Vet Who Claims He Was Victimized By Local Police Dept. Employee In Land Contract Ripoff That Led To Foreclosure Says Latter Allegedly Invited Her Co-Workers To Loot Premises While He Was Out-Of-Town; Cops Then Placed Alleged Victim Under Arrest For "Misuse Of 911" Saying Reported Burglary Is Only A Civil Matter

In Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, Salem-News.com reports:

• U.S. Navy veteran Ted Visner and his wife, Kathy Smith of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, have been living out a nightmare. It started two and a half years ago, when the family fell victim to an apparent real estate scam by a local sheriff's department employee.
  
  Ted Visner says they bought their former home on a land contract, only to learn seven months later, that the seller, Isabella County Sheriff's Dept. employee Shelly Sweet, was not making monthly payments on the house. A bank foreclosed on the property, all unbeknownst to the Visner/Smith family.
  
  Ted Visner, who builds custom homes for a living, said, "Although we were paying Sweet every month on the purchase of the property, she had not been paying the underlying mortgage and the home fell into foreclosure." I asked Visner if he had records of those payments, he said he does, including canceled checks. You won't believe what happened next.
  
  "On a weekend Sweet knew that we would be out of town, she offered the contents of our home to her friends and coworkers at the Isabella County Sheriff’s Department, claiming we had abandoned the home. Many took her up on her free offer deal and took over $55,000 dollars worth of our personal property."

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• The story seems blatantly criminal in nature, with police banding together to help off their property in its entirety. Visner said, "She just put a sign out and let anybody have what they wanted, she didn't remember who was there. In her own disposition she admits to giving our stuff away."
  
  Visner says Sweet told her employer, the sheriff's department that Visner and his wife weren't making payments, while Visner is able to prove via canceled checks to Sweet that they were indeed paying. "It was blatantly untrue," Visner added. "There is no evidence to support what the county did, it all shows what we are saying though."

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• Visner, Smith and their kids, returned from their weekend away on Monday September 27, 2010, to discover that they were locked out of their own home. Visner called the law enforcement agency that Sweet worked for. [...] It would take a day before the family was allowed to go back inside of the home, and that is when Smith and Visner learned that 95% of the home's contents had been stolen.
  
  "A sheriff deputy named 'Steinert' came to our home three times that day and only assisted his coworker while the under-sheriff, sheriff and PA refused to help us after they recognized the totality of the situation," Visner said, adding that the "situation" was 6+ coworkers of Sweet having entered their home and receiving stolen property, which for anyone else in the world is Theft.
  
  Instead, Visner was arrested for "Misuse of 911" on the deputy's third visit. "The county investigated the crime for almost four months and during this time, I moved my family out of Isabella County for safety, I could not move with them because my indefinitely delayed arraignment still loomed over my head."
  
  Visner says after losing the home he shared with his family, and 95% of their belongings to the sheriff's department, that the prosecutor's office ignored their complaints and still refused to investigate "their employees". In his words, "Over two and a half years have passed now with law enforcement officials doing nothing except covering for one another."

For the story, see Sheriff's Department Takes Family's Home and Contents Using a Fake Eviction.

See also, The Morning Sun: Isabella man to appeal lawsuit judgement.