With four decades as an investigative reporter, I can tell you a few things about what’s going on inside the FBI investigation into HOA corruption in Las Vegas. First, I happen to know that about half the readers of this blog are federal investigators. That’s not ego, it’s just past experience. So, some of this is written for them.
Second, federal agents are extremely worried about the number of indicted suspects who are getting “whacked.” With ten people under indictment, and four of them suddenly dying, the feds know that a large part of their case is going down the tube. For the time being, those are all being called “suicides” for obvious reasons. But no case in FBI history has had forty percent of its indicted suspects die before trial.
It doesn’t take a CSI-head to know why suspects are indicted early. It’s to make them talk. It’s to force them to rat out co-conspirators. Give ‘em a lesser sentence to testify about the scope and breadth of the conspiracy. And for about a month, the feds were on a roll. But then, top figures in the case ended up being beaten, drowned, hanged. By the way, how does a 57 year old attorney (David Amesbury), who’s beaten to a pulp and both his knees shattered by a baseball bat just two ot three months earlier, climb up onto a rafter in the barn and hang himself? Anybody who believes that one desperately needs some psychiatric help.
Anyway, the feds had two dozen other people right on the cusp of agreeing to work out plea deals by testifying against up to a hundred others involved in the Las Vegas HOA scam. Suddenly those swindlers are clamming up. The feds are promising protection, which absolutely cannot be guaranteed.
Reporters have acronyms for contemptible organizations: NASA (Never A Straight Answer), FBI (Famous But Incompetent). And there’s not a doubt some of those organizations have the same contempt for the news media.
But for the feds to salvage this thing they’re going to have to work faster and harder and forget about offering plea deals to get some lesser player to testify against a major figure two years in the future. It’s not going to happen. This spaceship is going to crash.
The very next thing we’re going to see is the Feebies refusing to release any information at all to the public. Remember, this is an embittered public, many of whom have lost their homes and their entire life savings to these HOA scammers. Shutting down all communication about progress of the investigation is a horrible idea. Homeowners are desperate to get some relief.
The best solution? Recognize that the entire Homeowner’s Association Movement is rotten to the core from Miami to Seattle and from San Diego to Maine. Announce to the world that it’s all organized crime. The entire HOA system was designed to allow racketeering. These RICO organizations have to be attacked everywhere. National legislation has to be enacted to take away most HOA powers. Enact a reasonable Homeowners’ Bill of Rights. Take away the ability for any HOA to foreclose. Ensure that every dispute has an entirely independent “judiciary” which will arbitrate away the small disagreements that turn into huge lawsuits. But most of all get the lawyers out of the HOA business. The current structure is just too profitable for them. That’s why so many lawyers are facing indictment in Las Vegas. But this stench is rising not just out of Las Vegas, but from neighborhoods across America.
End it!
