asshanson
12-04-2013, 03:00 PM
I mentioned something about this in the shoutbox last night, here is a full description of what happened.
Yesterday around 4pm Emily went over to our new house to do some prep for painting one of the rooms. She saw a truck in the driveway and went inside the house to find a guy in the front bedroom taking pictures of the contents of the closet. He claimed he was there to winterize the house, and had shut off the water and put antifreeze down all the drains. He was contracted by Mid American Property Management out of Nebraska City, NE.
When he first arrived our neighbor came over and told him that people had just moved in, we were painting last weekend and he must have noticed us carrying several boxes in. The contractor called the property management company and they assured him that the bank had ordered the work to be done because it was a foreclosure. Apparently there is no communication between the different mortgage branches within the bank because the foreclosure/short sale department had no record of the house being sold on November 22nd, over 10 days prior.
Emily and the contractor proceeded to take off all the tape/stickers on the faucets and toilets, and he turned the water back on. After he left, Emily checked out the closet where he was taking pictures, and found that my handgun case had been opened and the scope was no longer on the shelf, but had the sun shade taken off and everything put back into the box. Furthermore, he had no reason to be in the bedroom taking pictures because there are no water sources in there, so we think he was planning to find out the value and come back to steal them. He had changed the locks on the front door, so we have no idea if he kept a key for himself. I'm sure there are fingerprints on the scope and handgun, so I didn't touch them in case we need to take them to the authorities.
And finally, the workmanship on the lock change is astonishingly bad. There are pieces of door knob & lock outside the door along with some broken drill bits, he messed up the weather stripping on the outside of the door, there are a pile of door parts inside, and it looks like he totally stripped one of the screws on the inside of the dead bolt and left it half way in. See pics below.
We are wondering what sort of action we can take here. Obviously we are going to ask the bank to pay for a new set of locks (since it was their mistake in the first place), and have it done properly this time. Hopefully he didn't mess anything up on the door while drilling it, it looks like the dead bolt is now tilted sideways quite a bit. I haven't taken it apart to inspect for damage yet. We are also going to search all our things to see if we can find anything missing.
I'm really glad he didn't decide to take my volks, which were sitting on the porch right in front of the door. How do you not realize that people are living there with tons of stuff around the house and a set of 4 boxes delivered that day on the porch? Blows my mind.
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/outside_door.jpg
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/locks_outside.jpg
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/locks_inside.jpg
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/parts_inside.jpg
Yesterday around 4pm Emily went over to our new house to do some prep for painting one of the rooms. She saw a truck in the driveway and went inside the house to find a guy in the front bedroom taking pictures of the contents of the closet. He claimed he was there to winterize the house, and had shut off the water and put antifreeze down all the drains. He was contracted by Mid American Property Management out of Nebraska City, NE.
When he first arrived our neighbor came over and told him that people had just moved in, we were painting last weekend and he must have noticed us carrying several boxes in. The contractor called the property management company and they assured him that the bank had ordered the work to be done because it was a foreclosure. Apparently there is no communication between the different mortgage branches within the bank because the foreclosure/short sale department had no record of the house being sold on November 22nd, over 10 days prior.
Emily and the contractor proceeded to take off all the tape/stickers on the faucets and toilets, and he turned the water back on. After he left, Emily checked out the closet where he was taking pictures, and found that my handgun case had been opened and the scope was no longer on the shelf, but had the sun shade taken off and everything put back into the box. Furthermore, he had no reason to be in the bedroom taking pictures because there are no water sources in there, so we think he was planning to find out the value and come back to steal them. He had changed the locks on the front door, so we have no idea if he kept a key for himself. I'm sure there are fingerprints on the scope and handgun, so I didn't touch them in case we need to take them to the authorities.
And finally, the workmanship on the lock change is astonishingly bad. There are pieces of door knob & lock outside the door along with some broken drill bits, he messed up the weather stripping on the outside of the door, there are a pile of door parts inside, and it looks like he totally stripped one of the screws on the inside of the dead bolt and left it half way in. See pics below.
We are wondering what sort of action we can take here. Obviously we are going to ask the bank to pay for a new set of locks (since it was their mistake in the first place), and have it done properly this time. Hopefully he didn't mess anything up on the door while drilling it, it looks like the dead bolt is now tilted sideways quite a bit. I haven't taken it apart to inspect for damage yet. We are also going to search all our things to see if we can find anything missing.
I'm really glad he didn't decide to take my volks, which were sitting on the porch right in front of the door. How do you not realize that people are living there with tons of stuff around the house and a set of 4 boxes delivered that day on the porch? Blows my mind.
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/outside_door.jpg
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/locks_outside.jpg
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/locks_inside.jpg
http://www.dsmstyle.com/photopost/data/500/parts_inside.jpg