So secured = broken into, ransacked, emptied, and the contents put…where? No short-term storage? In a dumpster? A landfill?
And how bright are these “securers”? Could they not tell someone was currently residing there? What if there’d been a dog in the kitchen? Or, re-reading, maybe was this was a vacation-type home.
The story you link totally misses the truly heinous kicker of this story. It happened not once, but twice.
Yes, after the initial “clean-out” and after the owners had come to recover what they could from the aftermath three days later, and after Wells Fargo and authorities had been notified, another contractor that was hired by Wells Fargo to “clean-out” the same originally-intended home made the same mistake with Wells Fargo’s satellite map/directions, and “cleaned 'em out” once again.
Does anybody think Wells Fargo (or any person within the company) really did this intentionally? It’s a colossal fuckup, to be sure, but at best you could say they acted recklessly. They should pay for it in the way that hurts a company most, with money.
It was breaking and entering. That’s a criminal act. I’d love to see the DA put a Wells-Fargo manager behind bars for a while.
I hope this stays in the news. It will give me a warm feeling inside when I hear the large dollar amount that this couple will get from Wells-Fargo.:):):):)
IANAL, but it would be down to a matter of intent. Since it was a mistake, and they didn’t *mean *to do it, it’s not a crime. They are of course still civilly liable.
No, they didn’t. They intended to take possession and then dispose of items that did belong to the bank. Unintentionally, they did otherwise.
That refers to ignorance of the law. They weren’t ignorant of the laws about breaking into houses, they just unintentionally broke into a house they had no right to.
I do wonder about the local foreclosure laws, though. I don’t know much about such laws in general, but I was under the impression that a county sheriff generally has to be present and sign off on any forced entry and removal of tenants/contents. Is something like that not always necessary?
