In New York, a 23-year-old man does not pay his mortgage and lives for free in a house that does not belong to him

A Long Island man has lived in an unpaid home for 23 years. He will pay only one installment due for a month, and then he went to court all the time so that he would not be evicted. Writes about it New York Post.

Guramrit Hanspal, 52, filed four lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy seven times to keep him from being kicked out of a 2 square foot (081 sq m) home in East Meadow, which he took out on a $ 193 mortgage in 290.

For him, the scheme still works: two different banks and a real estate company have owned a three-bedroom, 2-bathroom home since Hanspal was foreclosed in 2000. But he still lives there.

Hanspal is not the only resident of the home to employ Bankruptcy Code "auto-suspend" rules, which give debtors a temporary respite from all debt collection attempts, prosecutions, and foreclosures.

At least three other people who identified 2468 Kenmore Street as their place of residence also filed for bankruptcy in federal court in Brooklyn and received an "automatic suspension." Ultimately, their claims were rejected, but the eviction process was halted.

“This is a group of people who are more than willing to use the courts and abuse the law to whatever extent they need to in order to prolong their illegal stay in the home,” said attorney Jordan Katz, representing the current owner of the Diamond Ridge Partners property.

On the subject: Brooklyn landlord goes homeless: defaulter tenant lives in her home under eviction moratorium

Hanspal's forensic history is "incredibly long and grim," Katz said, adding that while he had seen tenants living in houses that weren't being paid before, "nothing even came close to the duration of this situation."

“He does not legally occupy this property,” Katz said. - This mess".

Hanspal, who had an initial interest rate of 7,375% on a $ 232 mortgage, probably saved himself over $ 000. He got a mortgage from Washington Mutual in 440 and made exactly one payment - $ 000 dollar. And then he stopped paying, which prompted the bank to begin the procedure for depriving him of the right to foreclose in a year.

By May 2000, Washington Mutual had successfully stripped the borrower of the home foreclosure, and Hanspal was “permanently barred” from any claims to the property, according to a court order.

But the man never left home. According to the documents, by January 2001, he had filed his first bankruptcy lawsuit. And then another in November 2001, two in 2002 and one in 2003.

If filing for bankruptcy did not help, Hanspal simply went to state court for relief, sometimes acting as his own attorney. This happened in 2005.

Meanwhile, in 2004, Hanspal transferred the ownership of the house to his friend Rajender Pal, although according to court documents he had no legal right to do so. Pal, using the address of this house, filed for bankruptcy in 2005, again preventing an eviction.

In 2008, the case was affected by the bankruptcy of Washington Mutual, which became one of the largest bank failures in US history. Its assets were eventually transferred to JP Morgan Chase.

The new bank also failed to evict Hanspal. The man has been in litigation with the bank for many years. He has filed at least three lawsuits against JP Morgan Chase in the Nassau County Supreme Court. Both parties are also involved in litigation in federal court in Brooklyn.

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Hanspal claims that in 2010, when they tried to evict him, there was “flagrant fraud”. And he accused the bank of withholding "surplus" funds from the previous sale of property at an auction.

JP Morgan Chase criticized Hanspal for "littering ships in this case with clearly frivolous" claims.

By May 2018, JP Morgan Chase resold the property to real estate firm Diamond Ridge, which offered Hanspal $20.000 to move out. He did not take the deal, but instead filed for bankruptcy again in 2019 and 2020. Another self-proclaimed home owner, Boss Chawla, filed for bankruptcy four times in 2019. Another resident of the home, John Smith, also filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

Diamond Ridge spent $ 150 in legal fees and paid $ 000 in property taxes since the purchase of the home. It is not yet known how this case will end.

The pandemic could give Hanspal another respite. Cases accumulated in New York housing courts due to COVID-19 do not allow the eviction to continue.