Keon Williams' fight to keep his house has taken another strange twist: The Milwaukee man arrived home Monday night to find that the locks had been changed on one of his doors on orders from Harris Bank, even though a court order says he can stay in the house for now.
"They admitted they had sent somebody to change the locks," Williams' lawyer, Geoffrey Gnadt, said after an emergency court hearing Tuesday. "They did apologize profusely - but there are costs."
Williams remains on the verge of being thrown out of his house on N. 44th St. because of a refinancing that went terribly awry during the mortgage meltdown of 2008, as detailed in a Journal Sentinel story Sunday.
When he refinanced in 2008, an affiliate of the now-defunct Central States Mortgage Co. failed to pay off the original loan. So even though Williams faithfully began making payments to the holder of his new mortgage, the holder of the unpaid previous mortgage, Amcore Bank, foreclosed.
The house then was sold to Harris Bank, which now owns Amcore, at a sheriff's sale this year.
Completion of that sale was stayed by a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge until May 12 after Williams explained the situation in court.
Yet when he got home early Monday evening, he was stunned to find new locks and a note from a property management company on the side door of the house. The front door was inexplicably left unlocked.
"They invaded my privacy - they broke into my house," Williams said. "You can't just walk into somebody's house and change the locks - I'm just shocked."
Harris Bank's lawyer told Milwaukee County Circuit Judge William Brash at Tuesday's hearing that the locks had been changed in error, Gnadt said.
Harris' lawyer apologized for the snafu and agreed to cover the cost for Williams to have a new lock installed. The bank will also pay Williams' attorney fees and any other costs incurred because of the mistake, according to Gnadt and court records.
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