were fine between Finn and I, I had no reason to be

mad at them. It was just unbelievable how ignorant they were, and it took all my strength. to not scream at them because I knew that would be pointless. All that they cared about, all that they could see was their own interests, and if something didn't serve them, it was useless to them. That's what they had done with my brother. They had used him and then discarded him and he was no use to them anymore and who's to say that they wouldn't do the same to me? I ended up getting into a really nasty verbal fight with them,

which ended with me walking out of their house and making up my mind that I was never going to look back because my parents were not the people that I had believed that they were. and since then, it's been a total crap fest because they haven't stopped calling me and I don't have it in me to block them yet. I feel like a horrible person because in spite of everything that they have done, they are still my parents and they are old and have nobody else to count on. I know that they screwed up in a very big way, but I feel like if I abandon them then I'm letting them down and being a bad person. I talked to Finn about it and he had nothing positive

to say about any of this. He told me that he had been facing the same dilemma when my parents. parents first approached him to ask for help. Neither of us knows what to do but one thing is for sure, if we don't help them, nobody else will, and they might have to go back to working. Which would be really bad because both of them are pretty old now and I don't think it's a good idea for them to go back to work. But the alternative is to continue helping them out with money, which just seems very unfair. I don't understand what I should do right now. I'd offer telling my parents that I won't help them out financially anymore after I found out that they had scammed me and ruined my relationship with my brother?

Update 1. Okay, my brother and I met for lunch yesterday. I still haven't blocked my parents so they do keep texting me, but I have muted their notifications so I don't get bothered by it constantly. I have also archived their chat so I don't have to be reminded of what I am ignoring every time I open my phone to text somebody. Finn and I forgot about all our problems as soon as we saw each other and it was really nice to see him and talk to him after so long. He has changed a lot in the past couple of years and has been dating a woman for the past two years. And it turns out, his fiancé, Jackie, was the one

who convinced him to reach out to me and try to make things right by telling me the truth. Because he didn't need to take the fall for my parents in order to be a good son anymore and she was right. I'm going to meet her in a couple of days as well and I'm very excited about it. But then we started discussing what we were supposed to do regarding the situation with our parents, and we hit a dead end once again because there was just no correct solution to any of this. I know most people in the comments said that there was nothing wrong with me wanting to cut my parents out of my life after what they had done, but I know logically it's the right thing to do and I don't have anything to feel bad about, but I am human and I do feel bad.

The world would be a lot easier to understand if it functioned on the basis of logic and rationality, but unfortunately, that's not how the world works and I am not an emotional, feeling robot, who just does things because it's the right thing to do and it makes sense to do it. So while I am fully aware of the fact that it would be better for me to just cut off my parents, I can't do that, because I have to think about the consequences of it as well. They are bad, but that doesn't mean that I have to get down to that level as well. A lot of you guys called me a doormat and whatnot for even considering forgiving them or staying in touch with them, but I don't really care about it.

This is the real world and I have to think about a lot of things and factor in the consequences of my actions before I come to a conclusion. So Finn and I are still talking about it, but I hope that we will be able to reach a common ground soon enough because I'm not sure how much longer I will be able to hold my parents off. Update 2, hey, so Finn and I have been talking on the phone for the past couple of days. It's been three days since we met, and we have finally come to a decision about what we should do regarding our parents. The two of us have decided that we are going to cut them off, but we are going to still continue to send them money. From what we know, they did have a retirement fund,

but my dad put all his money into reviving his car repair business a couple of years ago, and that went bust as we all know, so they don't have any money of their own anymore. That's why they have to rely on us. So whether we like it or not, we can't leave them, but we can stop talking to them so they know that we don't want a relationship with them anymore. Finn and I have also decided that he's going to join the company back again, now that we know that he was innocent. I've already spoken to Patty about it and she's completely fine with it because she thinks that he's a good guy and deserves a second chance, especially since the first time that he was fired. It was not even his fault. I mean, apart from the fact that

he was manipulated and lied to, his intentions were good, and his heart was in the right place. But this time, things are going to be different, and we're all going to make it. make sure of it. Update 3, So Finn and I finally spoke to our parents, and we let them know that while we were still willing to cover for them financially, we would not be keeping in touch with them. We visited them last evening and told them that for all their necessary expenses, they could rely on us, but for everything else, they had to make their own way. They were not in agreement with this, and there was a lot of drama. My mother kept crying and my dad claimed that we were being selfish and disrespectful towards them, but I couldn't see anything wrong

about any of this. What we were suggesting was far more generous than they deserved. Had we been a little less considerate, we probably would have cut ties with them altogether, and not even bothered to help them out later. Judging by what they had done, we were being quite generous. The two of them were pretending to be the victims here and claimed that they had always been good to us, but we couldn't do the same for them. and that's when I lost my car and started screaming at them because scamming me out of money and then manipulating my brother counted as being good parents then boy did I have some news for them. I really told them off because I just couldn't take the fact that they were pretending to be the victims even in a situation like this, where their lies had been caught, and they have confessed

that what they did was messed up. It was crazy to me that they were still trying to portray us as the bad guys because clearly, anyone in their right mind would know when to drop it. They could have just accepted our deal and let it go, but they had to create a whole scene for no reason. So they ended up losing us altogether and my dad had a lot to say, he said that he would rather be homeless than take money from us. And honestly, it was fine with us. So we left their house, and that was it, now we don't even have to keep in touch with them or give them money. They rejected it themselves, so that's it. Finn, and I, however, are going to keep in touch obviously, and in a few days, He's going to set up a meeting for the three of us, including his fiancé.

I'm really happy that we are reconnecting because I had lost a lot of time with my brother and it's going to be nice to finally have him back.