Susan Nussbaum called 1-800-GOT-JUNK — and now, she says, she’s 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
Nussbaum had used the junk removal service once before. So she called back when she had some furniture to dispose of before a move between Upper West Side apartments. She had three unwanted items – a bed, a bookshelf and a large wall unit with cupboards.
Hauling those furnishings cost her $412 — and much more.
The wall unit housed a safe filled with precious jewelry — worth about $100,000 and of great sentimental value, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed earlier this month against 1-800-GOT-JUNK, accusing company employees of stealing the safe.
Nussbaum emptied the wall unit except for the safe, which was “too heavy” for her, according to her lawsuit. She planned to ask the movers for help, but “in the chaos of the move,” she neglected to do so.
She then went to a Mattress Firm store at the other end of the block to look at a new bed, Nussbaum told The Post, but returned home shortly after realizing her mistake.
“I can’t run fast, but the truck had already left and I called the moment I got in,” she said.
“I was furious”, she remembers. “I said, ‘They just left, please look in the truck now, please have them come right back. My friend took over the call because I couldn’t talk. They said they didn’t see anything there. They lie.”
Nussbaum said she also offered a reward for the safe’s return.
“The customer service team was unable to discern the severity of the situation and failed to accept the conflicting statements between [Nussbaum] and their employees,” according to documents filed by Nussbaum’s attorney, Scott Wolinetz. The safe was appropriated “by deceitful and deceptive means… The plaintiff demands the immediate return of the value of the stolen safe.”
Surveillance footage of the sidewalk outside the building shows the wall unit on its side, with its cabinets falling open, revealing the safe. One of the two movers then closes the cabinets and they remove the item on a dolly.
“They definitely saw the safe, but they didn’t say, ‘Did you want to leave it?’ Nussbaum said. “That night, I even went to the junkyard in the Bronx with my son,” but to no avail.
She suspects that the jewels have been stolen and pawned. Since the incident, which occurred in October 2023, she has searched eBay to see if any of the allegedly stolen parts appear there, but has found nothing.
Nussbaum, 70, worked as a special education teacher and social worker. Her husband, a doctor, died almost nine years ago. Since she was a widow, she has moved several times between rental apartments in Manhattan.
Missing items included her first birthday candle, labeled in her mother’s handwriting, and her son’s baby spoon. There were several rings from her grandmothers, Nanny Frieda and Nanny Florie.
Also missing is her late husband’s wedding band and a charm bracelet her mother gave her when she was a teenager. “I’ll never see it, of course, but if I had it back I would wear it every day of my life,” Nussbaum said.
The jewelry was not insured. The safe also contained important documents, including passports and birth certificates.
“I should have taken the stuff out of the safe and put it in a bag, or called my super for help,” she said. “I should have gone through the safe again like in a hotel room. When you leave a hotel room, you go through the drawers.”
1-800-GOT-JUNK points are exclusive.
“Our hearts go out to Susan,” Evan Cohen, the area director, wrote in an email to The Post. “We took pictures of the unit before and after the service was performed to validate our price and the space the items would take up in the truck.”
He failed to provide the photos at The Post’s request, but sent documents saying, “I agree that the work has been completed satisfactorily and I understand that I no longer own the items that were removed,” which was signed by Nussbaum.
“Susan directed the team to remove and dispose of the entire cabinet, which the team did,” Cohen wrote. “Shortly after we performed the service, the cabinet was dropped off at a local third-party disposal/recycling facility…Susan called our office shortly after the service was completed and was very upset. She said a safe was in the cabinet wall unit and she had forgotten about it. She explained that she hadn’t told the team about the item and had instructed them to simply dispose of the entire wall unit … unfortunately, by the time she notified us, the truck crew members had already followed her instructions and were disposing of the wall unit at the local disposal facility … Truck crew members reported not seeing or handling a safe in the wall unit.”
An internal investigation determined that “the truck crew members and manager had followed our standard service process and removed the wall unit as requested by Susan, the customer,” Cohen wrote. “Members of the team categorically denied receiving any security.”
Information from a private investigator hired by Nussbaum showed that her first frantic call to 1-800-GOT-JUNK was made at 4:26 p.m. — an hour and a half after the truck’s departure time — and lasted eight minutes. . The truck was still in the trash at Bronx AJ Recycling, according to a bill stamped 4:35.
The manager of 1-800-GOT-JUNK in The Bronx “insisted that … his drivers … are reliable” and “also indicated that it is not unusual to have contents inside the cabinets that people are throwing away,” the report of the investigator. reads. “He insisted that the contents of the truck had already been dumped and that there was nothing more he could do. . . . [He] indicated during our conversation that the drivers stopped for lunch. We are unable to determine where and when the stop was made as GOT-JUNK refuses to provide any additional information.”
Nussbaum had planned to leave the jewelry to her daughter and son, both in their 20s.
“I think about it every day of my life and it haunts me,” she said.
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