SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Safe Deposit Boxes Aren't Safe
In the early 1980s, when Philip Poniz moved to New Jersey from Colorado, he needed a well-protected place to stash his collection of rare watches. He had been gathering unusual pieces since he was a teenager in 1960s Poland, fascinated by their intricate mechanics. His hobby became his profession, and by the time of his relocation, Mr. Poniz was an internationally known expert in the history and restoration of high-end timepieces.
At first, he kept his personal collection in his house, but as it grew, he wanted something more secure. The vault at his neighborhood bank seemed ideal. In 1983, he signed a one-page lease agreement with First National State Bank of Edison in Highland Park, N.J., for a safe deposit box.
Over the next few decades, the bank — a squat brick building on a low-rise suburban street — changed hands many times. First National became First Union, which was sold to Wachovia, which was then bought by Wells Fargo. But its vault remained the same. A foot-thick steel door sheltered cabinets filled with hundreds of stacked metal boxes, each protected by two keys. The bank kept one; the customer held the other. Both were required to open a box.
In 1998, Mr. Poniz rented several additional boxes, and stored in them various items related to his work. He separated a batch of personal effects — photographs, coins he had inherited from his grandfather, dozens of watches — into a box labeled 105. Every time he opened it, he saw the glinting accumulation of his life's work.
Then, on April 7, 2014, he lifted the thin metal lid. Box 105 was empty.
"I thought my heart would fail," Mr. Poniz said. He paused in his retelling of the memory. At age 67, he has a strong Polish accent and speaks English carefully. He struggled to find the right words to describe the day he discovered his watches were missing. "I was devastated," he said. "I was never like that in my life before. I had never known that one can have a feeling like that."
[...] In the days after Mr. Poniz found his box empty, he began piecing together what had happened: Wells Fargo had apparently tried to evict another customer for not keeping up with payments, and bank employees had mistakenly removed his box instead. After drilling No. 105 open, the bank shipped its contents to a storage facility in North Carolina. After Mr. Poniz discovered the loss, Wells Fargo sent back everything it had in storage, but some items had vanished.
In a six-page report filed with the Highland Park Police, Mr. Poniz described the watches, coins, documents and other items that were gone. Using auction records and sales reports, he estimated that their combined value was more than $10 million. That would make it one of the largest safe-deposit-box losses in American history.
[...] For over a decade, Mr. Poniz's Box 105 sat at the bottom of a seven-foot shelf in Wells Fargo's Highland Park vault, accessible via a metal-barred door with an old-fashioned crank. But halfway up a different wall in the vault was another Box 105 — a product of the bank's having consolidated several branches' safe deposit boxes into a single location and having kept their original numbering. Bank employees got them mixed up, and emptied the wrong one.
"There's no question that Wells Fargo drilled the box and took the contents out of it, put in storage and then returned it," John North, a lawyer representing the bank, said at a court hearing last year. "The underlying dispute is, was everything returned or not?"
That isn't really in dispute. When Wells Fargo employees opened Mr. Poniz's box, they created an inventory that included 92 watches. When workers at the bank's storage facility in North Carolina counted the items, they listed only 85. Also missing were dozens of rare coins that were listed in the first inventory, but not the second. According to Mr. Poniz, photographs and family documents also disappeared.
[...] Oddly, the bank returned to him five watches that weren't his. "They were the wrong color, the wrong size — totally different than what I had," Mr. Poniz said. "I had no idea where they came from."
[...] "Wells Fargo is reviewing the facts and circumstances of this case," said Jim Seitz, a bank spokesman. "We cannot comment further due to pending litigation."
Mr. Poniz hired lawyers. One of them, Kerry Gotlib, said he pressed the bank to find the missing items. It couldn't. He asked for a financial settlement; the bank said no. So Mr. Poniz sued in New Jersey's Superior Court.
[...] The lawsuit appears nowhere near resolution, and Mr. Poniz already has run up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. "The bank has spent a tremendous amount of resources and put them into defending the case, instead of stepping forward and saying, 'We made a mistake here, let's make it right,'" said Craig Borgen, another lawyer representing Mr. Poniz.
The watches that vanished were the largest and most visually striking in his collection, Mr. Poniz said. There was a Tiffany watch that tracked the moon's phases on its gold dial, and an early Breguet engraved with the coat of arms of the Duke of Orléans.
The highlight was a rare 19th-century pocket watch, whose face was dotted with pearls and rubies and concealed a pop-up bird, slightly larger than a thumbnail, that twittered and sang. Such "singing bird" watches rarely come to market. One of the last, in 1999, was sold at auction for $772,500 to the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva.
Mr. Poniz, who spent a decade working at Sotheby's and now consults for Christie's as a horological expert, had hoped that the singing-bird watch would one day be the centerpiece of an auction of his own collection. He considered the trove to be his retirement fund.
"My impression about safe deposit boxes was that it was like you were putting things in Fort Knox," he said. "Nothing could happen to it." He doesn't think that anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @12:11AM (12 children)
Is there any video or pictures of him putting in the said rare items in the box?
If there is no evidence of the said items really being put there by the owner, then the bank can only do their best to find the missing items. Paying a customer for lost items (that may have never been there) is a bad idea and encourages copycats.
Not defending the bank here.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JNCF on Tuesday July 30 2019, @12:41AM
From TFS:
You could doubt his claim that some watches were replaced, or that photographs and documents were taken, but the fact that the bank lost/stole at least seven watches and dozens of coins does not seem to be in dispute.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday July 30 2019, @12:42AM (3 children)
Shouldn't be needed.
Wells Fargo's own inventory of his box when opened and when delivered to storage are quite enough and prove there was a theft between the two inventories. This also begs the question of why were the two inventories not compared, or if they were, why there was no investigation when the evidence would of been freshest?
I don't know if it's legal or not for a bank to film you accessing your safe deposit box. My only experience would be retrieving my grandfathers will with my father in the late 1970's, There were cameras in the lobby, but I don't recall any cameras in the safe deposit box room. Of course VCR technology was fairly new and cameras were far from ubiquitous. The cameras themselves were also quite expensive and for the most part quite obvious due to their size.
But I digress...
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 30 2019, @02:27PM (2 children)
I do not know about legality, but I know of no bank that has any cameras past the vault door where safe deposit boxes are and I have been in several. There usually is a camera trained on the vault door itself to record who goes into and out of the vault. Many customers care very much about their privacy and do not want the bank to know what they have in the box. Banks do care and require you to state that the box contains nothing unlawful or harmful but beyond asserting that they generally need to drill or pick the lock to get into your box - they do not want to know what you have. Once you have your box the employee withdraws and/or escorts you to a viewing room with the box closed - the employee does not want to witness you opening your box. This, though, sounds like the bank itself broke the lock and inventoried the box - it is much more highly likely that the items disappeared in transit or at the storage facility given the inventory (i.e. at some point past the vault door). Someone would be resopnsible for signing off on those inventories. It might have been in the bank's interest, though, to have a camcorder brought into the vault during the drilling and inventory process.
Keep in mind the story author seems to be getting information from the side of Mr. Poniz; perhaps Wells Fargo and the police did indeed conduct (or are conducting) an investigation into the discrepancies. Additionally, if you're the bank and facing a claim in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) the sticking point is probably in the valuations. The inventory discrepancies should indeed be enough to establish the claim that the items are missing, but it would not automatically establish the worth of the missing items. The allegedly misstated items are a matter to investigate as well - are they unsupported between the inventories or did the initial inventory list the incorrect items? I doubt the bank had a horological expert on hand to inventory the contents of the box, but who knows. Despite that, I'd bet that Wells Fargo is not disputing that they owe the client, because of their own records, but the question would be how much.
Five years seems like a long time but the more money is involved the longer things can become... not to mention WF sadly might earn the settlement money on the interest float from then to now - wait for the settlement to accumulate as it were.
Then again, Wells Fargo does indeed have a less than perfect track record already in customer service and establishing fraudulent accounts. It would seem to me that they would have a vested public relations interest in settling this matter as rapidly as possible.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:40AM (1 child)
Ah yes, I had not considered the articles point of view. I would be interested to know if there is or was an investigation. It would seem to be quite the oversite if none were conducted in the face of such a major discrepancy.
Whats this? You would question Wells Fargo's absolutely sterling public relation.......never mind I can't go on...laughing and typing don't mix......
Seriously though, thanks for a well thought out comment. It's getting to be a bit rare of late.
You have breathed life into the failing embers of hope for at least another day.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:47PM
After negotiations with Wells Fargo have broken down, it sounds like WF either didn't do, or refuse to do their due diligence in investigating it. Or don't have records of who handled the transport between inventory, delivery, and subsequent inventory. Hell, maybe they don't even have documented who did the two inventories.
Long story short: None of the for profit banks should be trusted with your money, and very few of the banking coops are any more trustworthy.
Best of luck to those who need one though.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 30 2019, @12:52AM (6 children)
Why would the bank pay the customer? Other than possible good PR. As I understand it, as a rule banks are not liable for the contents of a safety deposit box (though it may vary by state). Essentially you're renting a very small, unplumbed apartment within the bank's vault. Insuring its contents is your business, they're just the landlord.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @02:39AM
landlords are not legally allowed to take tenant's things whenever they want - in my opinion anyone doing business with Wells Fargo this decade deserves this if they didn't learn from history
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:44AM (3 children)
Where I live, landlords aren't allowed to just confiscate your stuff, and aren't even allowed to enter your premises without notice.
They broke into his "apartment" without cause, they're responsible.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 30 2019, @01:33PM (2 children)
Sure, but is there any evidence that "the bank" is directly responsible? As opposed to the IRS, a bank employee, a clever unaffiliated thief, etc.?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kiffer on Tuesday July 30 2019, @02:25PM
Yes, The bank is responsible, they opened his box, took out the content, and lost it.
Did an employee lose or steal it?
Did the courier lose or steal it?
Did an employee at the storage facility misplace or steal it?
Doesn't matter,
The mistake was made by the bank in opening the wrong box and removing the contents.
The cops should treat it as a theft, as should the insurance company.
But ultimately the Watch Collector should not be out of pocket for this mistake by the bank.
(we know the watches were in the box, the bank's inventory shows they were there)
The bank can push blame onto the courier, the courier could claim that they never opened the boxes, the storage facility can claim they never got the items... but someone has millions of dollars worth of watches and coins that they shouldn't have.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday July 30 2019, @03:03PM
Kiffer said what I would say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 30 2019, @02:33PM
Because the bank was responsible for security the contents of the box - they had a duty to do so by the contract. By taking the wrong box out they broke that duty (they had no right to access the contents). The harm can be established that because of the inventory discrepancies the client lost money (presumably...) That harm was directly caused by the bank's access and transfer of the contents when they had no right to do so.
Duty. Breach. Harm. Causation.
It's an open and shut tort of negligence. The big question and what is arguable would be what the client lost in terms of money and what WF would owe.
This sig for rent.