Well, prosecutors in San Mateo finally nailed a 64 year old HOA manager. She’s accused of embezzling 2.8 million dollars from the Woodlake Homeowners Association. She’s facing a growing heap of charges while police continue to investigate her partner.
Suspect Susan Marie Lambert
My question is, how the heck do you steal nearly three million dollars from a bunch of condo owners? Do you just assume that because they live in condos they must be stupid? Let me put that loss in actual numerals: $2,800,000.00! Where do you hide it? It can’t be in your pillowcase. It can’t even be under your bed. It would completely fill one of those condo units you supervise!
The big hoot in the story linked below is a quote from Chief Deputy D.A. Karen Guidotti, who says, “It’s obviously an enormous embezzlement. We certainly don’t see them of this magnitude very often.”
Well, Deputy Dawg. You’d better take off those rose-colored glasses and start looking across America. Denver, Colorado, Overland Park, Kansas, Las Vegas, Nevada, just about anywhere in Texas or Pennsylvania, Virginia or Florida. Really, 2.8 million dollars is just an average take in the HOA embezzlement business.
(link to HOA embezzlement story from San Mateo Journal)
The craziest part for me is the fact that the HOA paid this woman over $200,000 per year! so she could rob them blind.
No one really has any idea where their money is going when we pay our fees. Mine are going up again for “repairs” that haven’t happened. Any inquiry into budget details or requests for more info are met with hostile resistance if they are even answered at all. Maybe if I didn’t have a job I’d have time to really push my HOA, but sadly I don’t, which is obviously what they want.