“She seems extremely competent, very professional, knows her business, but then once she gets your items, she disappears off the radar,” said Marci Wulfmeier.
Wulfmeier is one of several customers now complaining to Channel 7 about the loss of their possessions to a woman who was expected to sell them on their behalf.
While downsizing to a smaller home, Wulfmeier sought out help selling furniture from Susan Hass of Artful Estate Sales & Staging.
“Things that didn’t sell, she said I will take them and sell them for you. And you’ll get a check and I’ll keep you updated.”
While some money did come through, Wulfmeier says Hass failed to pay her an outstanding $5,000 dollars.
Jeanette Hudgins and brother, Gulliver Silvaggi say the same promises were made to them when they hired Hass to sell valuable goods from the estate of their late parents.
Gold, jewelry, pearls, fur coats, and three thousand ceramics were among the items the siblings entrusted Hass to sell. They estimate the value at anywhere between $50,000 and $90,000 but they have yet to see a penny of it.
“It's very frustrating to see my parents entire estate and basically 70 years of their collections and accumulations simply vanish," Silvaggi said.
The victims have all reported the activity to police, but because there’s a contract involved, authorities say it’s a civil matter that needs to be resolved in court.
But even with a lawsuit, collection on the money will be harder than ever imagined, with court records showing Hass filed for bankruptcy in late 2016.
Channel 7's Taking Action team went out looking for answers, but we could only reach Susan Hass by phone and as soon as we identified ourselves as Channel 7, she hung up on us.
But even though WXYZ couldn’t ask her our questions on camera, her former clients did.
They found Hass conducting an estate sale under a different company name, JJ Estate Sales.
During that confrontation, Hass told one of our victims that her missing items were being held in storage.
So we followed the trail to a storage facility in Troy. It turns out Hass has two units packed with goods at the facility, but she stopped paying her bills for rent, ultimately allowing the company to put those items up for auction.
But instead of doing that, the company was gracious enough to invite our victims to come in and claim their valuables.
The units were filled to the brim, making it very difficult to identify some of those missing items.
But Marci Wulfmeier had a breakthrough, finding two of her custom made chairs worth $1200 dollars a piece.
The storage facility has agreed to bring more of the packed items out and take pictures of them, so that the victims can more easily identify their possessions and hopefully reclaim them.
As for Hass, she has yet to respond to our repeated requests for comment.
