And this one, my friends, is being committed by a Federal Judge and a US Attorney. The hundred million dollar HOA scam that led to 43 federal convictions in Las Vegas is over. But the judge has ordered all the records from that scam and prosecution to be sealed.
As a reporter I spent a lifetime getting official records unsealed. When things are sealed, there are usually some dirty secrets in those records that make public officials not want to be accountable to the public they serve. This particular sealing of records is incredibly suspicious because of all the public officials who were involved. In the beginning of this investigation there were plenty of hints that one or more Nevada judges was involved. There was also suspicion about a ‘high up’ national political figure who had his fingers in the pie.
There’s an excellent column in the Las Vegas Review Journal about one of the sleazy cops who took part in the massive HOA corruption scandal. It’s linked below.
Also linked is an FBI press release on its long-running HOA investigation. Supposedly, this was a ten million dollar swindle, but now the FBI is using the figure $58 million. The real losses are many times that amount because the Leon Benzer HOA swindle helped collapse the Las Vegas housing market and an untold number of people lost their homes and life savings. Someday, some smart investigator will start calling it the billion dollar swindle, which it clearly was.
