https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/...in-foreclosed-house/

A Long Island man who only ever made one mortgage payment has deftly used the courts to stay in the house for 23 years — for free, according to legal papers.

Guramrit Hanspal, 52, has filed four lawsuits and claimed bankruptcy seven times to avoid being booted from the 2,081-square-foot East Meadow home he “bought” for $290,000 in 1998.

So far, it’s worked: two different banks and a real estate company have owned the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath home since Hanspal was foreclosed upon in 2000. But Hanspal remains.

Hanspal’s not the only occupant of the home leveraging the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s “automatic stay” rules, which give debtors a temporary reprieve from all collection efforts, harassment, and foreclosures.

At least three other people listing the home at 2468 Kenmore St. as their address have also filed for bankruptcy in Brooklyn Federal Court, winning the “automatic stay,” only to have the claims eventually dismissed, court records show.

“It’s really a group of people that are more than willing to use the courts and abuse the courts to whatever extent they need to extend their illegal occupancy,” said attorney Jordan Katz, who reps current property owner Diamond Ridge Partners.

Hanspal’s history of litigation “is incredibly long and sordid,” said Katz, who added that while he’s seen occupants staying in foreclosed homes before, “nothing even approaches the length of this one.”

“He’s not legally occupying that property,” Katz said. “It’s an outrage.”

And a good deal: Hanspal, who had an initial 7.375 percent interest rate on the $232,000 adjustable-rate mortgage, likely saved himself upwards of $440,000 by not paying his bills.

Hanspal got the mortgage from Washington Mutual in 1998 and made exactly one payment — $1,602.37, — before defaulting, prompting the bank to begin foreclosure proceedings a year later, court records show.

By May 2000, Washington Mutual successfully foreclosed on the home, and Hanspal was “forever barred” from any claim to the property, according to the judgment of foreclosure.

But Hanspal never left. By January 2001, he filed his first bankruptcy claim, records show. He went on to file another in November 2001, two in 2002, and one in 2003.

If bankruptcy filings didn’t work, Hanspal simply went to state court seeking relief, sometimes acting as his own attorney, according to an August 2005 order from Nassau County Judge Burton S. Joseph.

Meanwhile, in 2004, Hanspal transferred the deed of the home to a friend, Rajender Pal, even though he had no legal right to do so, according to court papers. Pal, using the Kenmore Street address, filed for bankruptcy in 2005, staving off eviction yet again.

“Mr. Hanspel and Mr. Pal’s apparent frivolous conduct in using the Court system and the
Bankruptcy proceeding as a sword to get out of a lawful debt, rather than a shield, is most disconcerting to this Court,” Joseph wrote in 2005, threatening sanctions.

By 2008, Washington Mutual had gone under, marking one of the largest bank collapses in American history, with its assets eventually taken over by JP Morgan Chase.

The new bank was also unable to boot Hanspal, and has been locked in litigation with him for years, with Hanspal filing at least three lawsuits against JP Morgan Chase in Nassau Supreme Court. The two sides are also in an ongoing legal battle in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Hanspal claims in court papers that Chase committed “blatant fraud” in 2010 by trying to evict him when it didn’t have proper title to the home, and accused the bank of withholding “surplus” funds from a previous auction of the property.

Chase slammed Hanspal for “clogging the court docket” with “patently frivolous” claims.

By May 2018, Chase unloaded the property to Diamond Ridge, which offered Hanspal $20,000 to leave. He didn’t take the deal, and instead, filed for bankruptcy again in 2019 and 2020. Another purported occupant of the house, Boss Chawla, filed bankruptcy four times in 2019, as did another resident — allegedly named John Smith — who filed once.

“There always seems to be a new occupant who pops up at the last moment,” said Diamond Ridge attorney Katz. “They never show up in court.”

At least one judge thinks it’s time for Hanspal to go.

“The history of this case going on for approximately 20 years must come to an end,” Nassau District Court Judge Scott Fairgrieve wrote in a December 2019 housing court proceeding.

Diamond Ridge has spent $150,000 on legal fees and paid $50,000 in property taxes since purchasing the home, said member Max Sold, who added, “as of this writing [we] still have no known end in sight.”

The pandemic may give Hanspal yet another reprieve, noted Katz, who said the COVID-19 backlog in New York’s housing courts has kept them from pursuing their eviction effort.

Hanspal did not return messages. A woman who answered the bell at Kenmore Street and identified herself as a tenant said Hanspal was not at the home, which featured at least three cars without license plates in the driveway.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wcb6092,

I used to work for a rental company. I saw this more times than I could count. Usually the folks doing this were wearing nicer clothes and drove better cars than we were as the office staff.

I've long wondered how these folks justify this kind of behavior. I've long since given up trying to figure it out.

But our justice system is the envy of the world, right?

quote:

Originally posted by Rick Lee:
But our justice system is the envy of the world, right?

Bankruptcy and evictions are civil matters.

So it's part of the judicial system (the legal system/courts in general), but not specifically the (criminal) justice system.

quote:

Bankruptcy and evictions are civil matters.

It's a civil matter when dealing with civil people. There's a way to handle this guy, and it doesn't involve the courts.

Although fiction, the 1990 movie Pacific Heights does accurately describe how hard it is to get rid of somebody who doesn't want to be gotten rid of.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by Rick Lee:
But our justice system is the envy of the world, right?

Bankruptcy and evictions are civil matters.

So it's part of the judicial system (the legal system/courts in general), but not specifically the (criminal) justice system.

I know how it works. But to the rest of the world cases like this and the McD's coffee being too hot, etc. make our system look ridiculous, which it is.

An acquaintance of mine put his house up as collateral to flip houses.

He was a pretty crappy remodeler.

He had been playing at it for years and it finally caught up with him

He has was foreclosed on 5 years ago, he is still living there.

It is on a main street and I drive that road a few times a week.

I see his car in the driveway.

Burn it to the ground

I’ve read stories like this over the years but have no personal indirect experience. I have no knowledge of the law behind these situations but I completely don’t understand this. I understand a reasonable grace period of one maybe two months. But how is it legally allowed that someone can occupy my property, especially without compensation, for any time beyond that?

The problem is that it's considered a civil matter, whereas it should have been criminal trespassing the day after the first foreclosure/eviction didn't end the matter.

Back around 2008 when all the foreclosures from the subprime boom were going on, a good buddy of mine let one of his houses go into foreclosure and just stayed there until they came knocking on the door. He had taken out a $60k personal loan to avoid a short sale of his main house, actually brought that money to the closing table to get rid of the house. This was before short sales were so common and easy to do. He really had tried to do the right thing. But by that time, he was down to living in his rental property, stretched out the no payments for almost two years, they finally came knocking on the door. He said he'd take a $3k cash payment and another 30 days in exchange for moving out peacefully without trashing the place or stripping anything. He was never going to do any of that, but had heard banks were starting to deal. And they did. They agreed. He took that $3k and used it to get into a rental.

quote:

how is it legally allowed that someone can occupy my property, especially without compensation, for any time beyond that?

You need to use the right collection agency. They would not have gotten away with this in Tony Soprano's neighborhood.

quote:

Originally posted by Rick Lee:
But our justice system is the envy of the world, right?

I was on Jury Duty once years ago and the Judge asked me if I had anything against our Justice system.

I told him "no, we've got the best justice system that money can buy."

He said that if he hadn't asked the question, he would find me in contempt.

Then I got installed on the jury, believe it or not.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

how is it legally allowed that someone can occupy my property, especially without compensation, for any time beyond that?

You need to use the right collection agency. They would not have gotten away with this in Tony Soprano's neighborhood.

Definitely. In the neighborhood where I grew up, they would have showed up with baseball bats.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Burn it to the ground

First thing that I thought after I read the story!

We have it happen quite often w/rentals. They pay the deposit and first months rent. Then don’t pay a dime after. By the time they get the notices, eviction stuff, court proceedings, and everything they have lived free for anywhere from 9 months to a little over a year. Then like locusts they move onto the next one. Some are very skilled at gaming the system. Pisses me off to no end. But, it’s civil not criminal.... which, sometimes I think is BS as well.

The guys mentioned in the story are Indians, of the same ethnic group as I am. It is a a common trait among some Indian people, especially those that are sort of traditional Indian. These folks are all about running scams and scamming other people. Back home in India, where the rule of law almost does not exist, scams and scam artists usually dont last too long, because, people getting scammed can pay for some goons to do damage to the scam artist. In America, scam artists can milk the system, safe in the knowledge the they are going to be safe physically, and so these Indian scam artists manipulate the civil court system to carry on their scams for years and years.
I tell you, the more stories like this I hear, the more I hate Indian people!!!!! And I am an Indian guy!!!!

Resident of infamous Long Island home killed in Queens car crash

https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/...in-queens-car-crash/

An occupant of the Long Island house whose owner has gone more than 23 years without paying the mortgage died in a Queens car crash this week.

Bhagwant Srichawala, 32, was killed early Wednesday on the westbound Long Island Expressway when he lost control of his 2008 Subaru Legacy and veered into a tree near Kissena Boulevard, according to the NYPD. Srichawala was pronounced dead at the scene of the 4 a.m. crash.

richawala was one of several residents of a home on Kenmore Street in East Meadow, where owner Guramrit Hanspal hasn’t paid a penny on his mortgage since 1998, filing numerous court actions and bankruptcies in a successful bid to stave off eviction.

It’s unclear if Srichawala was a tenant of Hanspal’s or a relative. A lawyer for several of the occupants of the home declined comment, saying he was unaware of the death.

The spell worked

quote:

Originally posted by sidss1:
The guys mentioned in the story are Indians, of the same ethnic group as I am. It is a a common trait among some Indian people, especially those that are sort of traditional Indian. These folks are all about running scams and scamming other people.

You don't say!

quote:

Back home in India, where the rule of law almost does not exist, scams and scam artists usually dont last too long, because, people getting scammed can pay for some goons to do damage to the scam artist.

That makes sense.

quote:

In America, scam artists can milk the system, safe in the knowledge the they are going to be safe physically, and so these Indian scam artists manipulate the civil court system to carry on their scams for years and years.
I tell you, the more stories like this I hear, the more I hate Indian people!!!!! And I am an Indian guy!!!!

It doesn't matter that you are Indian. Every race has this problem among themselves. I think we are all equal in that respect. Maybe some are more equal than others but in the bigger picture, we're all pissed at ours too.