Our buddy from Las Vegas sends us the latest news link (at bottom of this page). The Federal Prosecutor there will soon be indicting its last round of HOA scammers.
These are the guys, you may recall, who ran phony HOA board elections, got the fake board officers to start diverting millions of bucks worth of homeowners’ dues into the pockets of corrupt Nevada lawyers, police officials and building contractors. More than two dozen pleaded guilty; the feds say they may indict a dozen more before ending its racketeering investigation. It’s one of the most massive public corruption cases in the history of the FBI.
But the bottom line here is an awful one. It means the feds are wrapping up their investigation into HOA corruption. That is tragic news! They only looked into a couple dozen Las Vegas HOAs and found most or all of them to be fundamentally corrupt.
Folks, we have 300,000 HOAs in this country. If you think this same kind of Las Vegas corruption is NOT going on in every state in the country, then YOU are the fool.
Across this grand country of ours, countless numbers of HOA officials and managers have pleaded guilty to embezzling from gullible homeowners. And those thefts are never EVER investigated by the feds. It all falls on local cops who are untrained in complex organized crime investigation.
This squad of federal investigators in Las Vegas is now fully trained in how to flush out complex and sophisticated HOA corruption. When they disband their team to go back to chasing bank robbers and credit card thieves, we will all be the losers. The organized crime HOA network will go back to sapping the strength out of the American homeowner.
Since I’ve covered chicken wars in the past, I figured I’d link the latest pertinent news story. One of my neighbors has a chicken coop. Never in a million years would I complain. But I have to confess to having accepted some eggs in the past.
I’ve gotten some emails from Maryland asking the impact of the proposed state proposal to change the status of the Columbia Association (an HOA) into a ‘newly created’ nonprofit community services corporation, whatever that is. Any help on understanding this issue would be hugely appreciated. A public answer here, or private (NeighborsAtWar@hotmail. com), and I will be eternally grateful.
More and more Homeowners Associations around the country are actually demanding and getting police powers. Most homeowners are standing idly by and letting it happen.
In Illinois, in Colorado, in Florida and elsewhere HOA boards are purchasing traffic radar equipment and handing out speeding tickets. Fines against speeding homeowners can run anywhere from 50 to 3500 dollars! All by itself, that’s an outrage. But like gasoline thrown on a campfire, HOAs are actually fining homeowners when their guests are caught speeding!
As crazy as it seems, a case bubbling through the court system in Illinois has actually made it to that state’s supreme court.
Homeowner Ken Poris lives in the Lake Holiday Property Owners Association. Four years ago he was issued a ticket for going 34 in a 25, and he’s been fighting it ever since. He wasn’t pulled over by the cops. He was pulled over by the HOA’s private security guard. The guard even confiscated Polis’s driver’s license. The Lake Holiday HOA claims it has an unrestricted right to fine homeowners, EVEN IF THE HOMEOWNER HIMSELF WAS NOT IN THE CAR!
This private security guard’s radar was not even licensed as required by federal law.
Something has gone seriously awry in the American Homeowners Association Movement. If you, Dear Reader, are not screaming from the rooftops about this fraud, this complete collapse of Constitutional rights, then you will mightily deserve the society you get!
It’s not often that I post blogs from lawyers or law firms in the HOA industry. But when one of them truly ‘gets it’, they deserve praise. Jean Winters, an attorney who frequently blogs and answers questions in Florida’s Sun Central, occasionally shows a spark of brilliance. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t pass such material along.
