Two of Colorado’s largest housing foreclosure law firms are now in the cross hairs of the State Attorney General for allegedly fraudulent billing practices.
Attorney Susan Hendrick used to work for the law firm, Aronowitz & Mecklenberg. She has testified under oath that her former employer made millions of dollars by padding its legal bills on housing foreclosures. Those bloated bills that weren’t paid by homeowners ended up being charged off to the taxpayers. Hendrick also alleged that the law firm destroyed evidence subpoenaed by prosecutors during their investigation of the law firm’s practices.
Attorney Robert Aronowitz and his attorney daughter and son-in-law own a private firm which posts foreclosure notices. State investigators say they believe the law firm and the private posting firm were used to inflate foreclosure fees many times above the customary amounts.
Hendrick also testified about the second firm, The Castle Law Group. The two firms have handled 90% of the state’s foreclosures over the past few years. Among other allegations being made are that the two law firms manipulated State Legislators into passing legislation that ended up more than doubling the law firms’ already artificially inflated legal fees.
Sealed documents in a massive mortgage foreclosure fraud case against the nation’s biggest banks have now been unsealed. And the results are unsettling. I’ve long been predicting a real estate bubble in the country’s 335,000 Homeowners Associations, and I still believe it’s coming. If this mortgage fraud case picks up steam based on the release of these documents, my prediction will come true sooner than later.
It’s amazing to discover how few people know that Homeowners Associations routinely discriminate against the handicapped. Despite federal law against such discrimination, HOAs generally do what they dang well please. Once in a rare while HUD will file a lawsuit. Invariably that means a huge fine assessed against every member of the neighborhood. You can be a completely innocent homeowner and suddenly find tens of thousands of dollars assessed against your home because some idiot on the board did something stupid.
This story is not about HOA discrimination, just the nastiness that routinely happens around families with disabled children.
Fountain is a small town on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. A family there has a 16 year old daughter with Cerebral Palsy. The City of Fountain gave them a permit to build a wheelchair ramp to their front door, but the neighbors are outraged. They say the wheelchair ramp could destroy their property values. The family says the next-door neighbors are threatening to sue.
If this actually was a Homeowners Association, the couple with the handicapped child would already be out on the street. It’s happened before.
Very quick update: This blog passed a mile marker last week in numbers of readers.
23,000 unique readers
107,000 visits
1,266,000 page views
This is a relatively new blog and doesn’t count the numbers on the old WordPress site, which was apparently trashed the same day a couple of other homeowners’ rights websites were hit.
But these numbers, while not really huge, do mean something. They mean that more and more people are waking up to the national HOA scam. Our movement is growing and I deeply appreciate those of you who work tirelessly to enlighten naïve neighbors and friends.
