I’ve been following this thread and, out of the blue, have a bit of a situation myself. We bought our home about 15 years ago from a widow named Smith (obvious fake name). She died between the signing of the contract and the closing. We managed to get past this, but I mention it because that put a stop to our ability to communicate with her or her family after closing.
Now we are receiving letters from attorneys about her son, who has recently been charged with assault in a local court. Turns out that, in the eyes of the court and the attorneys seeking to represent him, our house is his “official” residence of record. We can, of course, just return the letters to the attorneys after marking them “not at this address,” but that doesn’t do a thing as far as correcting the court records. Should we try to contact the court before the sheriff’s deputies show up at our house trying to serve a warrant? Do they have him in custody already? Are we one of several addresses they have? It’s a current assault charge, not some left-over debt collection effort.
I honestly think that, by having the house for 15 years and being able to prove that with paperwork, you can have that corrected without great difficulty.
A few years ago I received a phone call that of course I sent to voicemail. It was Sergeant Smith of the Sheriff’s department in the county where I used to live and where my phone’s area code still is. The message was about “my” upcoming probation hearing court date. Fortunately Smith used “my” name which isn’t really me.
I did some checking and her callback number was legit at the Sheriff’s office. So I called her. We had a pleasant chat and I explained that my number wasn’t him and he hadn’t been notified by her call. She thanked me for bothering to call back and she would update their and the court’s records to remove my phone number from his case.
I never heard from anyone again about the case, so it seems to have worked.
Based on that anecdote, if I was in your shoes I’d be proactively contacting the attorney(s) to get my address detached from this case pronto.
Agreed. We’re just sort of wondering if we should be doing anything proactively at all. I’ve had enough experience with justice systems to imagine what it would be like for me to call the Clerk of Court saying, “I don’t know anything about Jim Smith’s case, but he doesn’t live HERE.”
Have you got anything in the mail from the court system yet? It could be he’s homeless or moved to another state & gave the cops a valid address but the fishing attorney saw the old address as his last one in your state.
That could certainly be, Spiderman. I think the odds that the court would send a notice to him here or show up with a warrant are very slim. But my wife seems to think it would be a good idea to try to remedy the situation. I tell her, “What’s the worse that could happen?”
When I mentioned this to a friend, he said, “Of course, if the bond recovery guys show up at your house at 4:00 AM and enter without needing a warrant, that might be bad.” True.
Pretty sure they can’t do that but one suggestion: my state has a searchable court case database. See if yours does & if you can find anything out about it; if you do, that might even help you know which court house to call to remedy anything, if necessary. It definitely wouldn’t be the first time someone gave bad info to the cops.
I'm asleep in my bed one mid-late December night when I'm awoken by voices in my ~~head~~ backyard. I hear, "Police, go open your front door!" I get up & gingerly peek thru the blinds & there are indeed local PD, in uniform, in the backyard; however, they are looking at the neighbors house & not mine. Phew!!! I go peek out the front window & there are a number of cars in the street, including a couple of marked cop cars. My neighbor had a young-20's son who still lived at home & his GF was staying with him for the night(s). Wow, what a nice guy her probation officer was in that he tracked her down to where she was staying just to, ummm, ahhh...give her her Christmas gift!
Delivered packages (once) to the intended recipient
Sent a registered letter to the intended recipient
Contacted USPS, w/o success for future packages
Contacted UPS w/o success for a given package
That certainly seems like they’ve (gone above & beyond to) tried to stop this mess. They’ve spent time, & money, & effort w/o success. What do you propose they do at this point? Unless there’s a crime the PD ain’t gonna do anything about it, which was your previous suggestion.
I’ll admit that it has been quite tempting to douse a bunch of these packages in gasoline, take video of burning them in back on our Weber grill, upload the footage to YouTube and Instagram and Facebook with the recipients’ names prominently displayed and loudly mocked, with open encouragement to the viewers to join in the mocking.
I haven’t done so. Sometimes people can’t help being stupid, privileged, and clueless.
But I’m not hand-delivering their misdelivered packages. They’re all going back in a mailbox with the original address covered up, labeled “Return to Sender”. I have sufficient photos of the first batch should I ever need to demonstrate that I’m not keeping them.
The OP isn’t being a jerk here, they’ve done a lot more than I would have in a similar scenario. They have no legal obligation to deliver the packages, & they can’t even get to the house due to it being in a gated community. They have tried multiple different ways to remedy it. Are you suggesting that they need to keep them forever or until the intended comes to pick them up?
Seriously, what do you suggest they do, given everything they’ve already done?
Yes, people buy lots of unaccepted and/or undeliverable packages second hand from various delivery services, and that is not what the topic of this thread is, is it?
No, I think she is talking about packages and items where a delivery was tried, and failed for various reasons, and sold in lots instead of being destroyed. Totally legal.
