Nevada continues to be Ground Zero in the federal fight against official HOA corruption. Across the country, residents and officials of Homeowner Associations have complained about financial irregularities and outright organized criminal activity involving the HOA Movement. But for years, they were ridiculed, mocked, threatened, fined and essentially separated from their Constitutional rights.
Now, such complainants are gaining serious credibility.
Federal prosecutors, of course, continue their current criminal investigation into Las Vegas HOA corruption, where hundreds of millions of dollars were bled away from homeowners and into the coffers of certain attorneys, judges, law enforcement officials and night club owners. Strange statistics, but out of ten officially indicted officials, four have suddenly and inexplicably “committed suicide.” One of those four had his knees broken a few days before his body was strung up from a barn rafter and hanged. No conspiracy theory there. They’re just dead. Forty percent of the Federal Grand Jury’s list of witnesses have just died. Forty percent seems an impossibly high percentage, but facts are sometimes pretty ugly. Dying Grand Jury witnesses really should be of great concern to every citizen who thinks Justice in the American system can actually be achieved.
I’m trying to think of any federal investigation in history where forty percent of the Grand Jury witnesses just suddenly “committed suicide.” Maybe it’s just my wild reporter’s conspiratorial thinking, but after four decades in the news business, I have never seen that happen. Why Las Vegas citizens aren’t pounding the streets and demanding honesty and justice baffles me. But then I’m old school. I believe the Constitution was written to say exactly what it says it says.
Anyway, there’s a new front apparently opening involving allegations of a corrupt HOA system that’s cheating Nevada homeowners.
I’m not a very popular person in Las Vegas right now because of my book which comes out in two months..
But you can check out the new criminal front in a current news article by the Las Vegas Sun.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/mar/29/dont-question-your-hoa-or-you-might-get-arrested/
The writer is J. Patrick Coolican. If you know him you might warn him of barn rafters, and bathtub drowings and kneecapping and the kinds of things that seem to be happening to truth tellers with some regularity these days.
I keep hoping that Federal Prosecutors are getting some practice in Las Vegas on how to investigate white collar corruption in the HOA Movement, and then institute such investigations in every city in the country. That’s just a pipedream, though. From a grizzled old-school reporter. All I can say is an old cliche. ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire’.
Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association
