Here’s a homeowner who drives a pick-up truck and parks it at his home on his driveway. Well actually it’s not his driveway according to his HOA.
This HOA board is dumber than a box of rocks, in my opinion. A pick-up truck does not indicate a person operates the vehicle for commercial use!
How well I know. One of my vehicles is a pick-up truck. Thank goodness it has four-wheel drive. My HOA owns my driveway, too. They are supposed to maintain it, but in ten years they have only sealed it once. One time! After it had cracked and fallen apart. The worst issue I’ve had is when it dropped below the concrete floor in the garage. I literally could not get my truck into my garage without using four-wheel drive every time!!! In addition, every time it rained the water ran in under the garage floor and eventually into my finished basement. The HOA made a very poor attempt to repair the driveway after I had professional contractors tell me it was not repairable. Now it has separated leaving a crack across the driveway that is 3″ deep allowing water to run under the driveway. It has also started to drop again…back to four-wheeling into my garage I’ll go.
The HOA now claims it’s my responsibility to pay for the replacement of the driveway. Yes, we are in another court battle because my HOA would rather spend $100,000 on a legal battle than to replace a $5,000 driveway. As our readers know, you just can’t fix the incredible levels of stupid in an HOA!
A former board president told me that all driveways are common ground. I asked if I had a party and needed extra parking spaces could my guests park on my neighbors’ driveways? He said, “They sure can!”
As if we don’t already have at least a million reasons why not to buy in an HOA, this driveway issue is just more proof of it!
Well, the guilty plea was made. Federal Judge Mahan accepted it. No sentence yet. Leon Benzer might be surprised to hear himself described as a mobster, but that’s exactly what he is. He conspired with lawyers, police officials, judicial officials, and state politicians to steal millions of dollars from Nevada Homeowners Associations. That’s called racketeering. You don’t need to be Italian to be a mobster. You just have to have a massive deficit of character.
Traditionally, white collar criminals get about 18 months in prison no matter how many millions they’ve stolen. Benzer has bankrupted an unknown number of Las Vegas homeowners. The damage he inflicted will impact generations of American families. In the end, he made himself a multi-millionaire at the expense of ordinary citizens. He conspired with mobsters and drug cartels in Mexico to hide his fortune. When he walks out of prison he’ll retire to waterfront property in some exotic locale and laugh at the stupidity of all the people he swindled.
Benzer will laugh at the impotent American legal system which couldn’t come close to touching the real scope of his swindle. He’ll snigger at FBI agents who spent years trying to uncover his scam. He’ll laugh at prosecutors and a judge who couldn’t give him life in prison. And he’ll look back fondly at his time in prison bragging to cellmates about how much fun he had doing this swindle. I know all of this because I’ve spent four decades investigating and exposing white collar criminals. Despite federal prison sentences they love what they do.
White collar criminals are addicted to their lifestyles. To the victims it’s devastating. To the mobsters it’s all a game.
Rumors are that HOA mobster Leon Benzer is going to plead guilty in federal court Friday morning! Benzer headed up the massive scheme to take over and corrupt Homeowners Associations in and around Las Vegas. Benzer got phony board members ‘elected’ in dozens of HOAs. Millions of dollars in construction defect mitigation insurance was then diverted away from homeowners and into the pockets of lawyers, police officials, prominent politicians, businessmen. A federal judge has told homeowners they’ll never get back those stolen millions. And Benzer will be the 37th member of the gang to skate past federal organized crime and racketeering charges with just a pat on his corrupt and flabby back.
This case has been weird from the very beginning. Four of the most ‘inconvenient’ suspects committed suicide. It was one of the largest public corruption cases in the history of the FBI. So it’s really rather sad to see the feds knuckle in to knuckleheads. By accepting Benzer’s guilty plea the feds will be throwing away one of the most valuable corruption intimidation cases they’ve ever conducted.
Yay that the the ‘feebies’ got Sammy ‘the Bull’ and the Teflon Don thrown in jail for life. But Nevada and Las Vegas, which are famous as a retirement community for the world’s Mafioso, will never get to know the whole story about how corrupt the American Homeowners Association movement really is. And that means the movement will not only stay corrupt, it will get more corrupt. Steal a hundred million bucks and get 18 months in jail? A lot of folks would say, “Hey, I’d like that job!”
Yes, most of us would like to see the Homeowners Association Movement go extinct. But the kind of violence in the story linked below is unacceptable. Anyone who tries to take another’s life and property deserves a life sentence in prison.
This incident happened at the Pointer Ridge HOA in College Park, Georgia. If you can help identify this suspect, please call police.
During a recent TV interview I was challenged by the host when I talked about connections between traditional organized crime and the Homeowners Association movement. The host was great and gave me some latitude to explain.
But next month the entire nation should be riveted by the federal racketeering organized crime trial involving Las Vegas Homeowners Associations and the Mafia. Nobody will pay attention, of course, especially the national media. But the FBI has found that there are very interesting connections between a Mexican drug cartel, corrupt government officials in Mexico who are doing money laundering for the American HOA business, and corrupt cops and lawyers in Las Vegas. This is a huge trial, one of the largest the FBI has ever undertaken. And 36 of 41 organized crime suspects have already pleaded guilty.
Mafia? Homeowners Associations? Exaggeration? Not by much.
Just keep in mind the question, “Who is Joseph Angelo Bravo?” What are his connections to the Mexican drug cartels and the Italian Mafia families in Buffalo, New York and why is he so deeply involved in the Homeowners Association movement in Nevada? Why is this convicted cocaine smuggler the airport manager in Baja, California?
It’s a perfectly written script for a Hollywood movie scandal.
But no matter how much you try, YOU WILL NOT get the American networks’ attention. It just not on their radar screens.
I guess that’s why you keep logging in to Neighbors At War.com… to get the real truth.
