I did this for a while one summer in the late 80s in high school. Back then there was no gps, so we used mapsco, and usually verified with the postman the address, as in the poorer areas of town they’d often change the address numbers on the houses, I assume to confuse the police or repo men. We did the post eviction boarding up and stuff, so there was never any nice stuff there, just whoever had broken in to squat, or to use the place to get high or drunk or as an impromptu whorehouse or any combination.
The standard procedure was to pull up in the driveway, honk a bit, then wait 10 minutes, honk again for a bit, then go into the house after another five minutes, to give everyone inside time to flee and take their stuff. First day on the job, first house, we’re about to go in, and my boss asks me where my gun was. About then I realized I didn’t want to do this forever
We didn’t record what we took out, either, just bagged it all up and threw it out. For some reason it was popular for neighbors to throw their household trash into foreclosed homes, so usually they were just packed with crap (literally, lots and lots of dirty diapers). We often had piles of trash bags eight foot high by 40 feet by several feet deep, and had to bribe the garbage men with liquor and beer to take it all.
A few times our keys did not work, so we backed off, took pictures of the house and surrounding houses, and went back to the bank to figure out what the problem was. Never had the wrong house, they did give us the wrong keys a few times though. But sure as shit if we ever went into one and it looked not like a drug den or whorehouse full of trash we’d’ve backed out assuming we were in the wrong place and would not have thrown everything out.
This whole discussion of intent is raising all kinds of questions for me.
For example: what about folks who get tricked into participating in check-cashing scams? Some overseas “business” sends them a check which they’re supposed to deposit and/or cash and then distribute payments to domestic “partners”, while keeping some of the money as a wage.
Those folks are under every impression that they’re transferring funds for a legitimate company, but in fact they are of course robbing the bank. Are they protected from criminal charges, since it was an honest professional mistake? Somehow I think that when used against the banks, this line of reasoning would not fly.
“Fair market value” is defined as a price that a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for something. This wasn’t a willing seller - even if the bank asserts that the goods have depreciated (which they have), that doesn’t mean that they get to pay any less than full replacement value plus a lot of damages. Weasels.
They are criminal matters, but I’m not sure if justice would be served by arresting the people who did the repossession. If those people were wilfully negligent then it might make sense, but we should be careful we aren’t arresting the fry cooks when it was McDonald’s CEO that commited a crime.
That their inventory claims changed is hardly surprising. Could you name every piece of item in your family’s house from memory alone? I’m pretty sure that over the next few days you’d have a fair share of d’oh moments.
It doesn’t look like the family committed fraud here. On the contrary it looks like it was the repo men who were trying to pull a fast one. The claim of unlocked doors sound a bit unlikely considering the family was on a two week vacation (which is why the front lawn was looking a bit unkempt and the utilities were off). When she complained to the bank the repo men conveniently found an expensive piece of missing gym equipment (this was by no means a destitute family) just lying by the roadside. And no scavengers had taken it during all those days it was out there! Wow, how lucky is that!
Let’s face it, some of the people hired for repo-work aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the world, nor are they always God’s little angels.
I am just wondering what the bank or Repo company would have done if the homeowner were there, armed, and threatened the repo folks. I am not even saying shot or Bidened(shot in the air to scare them)…Just stood in the way armed and threatened them if they did not leave? Would that homeowner be afforded the same rights as this bank in the matter of Fuzzy Law?
