Katie Barnett only wants her stuff back.
She says all her possessions in Vinton County, Ohio, disappeared when Wellston First National Bank confused her home with the house across the street, foreclosed on it, changed the locks, and then sold or trashed everything -- all while she was out of town for two weeks.
“They repossessed my house on accident, thinking it was the house across the street,” Barnett explained to Ohio's 10TV. “They told me that the GPS led them to my house. My grass hadn't been mowed and they just assumed.”
Worse still, Barnett says an itemized list requesting the bank pay her $18,000 so she can replace everything has only been met with ridicule from the bank's president.
The bank has not responded to a request for comment from The Huffington Post but told 10TV it was working to resolve the situation.
Sadly, stories like this are all too common. In September 2012, subcontractors hired by Wells Fargo mistakenly foreclosed on the wrong home in California, destroying a man's vacation home in the process.
A review of court records in 2012 by The Huffington Post revealed more than 50 lawsuits have been filed against banks and subcontractors who have entered and "foreclosed" on the wrong properties. Most of the suits are tied to two largest property management contractors in the U.S.: Safeguard Properties and Lender Processing Services.
UPDATE: Monday, July 29 -- In a statement published on the First National Bank of Wellston's website, Anthony S. Thorne, the bank's president, offers his apologies to Barnett and states a "desire to compensate her fairly and equitably for her inconvenience and loss."
Thorne attributes the conflict to a discrepancy in the items Barnett claims the bank took and the bank's own records:
... the written list of items that she provided to us – and the value she assigned to those items – is inconsistent with the list and descriptions of items removed that was prepared by the employees who did the work, and with the list and values of missing items provided by the homeowner herself as recorded in an earlier telephone conversation with one of our representatives.
WATCH a followup piece by 10TV, below:
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