Derf's Grotto

[junkmasterg]

Man owed $617,000 refuses to identify himself and claim money

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/11774798.htm#121

MILWAUKEE - Most people wouldn't wait a minute to claim $617,000 they were owed. But not Gene Sehrt.

He's owed the sum from the rental and sale of some Milwaukee commercial properties a court-appointed receiver administered at his family's request.

Sehrt - or a man the circuit court clerk and his staff believe is Sehrt - frequently shows up in the very county court office where he could claim the money.

But he never mentions the money, which now sits in a bank.

"We have our regular, day-to-day stuff, and then there's Gene," Milwaukee Circuit Court Clerk John Barrett told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "He is an interesting diversion."

Barrett said the man frequently visits his records room, asking for a cardboard box, permanently set aside for him. It contains 30 years of court records about Sehrt's case, which is among the longest-running in Milwaukee County Circuit Court history.

The staff doesn't think he's Sehrt's lawyer because of his disheveled appearance. The letters the man delivers, though they aren't signed "Gene Sehrt," imply they come from him.

"Since you fatuously and knowingly, fraudulently claim it is my money that you have under your control in my name," the man wrote to Barrett May 12, "please tell your depository and its contact person to stop (requesting cooperation)."

A reporter recently asked the man whether he was Sehrt. The man flinched, turned and responded: "Who told you I was?"

The man never confirmed he was Sehrt but said his legal claims could be worth "millions."

But he said, corrupt officials, including judges, are obstructing his interests and would happily "blow (him) away" to partake in the money if they catch up with him.

"If I go away," the man said, "this case goes away."

Judges, attorneys, court clerks, relatives, detectives, ex-business partners and ex-lovers whose paths have crossed with Sehrt or his case over the 30 years described him to the newspaper as a paranoid, elusive man.

In 1975, his mother, Lois Sehrt, filed court papers saying no one had heard from her son in three years and asking for land he owned in Milwaukee to be transferred. That began the three-decade court fight, which eventually involved at least 14 attorneys and a handful of judges.

Lois Sehrt died in 2000, but Gene was still nowhere to be found. One of his sisters, Jaclyn Doty, told the newspaper she hadn't seen or spoken with him in 24 years.

"The whole family has basically disowned him," Doty said by phone from her Illinois home.

After his mother's death he stood to inherit $70,000. James Krause, a detective hired to find Sehrt, came up with some old addresses and court cases stretching to California.

He chronicled the chase in a letter included with Lois Sehrt's probate court file:

"He does not believe in taxes. He would also never use his Social Security number.... Mr. Sehrt does not want to be found."

No record was ever found that Gene Sehrt had died, the detective wrote.

"If you want my cooperation," the man in the courthouse warned the reporter asking about Sehrt, "you will not try to ascertain my travels, my location or my contact information."

Meanwhile, the $617,000 sits in the bank and gathers interest.