Elderly NJ Homeowner Seeking Loan Modification Gets Victimized By Trash-Out Contractor While Temporarily Away From Home As Illegal Pre-Foreclosure Sale Bankster Break-Ins Continue

In East Hanover, New Jersey, nj.com reports:

• Steven Kenner came home to a nasty surprise after a two-week vacation in Florida.
  
  Papers were strewn about the house. Cabinets were left open. Cigarette butts were ground into the floor. A lock on the door to the laundry room had been tampered with.
  
  Kenner, 71, thought his East Hanover home had been burglarized. But what actually happened may have been worse. It wasn't a burglar.
  
  Instead, Kenner's mortgage lender hired subcontractors to break into Kenner's home as part of efforts to see if the home was vacant or abandoned, according to a lawsuit filed by Kenner against Citizens Bank, Citizens One Home Mortgage, subsidiaries of the bank and its subcontractors. The suit was filed in May in Morris County Superior Court.
  
  While subcontractors broke into his home, Kenner was in touch with the bank about a pending mortgage modification and no one reported anything was amiss, he said. And the bank even knew he was away on vacation, Kenner said.
  
  ***
  When officers arrived, they proceeded as if there was a burglary, Kenner said. They dusted for fingerprints and took photos, and they asked Kenner to see if anything was missing.
  
  As officers searched the home, Kenner opened the front door, looking for the packages he was expecting from the mortgage company.
  
  That's when he saw a "6" -- Kenner's house number -- written on the outside of the door with some kind of marker. And then they saw a sticker affixed to the door. "This property has been determined to be vacant/abandoned," the sticker said.
  
  Police called the number on the sticker and learned it was all a mistake by Kenner's mortgage company, Kenner said.
  
  That's some mistake.
  
  "The police said they were told that the mortgage company more or less made a mistake," Kenner said. "The mortgage company had contracted with the company that broke into my home to see if the home was vacant."
  
  But the home was not vacant, nor had the bank ever started any foreclosure proceedings, said Kenner's attorney, Philip Vinick.
  
  Vinick said the New Jersey Supreme Court adopted amendments to court rules governing the foreclosure of vacant and abandoned residential properties in December 2012.
  
  If a lender brings a foreclosure action and it believes a property is vacant or abandoned, the lender can ask for a quicker judgment from the court so it can take steps to maintain the property. For that to work, the lender must prove that at least two of 14 conditions must be present at the property, such as overgrown or neglected vegetation, disconnected utilities, the accumulation of mail or newspapers and the absence of window treatments.
  
  None of the 14 conditions applied to Kenner's home, the attorney said.
  
  "In Mr. Kenner's case the lender did not even institute a foreclosure action much less prove that Mr. Kenner's house was vacant, which it obviously was not," Vinick said.
  
  Even after Citizens was made aware of the error, the bank's subcontractors continued to contact Kenner, the homeowner said. One wanted to come into the home. Another wanted to shut off his water.
  
  ***
  "I've been very upset," Kenner said, noting that he doesn't feel comfortable in his own home. "I'm thinking very seriously of selling because of what happened to me."
  
  After the suit was filed, Citizens offered to settle, but Kenner's attorney called the amount "insufficient" to "compensate him for his physical and psychological damages, including being embarrassed and having to explain to his neighbors what happened."
  
  "The laws were bypassed or disregarded. It will eventually be left up to jury to determine how much Mr. Kenner's nightmare is worth," Vinick said.

For more, see Bamboozled: Bank unlawfully breaks into home, lawsuit says.