Tag Archives: corruption

The Rich, The Famous, and The Fraudster

guest blog by Nila Ridings

Perhaps this will serve as a reminder to NEVER PAY CASH TO YOUR HOA property manager, office manager, board members, or the door man!

We’re back in Aspen where a former manager of the Inn At Aspen has allegedly stolen $90,000. A Pitkin County judge is going to be seeing Saimoni Naivalu of Ivins, Utah again in September, but for now he’s lawyered up and bonded out of jail.

Saimoni created a company to do ‘maintenance’ for the Inn At Aspen. You know, the kind of ‘maintenance’ where the only task is cashing checks. These checks just happen to turn into cash…and that cash seems to have a way of sneaking into Naivalu’s billfold.

These crooks just hate to get caught stealing but they always want to pay it back when they do. Fat chance of seeing that money again at the Inn At Aspen!

(link to story in Aspen Daily News)

http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/171857

Another Scumbag Heads to Prison

With all the tens of billions of dollars being embezzled from homeowners and Homeowners Associations across the country, you’d think sending a crook to prison wouldn’t be that unusual a news story. Sadly, stories like the one linked below are pretty rare.

An embezzler in Utah who operates in a number of states has been sentenced by a federal judge in Nevada to three years in prison. Oh yes, he has to make four million dollars in restitution. At least those are the terms of his plea bargain. What? He stole all those millions and has no way to pay it back? Then why isn’t he in prison for life?

(link to Salt Lake City Tribune story on tiny sentence for big fraud)

 

New York Condo Lawsuit

For some reason I don’t get many emails from New York, even though condo and co-op problems there are as bad as elsewhere.

But here’s an interesting lawsuit involving a New York condo dispute, in which the board appears to have intentionally targeted one homeowner, possibly as an attempt to get him to move out and sell his home to one of the board members.

With this kind of nastiness, what do you think that does to the character of a condominium? Does a Homeowners Association of any kind actually protect property values?

(link to New York condo lawsuit)

 

 

Another Great Column On HOAs!

I seem to be getting more and more calls from reporters around the nation asking about HOA problems. Most of them are skeptical when I talk about how massive the national HOA scam is. So it really helps them to read newspaper columns like the one I’ve linked below.

It’s written by a seemingly level-headed HOA board member who’s discovering just how underwater he is in trying to deal with the difficulty of straightening out a crooked HOA.

It’s well worth reading the link…and possibly forwarding it to others.

(link to problems in one North Carolina HOA)

 

 

Trapped In Condo-Prison

I think I’ve linked to this YouTube video before. It’s an oldie but goody, but it’s a perfect example of the kind of corruption that’s rotted out the core of America’s housing structure. Give an HOA member power over her neighbors and homeowners get threatened fined, sued, and stolen from. This board president is in charge of a half million dollar budget, and her husband is a longtime convicted felon. This board even hires a gun-toting felon to enforce its wishes against homeowners.

Whew! If you think you’ve seen it all, then take another look: