Category Archives: Fraud

Mob Mentality in Las Vegas HOAs

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We haven’t heard much lately about the Las Vegas Homeowner Association scandal and the federal investigation which has already obtained ten guilty pleas against public figures for corruption. But, we may as well do this blog to keep Las Vegas criminality in the headlines.

The Mountain’s Edge Homeowner Association is being sued by investors who tried to snatch up foreclosed homes in the Vegas area. In the mortgage collapse, investors have taken a huge risk in trying to buy up homes which were abandoned by bankrupted homeowners. Those investors are just about the only financial thread keeping entire neighborhoods from going under.

But investors are now filing complaints or suing dozens of HOAs which they claim are gouging them with inflated liens and excessive dues, fines and collection costs. The old wisdom is “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” Investors are pouring money into dying neighborhoods, but HOA boards are slamming them with fistfulls of phony fines.

The mortgage mess will take years to clear up. But many Las Vegas HOA boards don’t seem to “get it.”

Welcome the investors. Bring in the investors. Use their money to prop up your dessicated neighborhoods. But if you use your customary mob mentality against this new money, you’ll end up paying a high price.

The obvious message to investors is… “never buy a home in an HOA. Not in Las Vegas. Not anywhere.”

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

HOA Alligator Killing Goes to Court

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The story is tragic. An 83 year old woman is killed by an alligator in the Landings Homeowners Association.

Gwynth Williams’ body was found in a lagoon in an exclusive community in South Georgia. Her family is suing the HOA, saying it was negligent for not removing the gator. The HOA and its golf course say they’re not responsible for controlling wild animals that roam the area.

Those are the raw facts, but the behind-the-scenes story will probably not get told by the mainstream media. Win or lose, millions of dollars will be spent on this case. Perhaps the HOA will be punished by a large jury award. That seems to be par for the course in today’s atmosphere of tort law.

The real story is where those millions of dollars will come from and where they will go. They will come from the pockets of homeowners who bought homes in The Landings Association. They will go into the bank accounts of lawyers who represented Williams or who represented The Landings Association.

It’s a tragedy, of course, for the family of Gwynth Williams. It’s a double tragedy for the American system of justice.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Homeowner Associations a Social Disease?

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Just like a social disease that keeps coming back, some Homeowner Associations never let a patsy out of their grip.

The latest “sucker” is some poor fellow in The Times Condominium At Sweetwater Del Webb Master Homeowner’s Association (Whew! Where do these names come from?)

Anyway, resident Larry Murphree thought he knew what was meant when GW Bush signed the “Freedom to Display the American Flag Act” in July of 2006. Muphree planted two little flags in flower pots outside the door of his condominium.

Along comes the HOA and starts whacking him with fines of a hundred bucks a day, liens, threats of lawsuit and foreclosure.

Murphree is now in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida. He notes that the flag act specifically says “A condominium association… may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.” Hmmm. Sounds moderately clear.

Whichever way it goes, Murphree will lose tens of thousands of dollars. The HOA will lose tens of thousands of dollars. The stature and marketability of the neighborhood will fall. The lawyers, of course, will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. It always seems to come back to that, doesn’t it? The lawyers. They just keep coming back.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

A Homeowners Association Dating Scam?

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Sometimes it hurts too much to cry…so you just have to laugh…and give ’em the publicity they so richly deserve.

It’s another embezzlement from an HOA. The suspect is 62 year old Nancy B. Walker of Boonsboro, Maryland.

Details aren’t crystal clear yet, but investigators claim Mz. Walker filched from $100,000 to $137,000 from the Ballenger Creek Meadows Homeowners Association.

It seems she was involved in an Internet dating scam and was wiring the money to a man in South Africa.

Just an idle question, here: How low does your I.Q. have to be to qualify as the HOA board member in charge of the the neighborhood treasury?

SOMEBODY’S GONNA BE IN TROUBLE!

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Residents of the Laural Hills Condominum on Tennessee’s Renegade Mountain have been arguing over the price of water for the past six months. The property association, not the homeowners association controls the water. But those danged hillbillies up at Laurel Hills kept up the argument.

Now the property owners association has raised the ante. They just flat-out turned off the water to 84 homes. Turned it off! And that, my friends, is against the law.

Monkeying with someone’s water is almost a shootin’ offense. In fact, a lot of people have been shot during the water wars of the past three hundred years.

Hopefully, we won’t see any of that. But laws are being broken! Can’t you just smell the perspiration of all those lawyers trying to climb Renegade Mountain to solicit clients?

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

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