West Virginia Woman Has Home Foreclosed On By Accident, All Furniture Trashed by Contractors

Wall Street crime number one billion and one: A bank sent the repo men to the home of West Virginia resident Nikki Bailey to foreclose on the property and trash all her belongings only to learn that Bailey's was actually the wrong house in the wrong town. 

Bailey returned to her house from visiting a friend in the hospital to find that repo men from CTM Industries had removed every last item of furniture from her house. When pressed to explain what was going on, the men simply stated that they'd been ordered by an unnamed bank to foreclose on Bailey's house. The only issue was that Bailey's house had been bought in full over 25 years prior. Upon further inspection, it turned out that Bailey's house was on Godby Street, while the house slated for repossession was found in Godby Heights. An understandable mistake except for the fact that Godby Heights isn't located in the town of Logan, but Chapmanville—over ten miles away.

"Everything was gone," Bailey said to local news WSAZ. "Living room furniture, my Marshall diploma, my high school diploma, my pictures—my history. I was teacher of the year. All of that stuff is gone…it's all gone."

And to just twist the world's rudest knife a little further, the repo men told Bailey that all the things they had trashed from the house was considered "junk" when inspected. The bank in question has remained unidentified, even after Bailey and her lawyer began pressuring the repo company for some information. They have begun the process of securing restitution for her lost items, but with the error still unclear and the bank unnamed, it might prove to be difficult. 

"It's a lot like taking someone's luggage at the airport," said Kanawha County Prosecutor Mark Plants, who has already ruled out the possibility of forthcoming criminal charges. "It wasn't a crime. It was an accident."

Why is it that for an institution that deals with accounts of the highest bracket, accountability is always the hardest thing to come by?