In St. Louis County, Missouri,
KPLR-TV Channel 11 reports:
- A South County man, trying to save his home from foreclosure, says he found it burglarized by subcontractors working for his mortgage company. You might not believe it, if he didn’t have video to prove it.
When banks begin foreclosing on a home, it's common for the bank to send someone out to make sure the property is secured and protected. In this case, a homeowner's video cameras appear to capture the opposite.
It happened on a quiet middle class neighborhood near Rock Hill and Laclede Station. Brent Evans was trying to save his home. He said, “I tried to work things out with Wells Fargo, but it just wasn`t going to work out with my finances. So the best thing to do was work with them to find somebody to buy the home.”
Brent said he remained the legal owner at the time the bank sent unknown subcontractors in May.
What the bank could not have imagined is what they did when they got there.
The men backed a trailer into Brent`s driveway. One of the men walked up to his door. The man knocked, looked around and put a notice on the front door “Warning. This property has been winterized." He then waited before breaking in. Four cameras capture what happened next.
Brent said, “Once they got in, then it was just a flood of everything coming out of the house.”
You can see a man walk out with a tool set. Someone takes a large hunting bow. One box appears to be so heavy the man struggles with it.
At one point it looks like a treasure hunt. One guy uses his phone light to look.
Then someone notices a camera and points it down. The new camera angle later captures what appears to be more thefts from Bent`s trade as an auto technician.
Over the course of two days, nothing was off-limits as one man rummages for food. A camera outside shows the men loading up. A bucket of stuff here. A box of stuff there.
Then some remodeling inside as one man grabs a power drill to work on the back door. Brent says they replaced the door lock probably so they could get back in with their own key. He said he may not even have noticed if they hadn`t left behind the bashed in door handle.
The sign on the door says to contact Wells Fargo subcontractor MCS – ‘Mortgage Contracting Services' with problems. But MCS sent another subcontractor to do the winterizing. Neither MCS nor Wells Fargo will give the local company's name.
Brent added, “They still won`t give me any more information, so that`s why I contacted you.”
St. Louis County Police are now investigating and a Wells Fargo representative tells Fox 2 it is 'cooperating.’ The bank added, “We did not direct or authorize our vendor to remove any personal property from the house and any such action by the third-party contractor would have been inappropriate.”
MCS also sent a statement saying it's been in business for 30 years, it background checks its subcontractors and that "If the police investigation determines our standards have not been met, we will act accordingly."
We'll stay on top of the police investigation and the response to Brent's loss.
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