Tag Archives: Horror Stories

Another HOA Property Manager With Her Pinkie in the Till

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It’s always a sad day when a person in a position of trust violates the confidence he or she is given. It’s even sadder when the victims are elderly homeowners who’ve worked all their lives to save their money for retirement.

Homeowners Association boards and Property Management Companies, though, probably have more embezzlers than any other industry in America.

The latest arrest of a suspected embezzler happened in early July in St. Augustine, Florida. This blogger will enthusiastically post her name: she is 57 year old June Elizabeth Supko. She’s accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the Captain’s Quarters Condominium Association.

The president of the Association suspected something was wrong, and asked Supko to turn over HOA computer passwords so the accounts could be audited. She says Supko refused and was fired. A forensic audit discovered the illegal withdrawals. Supko is now facing felony fraud charges.

Good reporting by the St. Augustine Record!

http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2012-07-04/woman-accused-stealing-thousands-homeowners-association

North Austin Homeowners Decide to Quit Being Stoopid!

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Hallelujah! It took years, but members of the Sunchase Condominiums in North Austin have decided to quit being stupid. Sunchase homeowners have been paying dues for years, but their HOA board and the property manager, Nancy Thompson, refused to show them the books! Last time I looked, Texas law mandated that HOA members be allowed to see where their dues are going.

Homeowners have poured more than a million dollars down a black hole that hasn’t been audited in more than five years. Readers of this blog know that I’ve got a very low tolerance for the stench rising from tens of thousands of HOAs in almost identical situations. And Sunchase stinks to high heaven!

Investigative reporters from KXAN followed the skanky trail behind the property manager and found that it leads to some other HOAs in Austin where large sums of money vanished like some magic trick at Circus Circus. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of checks have been written to various members of Nancy Thompson’s family. Damn, those no-bid contracts sure are profitable.

Someone at Sunchase should consider calling the huge FBI unit that’s rooting out identical corruption in Las Vegas.

BTW, great investigative work by reporter Chris Willis and KXAN, Austin!

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/homeowners-fight-back-against-hoa-board

Chalk it up to HOA Stupidity

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Everybody else has reported on this already, but I should at least get my take on the record. So here it is:

In Aurora, Colorado, a Homeowners Association is threatening to ruin the family of a three year old girl who uses colored chalk to draw flowers and hearts on the sidewalks in front of her home.

Seems that some wicked witch in the cul-de-sac complained that the chalk drawings were against the covenants and destroying the value of the neighborhood. The child, Emerson Cohen, is mystified at the dispute, but her mother is furious.

The Stapleton Master Association is furious because the HOA was originally identified as being a Stapleton Homeowners Association. They’re working overtime to lobby the media to say, “It’s not Stapleton, is an HOA within Stapleton. Additionally, Stapleton is saying “We have no rules against sidewalk chalk drawings by children. And the Master Association is pointing its collective finger/fingers? at a member HOA called ”the Innovations and Courtyard Traditions at Stapleton Homeowners Association.”

Still, you’d think that Stapleton Master Association could show some leadership and throttle a few complainers by the necks. This little Nazi-like neighborhood is now in the national news for beating down a three-year-old girl whose artistic efforts were all going to be washed away in the first rain, anyway.

Yes, some people hate little children. Even worse, some people move into HOAs because they hate little children. They realize that a single complaint to the HOA board can shut down chalk drawings, lemonade stands, kids playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. Incredibly, a number of HOAs have even enacted rules that mandate that no children are allowed to play outside!

The hatred of little children is a serious disease. Sadly, when a diseased mind moves into an HOA, that hatred is toxic and communicable.

Here, the message is in big print: IF YOU HAVE CHILDREN, DO NOT MOVE TO ANY STAPLETON NEIGHBORHOOD IN AURORA, COLORADO!

Can You Say “SUSPICIOUS?”

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At long last a Texas HOA is getting some much-deserved attention. Sadly, it took a homeowners lawsuit to get the ball rolling.
Folks in the Sunchase HOA in Northeast Austin are wondering where a million bucks went. It just kind of wandered off someplace. It’s illegal for a Texas HOA not to have regular audits of their books. Of course, it’s also illegal to filch a million bucks, IF that’s what happened. And Sunchase hasn’t had an audit for at least five years.

The property manager, Nancy Thompson keeps the HOA’s money in several different banks. But for some reason, she won’t let board members or homeowners see any of her bank statements. Board members are also question why Thompson was given thousands of dollars in bonuses. Austin Police are sniffing around. Between them and the lawyers, we may see some future news stories.

Good reporting by Chris Willis of KXAN.

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/lawsuit-filed-in-hoa-money-dispute

Calling All Lawyers! “Ready, Set, Sue!”

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Now that I’m out of mainstream journalism, I can afford to occasionally get my hackles up at the kinds of things written by other journalists. Indeed, most reporters don’t write their own headlines, but this one got my goat. It was an article in Main Street, a real estate magazine, which discussed the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida. The headline said, “Homeowners Association Could be “Eden” of Liabilities.

The headline writer was correct, of course. And the reporter, Jeff Brown, was also correct in saying that questions about legal liabilities could “wreck your worry-free Eden.”

This blogger has long been saying that the scariest HOA in America is YOURS! Why? Because the slightest slip and fall at the neighborhood pool, or the workman who cuts his finger mowing grass at the front entrance, now has unrestricted access to the pocketbooks, bank accounts and home equity of every single person who owns a home in the community. By joining “the club,” or the HOA, you have essentially pooled all of your net worth with your neighbors, thereby creating an irresistible deep pocket to which the tort industry just hasn’t paid much attention in previous years.

But with lawyers being graduated at the rate of 104,000 a year, and the with law firms clogged with too many lawyers and not enough lawsuits, there’s going to be a huge upsurge in lawsuits against this previously untapped “resource.”

You can buy liability insurance, of course, but you can never buy enough insurance to dig your way out of the kinds of jury verdicts that tort lawyers like, John Edwards, for example, are able to wreak out of a dysfunctional court system.

The HOA system is broken. The tort system is corrupted. On this entire Earth could you find any uglier twin sisters than that?

http://www.mainstreet.com/print/26716Posted