Tag Archives: HOA Embezzlement

Have We Lost Our Minds?

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guest blog by Nila Ridings
 
This story may serve as a mind-bending psychological trip when a prospective homeowner has to “win” over the board to be granted the right to buy into a place to live. 
 
Medical students stress over the LSAT, MCAT, and Step One, Two, and Three before they qualify for a medical degree. All of those tests induce stress beyond comprehension. But it’s more understandable when you realize these positions require a great deal of commitment and little room for error.
 
Many prospective home buyers are going through similar agony over their “interviews” with co-op boards as if acceptance into one of these places could mean life or death.  Are they really providing employment details, financial records, and having their pets “interviewed” just to be able to put a roof over their heads?
 
What if they get laid off, change jobs, or their company agrees to a merger that doesn’t meet the acceptance of the board?  Or their dog goes to a new groomer and the new haircut isn’t to the liking of the uppity board president?  What happens if their uncle’s cousin is convicted of bank robbery?  Could these changes push these “lucky” homeowners into homelessness?
 
Ridiculous.  Outrageous.  Insane.  Who would, and why would, anybody ever sign on to such nonsense…and pay for it? 
 
 

Little Pleasure On Pleasure Island

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People move into lush-looking Homeowners Associations thinking they’ve bought a little slice of Utopia. But few people know that there really is no workable Utopia in this life. In fact, the original Utopia, written five centuries ago by Sir Thomas More, was actually a farce; a comedy about the inability of the human race to get along with one another. Homeowners Associations founded along the same lines of More’s Utopia have built into their own structure the probability of failure and decline into despotism and tyranny.

There’s an old bit of survivalist wisdom that teaches if three men go into the wilderness, two will always turn against the one. So any government which is allowed to use tyrannical rules against a minority is doomed to failure, disaster and a complete loss of justice. In fact, the genius of our country’s Constitution is that it doesn’t create a ‘majority rules’ ethic. It’s not a Democracy. It removes the people several steps from the rulers, and it divides the rulers into several separate but equal bodies of government. Our Congress is divided into a House and Senate. But the two must work together to pass legislation. The Executive has veto powers over Congress, yet Congress has the ability to overpower the Executive by gathering together a super-majority. And when everything goes to Hell in a hand basket, there’s a Supreme Court which can overturn or delay the implementation of bad legislation. All states except Nebraska have a similar structure (Nebraska has a unicameral instead of a bicameral legislature).

With all this in mind, we sadly turn our eyes to the Pleasure Island Mariner’s Cove Homeowners Association near Port Arthur,Texas. We’ve discussed Pleasure Island before. Like every other HOA in the country, Pleasure Island is just one vote away from disaster. If an HOA attorney needs a little extra cash, he advises the board to use minor violations of covenants to fine, seize and foreclose on straying homeowners.

Deborah Dommert got behind on her HOA dues. Then the late fees and legal bills started rising too quickly for her to catch up. Remember that HOA covenants invariably order a homeowner to pay all the legal bills of the Homeowners Association. And like thousands of other homeowners across the country, she now faces the seizure and foreclosure of her home. She has no court of last resort. She has no Congress which can pass laws shutting down these neighborhood tyrannies. She is without access to real justice.

HOA attorneys are taught by huge HOA management conglomerates to never allow a homeowner to negotiate a way to catch up on dues. In national legal seminars, attorneys learn how to boost their income by abusing those who can’t afford legal representation.

Deborah Dommert will most likely lose her home. But some investor in future weeks or months will make a tidy fortune out of her personal disaster. The investor might even turn out to be a close ‘friend’ of the HOA board or law firm.

The biggest disaster of all is the loss of personal freedom for all of us.

http://tinyurl.com/ln2pxdk

Fiddler On The Wrong Roof!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

From my previous Wichita, Kansas story you might recall folks there have some weird and wicked things happen to them. 

Rozalin Taylor was away from home for a few hours, and stunned by what she saw when she returned. Half of her roof was gone, not because of wind, but because of a lost roofing crew. At first, Rozalin thought she was being surprised with a new roof compliments of members of her church.
 
Reality set in and she went searching for whoever had done the damage and left truck tracks in her lawn. The roofing company working right down the street claimed no knowledge of ever being on her roof.  Finally, some helpful friends papered the bare roof to help protect her from an approaching storm.
 
Rozalin learned she wasn’t the first homeowner in the area missing part of their roof simply because a roofing company couldn’t read addresses!
 
Could somebody please buy these guys a GPS?
 
 

Las Vegas HOA Mob

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As I’ve said repeatedly on this blog, never in my forty year career as an investigative reporter have I seen forty percent of the suspects on a federal indictment list suddenly ‘commit suicide’. But in the Las Vegas HOA scandal, of the first ten indictments, four suspects died in somewhat weird ways. Yes, I’ve read the coroner’s reports and the police reports. But still….

Attorney and HOA TV star Nancy Quon had supposedly tried to commit suicide before…WITH the help of her police officer boyfriend who supposedly had the Las Vegas police lab mix up some illegal drugs which she would use in her ‘suicide’. That cop is one of those under indictment in the HOA scandal. The coroner ruled it was a legitimate suicide. OK, I understand, it’s Las Vegas.

But even the family of attorney David Amesbury doesn’t believe he committed suicide. He was found hanging from a rafter in his brother’s barn. Just shortly before his ‘suicide’ he was found inside the locked gates of his gated HOA community, badly beaten, ribs broken, both knees bashed inwards. And somehow he’s able to climb a ladder in a barn and hang himself? Give me a break.

Folks, you haven’t even seen one percent of this scandal as it’ll unfold in next year’s federal court case in Nevada. This is Organized Crime in capital letters. And it’s the same kind of Organized Crime that permeates the entire structure of Homeowners Associations across America. Have I seen it personally? Yes, as documented in my new book, Neighbors At War, I was once hit with a $75,000 extortion demand by a local HOA official. He was stupid enough to issue that demand through my personal attorney, who took extensive notes. Then, this HOA official was stupid enough to ‘confess’ to the HOA board in writing that he actually had such a communication with my attorney and he was sure it was tape recorded. Strangely enough, his memo was not produced during discovery as required by law. It was ‘accidentally’ included in a box of material that I was never supposed to see. Those records suddenly vanished right before my court trial, but he couldn’t get rid of that memo.  These people may be organized criminals, but they’re really not very smart.

Homeowners Associations are a dangerous institution. Any phony or quasi governmental institution that’s not required to abide by the restrictions of the U.S. Constitution is dangerous to your personal and financial health. They do not protect your property values. They do not protect your family’s privacy or safety. Thousands of Americans have discovered over the past few years that by agreeing to live in an HOA, they’ve signed a Devil’s Contract. If I appear to rant and rave, it’s just my way of trying to issue the warning that I wish someone had once issued me. Reading your real estate paperwork is the customary advice. But there’s nothing in your real estate documents that talks about what’s actually happening in HOA Amerika.

You know, I’d just love to cover those Las Vegas trials in person.

Just my rant of the day.

http://tinyurl.com/bwdjoat

 

HOA Figures Involved In International Drug Trafficking?

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That headline might seem like a bit of sensational hyperbole, except that the story comes from one of the nation’s most respected journalists, John L. Smith, columnist for the Las Vegas Review Journal. I’ve talked about him before, but I don’t remember sending you to his column earlier this year on some bizarre links in the Las Vegas HOA scandal.

As you may recall, the feds have indicted or gotten guilty pleas from nearly forty HOA figures in Nevada, including famed attorneys, a famous attorney/TV talk show host, Nancy Quon, well know politicians and police officials. These are well known public figures, folks! Public figures in the Homeowners Association business. And already federal investigators have talked about organized crime, rigged HOA board elections, racketeering, attempted murder, suspicious suicides, armed robbery, hostage-taking, extortion, bribery, embezzlement from homeowners, insurance fraud. The list goes on and on.

But Smith’s column from May 19th would be freakin’ unbelievable, even as a plot for a Hollywood action flick. Except that it’s real.

This federal investigation of Homeowners Associations is the first of its kind in the country. Yet the feds know of hundreds, possible thousands of cases of HOA embezzlement across the land. It’s long been my contention that if this FBI/US Attorney’s team was planted in any major city in America, they’d find the same kind of corruption. That’s because the very model of HOA management is designed to perpetuate, excuse and even encourage corruption. This is the type of neighborhood management that’s supposed to protect your property values! But millions of homeowners have suddenly discovered that they weren’t protected. They never were.

The players mentioned in Smith’s column are almost impossible to graph out on a chart. But you’d better believe the U.S. Attorney plans to do exactly that in front of a federal jury next year.

As you read Smith’s column linked below, just ask yourself, “What if this is going on in my town?” What if?

http://tinyurl.com/mwwn3l3