Another Foreclosure Trash Out Contractor Screws Up; Victimized Property Owner Says Outfit Made Off With $150K Worth Of Stuff; Cops Punt On Criminal Probe - Say It "Happens All The Time ... Is Not A Crime"

In Coupland, Texas, the Austin American Statesman reports:

• The workers who were supposed to clear out his neighbor’s foreclosed house instead cleaned out Mike Moors’ barn, making off with his wife’s wedding dress, their love letters, his boat, his backhoe, the works.
  
  Moors wants to know where his stuff is and when he’ll get it back. The answer might be never.
  
  “Are my things in storage somewhere?” asked Moors, 53, an unemployed construction worker who has been asking the same questions for more than a month. “Have they sold it at auction? How do I explain to my wife that she may never get her wedding dress back? There were many other heirlooms taken that are priceless.”
  
  Safeguard Properties, the Ohio company that hired the crew to prepare the house next door for foreclosure in December, acknowledges the error and says an insurance company is verifying Moors’ claim and will soon have information for him. But not yet.
  
  Moors cannot imagine how the mistake was made in the first place. A fence separates his property on County Road 460 from his former neighbor’s land. And there isn’t a home on Moors’ land, just a barn.
  
  Moors, who lives in Taylor, discovered his belongings were missing in late January when he drove by the property, which he hopes will be the site of his retirement home. At first he thought he had been ripped off. He didn’t see his 16-foot fiberglass boat. A closer look revealed that the metal barn was broken into. The bolts on a metal rail fence securing the barn were cut off, and the fence was removed. Missing were his $15,000 Case 580 backhoe, a small printing press for sign-making and two locked construction trailers on wheels that were parked on either side of the barn.
  
  A neighbor, Joe Diaz, saw it all. Three men in trucks and carrying clipboards showed up and began hauling things off. “They were here all day and part of the night. They couldn’t get the backhoe out so they dragged it out and put it on a trailer,” Diaz said.
  
  Diaz said he was suspicious but not enough to call police: “I hadn’t seen Mr. Moors in a couple of months so I assumed the worst and thought he’d died or something. This was happening in broad daylight; I thought it was legit.”
  
  This type of thing has been known to happen. In 2008, a Cedar Park couple who just bought a previously foreclosed house came home to find all their belongings missing. Field Asset Services workers hadn’t heard of the sale and believed the house was still in foreclosure. The company apologized; the couple sued.
  
  Records from the national Better Business Bureau show that Safeguard Properties, which has a “C” rating and 33 complaints against it, was alleged to have made virtually the same mistake in 2011. The records don’t indicate where it occurred, but they say Safeguard failed to respond to the BBB’s attempt to resolve it. The Texas Attorney General’s Office confirmed late Friday that two complaints have been filed against the company in the past.
  
  Moors estimates the value of the missing items at $150,000, but he says he doesn’t want money. The contents of the trailers included a late aunt’s antique ceramic figurines and a 100-year-old trunk that once belonged to the grandfather of his wife, Janine.
  
  There also was a cedar chest with her wedding dress that she wore Nov. 16, 1985, a wedding reception book and love letters that Mike Moors and his wife had exchanged when they were dating.
  
  “When I think about that wedding dress, it makes me so sad that it’s gone. Nothing, nothing can replace it,” Janine Moors said.
  
  Mike Moors filed a theft report with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 24. He said Detective Brian Johns sent him an email that said Safeguard Properties was responsible, but that the company was acting in good faith. Case closed. “This happens all the time, not that it makes it right, but it is not a crime,” Johns told Moors in the email.(1)
  
  Frustrated, Mike Moors said he spent the next few weeks calling and sending registered letters to county officials, the lender CitiMortgage and Safeguard Properties. He finally filed a claim in February.
  
  Sue McConnell, a spokeswoman with the BBB in Ohio, said that, according to its records, no government agency has taken action against Safeguard.
  
  Safeguard isn’t providing any details about Moors’ belongings. Diane Roman Fusco, a spokeswoman for the company, said the information is confidential, but that Moors can get the details from claims solution specialist Lisa Horvath. Mike Moors said he called Horvath on Thursday, and she told him the information was confidential.
  
  “She also told me it’s not necessary to get the media involved. She said, ‘I promise I will do the right thing,’” Mike Moors said.
  
  Janine Moors hopes for more than a promise. “A woman plans her whole life for her wedding day and choosing that dress,” she said. “And when you don’t have it anymore, it wants to make you cry.”

For the story, see No answers after foreclosure crew empties wrong building.

(1) I guess this case qualifies as a "civil matter."