I am an apartment building manager. Once, years ago, I was brought in to clean up after another manager who had quit/been fired for… let’s just call it incompetence.

Anyway, there was a unit in the building that was occupied by a guy I never met or even saw, and the rent was months overdue. So I followed the required legal procedure to declare the unit abandoned. I spoke to neighbors who hadn’t seen the guy either. I posted notices, etc. Eventually, the unit was legally declared abandoned and I started the task of clearing out any property left behind.

The unit was very neat and tidy and full of nice stuff. Not the usual state of a rental that someone abandoned, and this should have tipped me off. But it didn’t, and so I had everything hauled away. Furniture, electronics, clothes, the lot.

Then after 6 months I moved on to a different building. Later, I learned that the person who lived there was on active duty in the military, and that’s why no one had seen them for months. Apparently, a neighbor had been entrusted to pay the rent but they had just kept the money for themselves, and lied to me when I inquired about the neighbor’s whereabouts.

So, this poor guy comes back from overseas military service to discover that not only has he lost his apartment but also everything in it. And since I had followed the legal procedure, no law was broken (by me.)