Return Of Stolen Muscle Car Taken By Foreclosure Vendor Brings More Heat On BofA For Lack Of Oversight In Hiring Process

In Worcester, Massachusetts, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports:

• On Tuesday afternoon, a garage door rolled up at the Manchester Police Department in New Hampshire, and Sims Dahrooge laid eyes on a familiar rear spoiler and dual exhaust pipes bristling from the back of a vintage purple muscle car.
  
  “That’s all I had to see, and I couldn’t help it. I just started to burst into tears,” he said yesterday, back in the city with the 1973 Dodge Challenger he restored with his father, Aaron Dahrooge.
  
  As the Dahrooges towed the car back to Worcester on a trailer, on account of a blown transmission and rear tires scorched smooth from untold burnouts, two Manchester men were being held on Massachusetts warrants for receiving stolen property.
  
  The classic American muscle car had been taken from the Burncoat home of Aaron Dahrooge’s deceased mother in March, a day after a Bank of America contractor had gone to the home to winterize and secure it.
  
  Bank of America is foreclosing on the vacant Uncatena Avenue home, which is in Mr. Dahrooge’s control in the meantime as executor of his mother’s estate. He stored the Challenger in the home’s garage during the winter as he did when his mother was alive, he said.
  
  A neighbor told Mr. Dahrooge that the same crew that had winterized the home and padlocked the garage door in March returned the next day, used a key to open the garage lock and towed away the distinctive purple car, which has dual four-barrel carburetors and a chrome air scoop sticking up through the hood.
  
  Mr. Dahrooge, who immediately reported the car stolen, said his attempts to get information about the winterization crew from Bank of America were met with months of stonewalling, a characterization disputed by the bank.

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• The Dahrooges said investigators told them the two New Hampshire men arrested have criminal records, one of them extensive. They maintain the bank should be liable for the damage to the car.
  
  “The biggest thing for me is Bank of America hired criminals. Don’t they do background checks? This is supposed to be a professional bank,” Sims Dahrooge alleged.
  
  His father’s lawyer, Thomas J. Scannell of the Worcester firm Fusaro, Altomare & Ermilio, said he’s looking into whether the Dahrooges have legal grounds to sue the bank for damages.
  
  In the meantime, Patrick Peryer, 22, and Kurtis Lavigne, 27, both of Manchester, N.H., are fighting rendition to Worcester on charges of receiving stolen property. They were arraigned Tuesday as fugitives from justice on the charges in New Hampshire.

For more, see Missing muscle car back home in Worcester amid foreclosure battle (No explanation of how it was taken, but charges against NH men).

For story update, see Car stolen from foreclosed house causes bank, vendor freeze:

• Local muscle car enthusiast Aaron Dahrooge's successful battle to get his stolen 1973 Dodge Challenger back has prompted one of the world's largest financial institutions to temporarily stop doing business with a major foreclosure vendor in Massachusetts and to require the vendor to verify that all of its employees and subcontractors have up-to-date background checks.