A young couple with a newborn baby have lost everything after responding to a Facebook post.
Becky Szenk, 22, and her fiancé Mark Higgins thought they were moving up in the world. The young couple had recently become new parents and they were looking forward to moving from their small apartment in Wolverhampton into a new home.
They looked for a moving company online and found an advertisement posted to Facebook for Lee Green, a “man with a van.” They contacted the simple moving service and set up an appointment.
Moving day came and two workers helped load all of their possessions into a box van. When the movers drove off, Becky and Mark never heard from them again. The young couple was devastated.
“The removal men were racing in and out of the flat. We just thought they were being very professional. But once they drove away we didn’t see them again,” Becky told the Telegraph. “Everything we own was packed into that van. It all happened so quickly, around 45 minutes from start to finish.”
The movers were supposed to meet Mark at the pub where he worked as a manager, but they never showed. “We have been left with virtually nothing,” Becky said.
Becky and Mark invested all of their income into the pub Horse and Jockey in Walsall Wood, West Midlands. “The men had told me in advance to pack all of our belongings into boxes and label them up clearly – I didn’t realise at the time, but they took the most valuable items first,” Becky explained. “When I commented on how fast they were completing their work, one of them told me that ‘we have a lot of jobs on today’.”
“I have never cried more in my life than I did on Friday afternoon – I am so distraught that they have taken my engagement ring and my baby’s toys,” she said. Beck and Mark have a 7-month-old daughter, Ariyah. “We were in our new home on Friday night, but it wasn’t a home, it was four walls. We didn’t even have a blanket to sleep under.”
The couple has relied on the kindness of friends, family, and even strangers as they struggle to get back on their feet. “Some people have come forward recently to provide us with essentials, but we still don’t have everything,” Becky said. “I have to put my daughter first and it important that she is looked after before Mark and I have what we need to live. It’s left us absolutely heartbroken. We can get new furniture but the personal stuff cannot be replaced.”
The couple hopes that others will hear their story and learn from their mistakes. “For us it’s been a big lesson to learn. I just hope others can be more careful about trusting people they book over social media as I would hate for this to happen to anyone else.”
As their story went viral, more people came forward to help the young couple. “The donations that we have received have been so overwhelming. We lost our faith in humanity when we lost our belongings, but it’s been restored and more by the way people have responded,” Becky said to the Mirror. “The regulars in the pub have been coming in as well – they read what happened in the paper and they said ‘We want you to know that not everyone around here is the same as those removal men.’ We are so grateful and thankful that people have found it in their hearts to donate to us.”
West Midlands Police spokeswoman Gina Lycett, said “Police are investigating a theft after a family from Bilston hired a ‘man with a van’ to help them move house, advertised on a social networking site.”