One of the most bald-faced embezzlers in the country has been told he’ll be spending a little time in prison.
I wrote previously about Chris Barna, who swiped almost a million dollars from the California company where he worked as controller. His firm handles the finances of a number of Homeowners Associations in California. The parent company is Associa, the HOA management firm run by Texas State Senator John Carona.
Earlier this year Barna pleaded guilty to embezzling 980,000 dollars that came out of the accounts of California Homeowners Associations
This week, Barna was sentenced in Federal Court to three years and five months in prison and more than a million dollars in restitution. Judging from past white collar crime cases, though, he’ll only spend part of that time behind bars. And it’s highly doubtful that restitution will ever be made.
Las Vegas is the nation’s home for Organized Crime posing as Homeowners Associations, with more than two dozen felony guilty pleas and nearly a dozen federal criminal trials pending. Las Vegas may have more Homeowners Associations than any other metropolitan city. Las Vegas has so many HOA horror stories that writing a blog like this is almost effortless. Home buyers everywhere are beginning to tell their Realtors, “Don’t show me anything in an HOA!”
Now, here comes a major real estate company saying it’s going into the HOA management business! Hard to believe, but Shelter Realty, Inc. says it’s ‘pleased’ to announce that it’s creating a sister company which will provide management services for Homeowners Associations.
Realtors make their living by being respectable. Realtors live or die on their reputations and client referrals. Of course there are plenty of people living in Nevada Homeowners Associations. But HOA management is a stenchy business with neck-deep corruption. For a realty company to suddenly say it’s going to clean up HOA mismanagement and corruption is beyond laughable.
Why buy a condo or townhouse when a colorful little village awaits us sans taxes, upkeep, the basic boring beige and the biggest reason of all NO HOA or their ridiculous dues and psycho boards?!
What a smart investor Mr. Blankenship seems to be. He builds these darling small houses on concrete slabs and has the exteriors finished in three weeks. He paints the exteriors beautiful warm colors of pink, green, purple, robin egg blue, and a steel blue. He changed the roof lines so they don’t look like all of our “cookie-cutter” HOA neighborhoods.
Three weeks is all it took for him to rent every one of them on one year leases at $500 per month. And utilities are running around $50 per month.
This concept could be duplicated anywhere. And everybody wins. No apartment. No condo. No Co-op. No HOA.
For the money I’ve lost on my townhouse I could have built this whole village. Geez, if only I could turn back time!
Our frigid weather and snow here in Colorado reminded me of a video story I did several years ago on a beloved dog. Her name was Glory. And her name was a perfect description of a dog sent to me from Heaven.
The latest neighborhood nastiness comes to us from Newport News, Virginia and the Kiln Creek Homeowners Association. Eight years ago Bill and Janeth Garlette built a koi pond in their backyard. And for eight long years the HOA has approved of their pond and their various gardening improvements.
All of a sudden, a new HOA board has hit the couple with two dozen alleged violations of neighborhood covenants. The couple’s attempts at fighting the allegations were futile, so Garlette ripped out the koi pond and razed the backyard to bring it into compliance. But even that wasn’t good enough, and the HOA has filed a 300,000 dollar lawsuit.
Yes, there are allegations of death threats back and forth between the Garlettes and a neighbor who they think instigated the HOA lawsuit. And yes, the Garlettes say they are now officially out of money.
HOAs claim they were set up to protect property values. But this is one neighborhood where property is going to be very difficult to sell.
