If you are getting strong “Milton and his stapler” vibes from this, you are not alone. Thanks to Bloomberg News, we learned of a lawsuit brought by a retired Consumer Financial Protection Bureau examiner, who is is suing the agency’s former acting director in federal court over a paper shredder and a pedestal fan.
Nicholas Chicorikas, who helped set up the CFPB’s Northeast Regional Office in New York and served as its second in command, appeared last week before Judge Gregory H. Woods in the District Court for the Southern District of New York for a pretrial conference in Chicorikas v. Vought.
Chicorikas, who is representing himself, alleges in an amended complaint filed July 8 that the bureau “stole personal belongings” after Russell Vought locked employees out of CFPB offices in February 2025 and shuttered the agency’s field offices. A remote employee who worked out of the New York office at 555 Madison Ave., Chicorikas kept a Fellowes B-161C shredder and a fan there. He says he was traveling for a new job at an upstate New York bank when the bureau assigned retrieval times last October.
He is asking for $4,407: $1,600 for a replacement shredder, which is no longer manufactured, $110 for the fan, $405 in filing fees, $600 for a process server, $30 in postage, $87 in travel and $1,575 for three days of missed work.
The CFPB says it wants to return the property. Agency attorney Timothy Bo Stanton told the court the bureau wants to give Chicorikas his fan and his shredder. In an Aug. 26 status report, the CFPB offered to ship both items to his home in Carmel, N.Y., about 70 miles from the courthouse. Stanton said Chicorikas did not properly serve the suit and has not exhausted administrative remedies, limiting the agency’s ability to settle. Chicorikas says he never filed an administrative claim, and told the court in an Aug. 24 letter that he served Vought at his personal address, where a federal marshal accepted the complaint.
Chicorikas, who spent 37 years in federal service including stints at the FDIC and the Office of Thrift Supervision, told the court he is prepared to continue the case “forever.”
Judge Woods urged him to weigh the sunk costs already incurred.
