Tag Archives: foreclosure

Embezzlement Allegations

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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)

 

Legalized Grass

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In Florida, it’s an HOA turf war. St. Augustine turf.

Many HOAs mandate the stuff even though it soaks up water, isn’t native to Florida,  demands pesticides and dies anyway. But if your St. Augustine gets a little bit brown there’s likely a big fine in the works by the Homeowners Association. Many homeowners have been begging for the chance to plant more environmentally friendly lawns, but the arrogance of many HOA boards is beyond description.

“You knew the rules before you bought into this HOA,” they scream. We’ve all heard that. We all know that. But if the EPA ever declared Homeowners Associations to be an illegal toxic chemical many of us would be a lot better off.

(link to Florida story on battle over grass)

 

 

 

How To Fight Your HOA? Education!

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I get email every day from frustrated homeowners who are being bullied by out-of-control HOA boards. I only wish I could tell all their stories.

The advice I consistently give is for people to recognize that by moving into a Homeowners Association you have essentially bought shares in a corporation where you have no rights under the U.S. Constitution. You have essentially put your net worth and the equity of your home up as collateral against all debts, legal judgments, and legal expenses racked up by your board members and its management company. You’re legally and financially responsible for paying expenses related to embezzlement and racketeering activities by board members. We saw that in Las Vegas over the past few months with the forty or so federal convictions of HOA thieves.

I tell people over and over again, learn what you’ve gotten yourself into. Educate your neighbors. Learn what and who the Community Associations Institute (CAI) is. This organization is one to be despised since it turned in the early 1990s from a homeowners’ informational group into a perverse lawsuit referral machine. Still, CAI testifies before state legislatures that it’s benign and  “represents all homeowners.” It’s a blatant lie. Even one of its founding fathers, Lincoln Cummings, has some dismay about the direction his organization took.

Cummings was interviewed by Shu Bartholomew about the origin of this organization.

(link to a fascinating inside look at CAI on a recent OnTheCommons.net)

Scroll down to the September 5th interview with Linc Cummings.

 

Totally Unrelated to HOAs, But Still Ticks Me Off!

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HOAs raise my blood pressure. But this story really hit hard. A 14 year old budding genius named Ahmed took an invention of his to school. It was a digital clock he made as an experiment. But something caused school officials to think he’d made a bomb and they called police. Ahmed was handcuffed and led away in front of schoolmates while the bomb squad dissected his science experiment.

I’m no science genius, but in 8th grade some 50 years ago I built a robot which I took to school. It was a three or four foot long ‘monster’ that I covered with a red bedspread and maneuvered down the school hallways. It looked for all the world like a huge stupid-looking lady bug. It even had eye holes and when fellow students looked down the eye holes the ‘bug’ spit ping pong balls at them. For that stunt I should have been arrested. But instead I got a science fair award.

Ahmed? Unlike me, this kid is going places in science. The school officials who had him arrested should have to spend a little jail time themselves. Shame on any system that rewards sloth and damages those who really try to make something of themselves.

(link to story on Ahmed’s arrest)

 

Chaos Reigns

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Imagine living in the Vista Lago HOA in Orlando, Florida. What a nightmare. Two property managers claiming to be the legitimate ones, have hired and fired each other and filed liens against dozens of homeowners for unpaid dues. Many of those homeowners have been paying double and triple the dues and fines just for fear of losing their homes to whichever manager ends up winning the power struggle.

It’s hard to imagine the kind of unnecessary stress these homeowners are suffering.

(link to WFTV news story on the madness in Vista Lago Homeowners Association)