Alert to recover default judgements

PORTVILLE, N.Y. (WIVB) - A southern tier Grandmother blew the whistle.

Call 4 Action reports her alert may have allowed thousands of New Yorkers to recover some of the millions they lost in default judgements.

William Singler is accused of cheating thousands, if not, tens of thousands of New Yorkers out of their day in court.

Authorities say Singler's Long Island based company signed off on court papers that led to those New Yorkers losing court cases, they often didn't even know existed.

"That serves summonses and complaints on people being sued, and he is being accused of falsifying affidavits that indicated people were served properly," said Assistant Attorney General, James Morrissey.

Morrissey told Call 4 Action, one extreme case Singler signed off on return papers from one process server, who would have had to travel more than 10,000 miles in one day.

"To give you a perspective, from Buffalo to Los Angeles is 2,500 miles. This server would have done the equivalent of Buffalo to Los Angeles and back, and there and back again, in one day."

And authorities believe due to Singler's fraud, as many as 42,000 New Yorkers lost their cases by default, amounting to millions of dollars.

The massive case was exposed by Portville grandmother Kathy Baughman, simply balancing her checkbook, and finding out her account had been frozen by one of those default judgments.

Because I had no idea who served me, when they served me," Kathy said.

So Kathy contacted the Cattaraugus County Clerk Jim Griffin, to find out who filed the lawsuit, and who served her with the court papers.

Kathy said, "And that is when I said, I don't know who this woman is, and I said I'm telling you Mr. Griffin, I was not served, and he believed me! Which made me feel good, but I did not know where he was going to go with that."

The County Clerk then took Kathy's issue to a judge, leading to a local investigation, which then went statewide.