Category Archives: Fraud

HOA Dues: For Some, it’s Poison

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Members of Homeowners Associations must pay their HOA dues, on time!

That’s as it should be, of course. After all, homeowners agree in their original real estate purchase agreements to abide by all HOA rules and restrictions. But in thousands of cases across the country, people’s homes are being snatched and sold at auction, sometimes without notice, after a late payment or other violation of vague neighborhood rules.

Tony Goodman, of San Antonio, Texas, is just another in a long line of homeowners to find themselves threatened with homelessness.

Goodman, who was unemployed for nearly a year, says he was unable to pay HOA dues on his $165,000 home in the Lookout Canyon Creek Homeowners Association. He owed $769. With surprise collection fees and attorney’s costs that sum rose to more than $2000. Goodman says he worked out a payment plan with the HOA’s lawyer, Tom Newton, but the plan was rejected by the HOA twice.

Reporter Brian Collister, of WOAI TV, says he tried to get both the attorney and the Homeowners Association to discuss the Goodman case. Neither would talk to him. Collister says he then showed up at a Homeowners Association meeting and tried to ask questions about the home seizure, but the HOA ordered Collier to leave and then called the police.

Tony Goodman was eventually one of the few “snatch and sell” victims who was able to save his house. After all the negative publicity in Texas, the Lookout Canyon Creek HOA agreed to let Goodman make payments to head off the foreclosure.

Others, many others, have not been so “lucky.”

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

For Anyone Planning on Buying a Home in Eden Prairie, MN:

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I love to hear stories of really rotten, really contemptible things that Homeowner Association boards do to certain “targeted” members of the neighborhood. Every ghastly story just reinforces my belief that there’s something desperately wrong with these phony Utopian neighborhoods govered by deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants.

Seven years ago, homeowner Gregg Harcus hung about a half dozen birdhouses around the area. Suddenly, Harcus was ordered by his HOA board that the birdhouses were illegal and had to be removed.

Nobody had complained about them, but the board just decided to remove them.

Harcus, is actually a member of the board, himself, and he thought he’d be able to persuade the rest of the board that the birdhouses were an improvement for the neighborhood.

At the hearing, he was surprised to see that the HOA had hired an attorney be be present.
But wait, it gets even more interesting. Two weeks after the hearing, the HOA Board slams Marcus with a $650 bill for the attorney hired by the Homeowner Association’s board! In other words, just by asking the HOA board to reconsider its decision to remove the birdhouses, the board is ordering Harcus to pay for the lawyer who Harcus didn’t even know was coming!

Ah, but there’s a backstory here; Harcus is apparently in a dispute with a new management company hired to oversee the neighborhood. Somebody wanted to find a way to demonstrate their power to punish a fellow board member.

In frustration, Harcus resigned his position on the board. From what it sounds like, that’s exactly what they were trying to accomplish in the first place.

The petty, arbitrary, and vicious things that routinely take place in the country’s Homeowners Associations just makes them all the more unattractive to would-be buyers.

And to the Homeowners Association board at Bluff Country Village Townhomes, an extra helping of scorn and shame. You’ve just made your neighborhood a little dirtier, a little uglier, a little more vulgar, and a little more socially dangerous for homeowners to rise out of their own apathy.

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

Embezzlements from Homeowner Associations Routine

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It’s incredible, really, how common embezzlements are from Homeowners Associations. With 320,000 HOAs across the country, you’d think there would be a major push to clean out the corruption that seems endemic in such HOAs as the latest one in the link below.

There are many fundamental problems with the structure of the modern HOA.  As private non-profit corporations, the HOA is typically beyond the law. Restrictions against government, the protections we’ve grown accustomed to in the U.S. Constitution, don’t apply to the average HOA. As such, dictatorial edicts against such things as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and due process happen all the time.

Homeowners in the HOA environment become apathetic.  So when the “neighborhood Nazi” gets elected as the tipping point vote on the HOA board, it’s usually by a very tiny vote by the HOA membership.

Overthrowing the “neighborhood Nazi” or overturning senseless edicts usually requires a “Super Majority” of an already apathetic membership. The idea that Homeowners Associations are “democracy at work” should really be a warning about the true meaning of “democratic tyranny.”

The typical embezzler who recognizes the truth of all the above points, feels no guilt or compunction about dipping into the till. He or she feels they’ve earned the right to help themselves, and they do just that.

How many millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions!) are stolen each year from Homeowners Associations? You just don’t want to know. But research by this writer indicates the crime happens in tens of thousands of communities.  It just gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.

Source: http://www.winknews.com/Local-Florida/2011-11-23/President-of-Homeowners-Association-Accused-of-Embezzlement

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

Another Crook Embezzles from Neighbors

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I wonder if it’s hard for these people to sleep at night. Stealing from neighbors? The ones you say “hi” to on the street each day? Maybe it’s just me, but I could never get used to the guilt. Your neighbors are trying hard to pay their bills, to put the kids through college, some of them even struggling to pay HOA dues. Other neighbors have lost jobs in this economy, and are wondering where the next bag of groceries are coming from?

Then some runny-nosed, gambling-addicted, coke-head of an HOA treasurer grabs all the neighborhood’s money for a quick run to Vegas.

The latest case involves a Homeowners Association treasurer from the Parkwood HOA In Durham, North Carolina. This yahoo only stole $150,000 to $200,000. This kind of theft doesn’t just happen because the crook is arrogant. It happens because the crook thinks you, the homeowner, are stupid. You’re too dumb to read the annual report. You’re too stupid to suspect a crime. You’ll deny to the bitter end that you were the one who was robbed.

But just try selling your home, Bunky, to another buyer. It’s required by law that you disclose all defects in a property, including whether the HOA treasurer had a blank check to transfer money from your Homeowners Association to the casinos.

That should do something for the offer price on the home you’re selling. After revealing that the HOA is now totally out of money, prepare to lower the asking price of your home by 20 or 30,000 dollars.

You’re a sucker. A sucker for living in a Homeowners Association where trust is the only promise you really get. A sucker for not realizing that governing covenants across the land are so poorly written that thousands of Homeowners Associations are in the same sad shape. Yep, Buddy. Welcome to HOA life. You’re a sucker.

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/16485899/article-Parkwood-president–Embezzler-took-at-least–150K-from-HOA-?instance=homethirdleft

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

Dream Home Gone Bad | The Ultimate HOA Nightmare

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Sometimes people get to own their dream home, complete with fine furnishings, a swimming pool, and a well-guarded community, where they believe they will live forever.  Unfortunately, neighborhood squabbles can make those dreams vanish. All too often, that moment of horror is delivered on a silver platter by a homeowners association.

Technically, a homeowners association is an organization of homeowners that looks out for the common good of all neighbors. But sometimes, the interpretation of “common good” turns into a nightmare. And a new resident finds the community is not so neighborly after all.

A.J. Vizzi bought his “dream home” in the Eagles Homeowners Asso0ciation near Odessa, Florida. Vizzi owned a brand new Ford F-350 pickup truck. But The Eagles deed-restrictions don’t allow pickup trucks of any kind. Had Vizzi purchased a Cadillac Escalade or a Hummer it would have been allowed. But his F-350 had to stay out of sight, inside his garage.  The truck, Vizzi said, was too large for the garage. Beginning in 2001, the HOA began ticketing Vizzi, saying his truck was in violation and had to go.  The tickets kept coming, the fines kept growing.

Finally, The Eagles filed a lawsuit against Vizzi. He stood his ground. The case wound its way through the lower courts and then the Court of Appeals.

In March of 2010, nine years after the fight began, the court not only ruled that the F-150 was legal in the community, but Vizzi’s neighbors now have to pick up the tab for all court costs. It awarded more than $187,000 in legal bills to Vizzi. Presumably, the Eagles also has to pay its own legal bills. So a mindless fight over a pristine, new pickup truck kept the protagonists awake for nine long years, and cost the HOA nearly a half million dollars. The attorneys all got paid, of course, but the neighborhood lost a half million.

The case should give pause to any prospective homeowner looking for a dream home. The Eagles looks like an unhappy place to start chasing that dream.

Vizzi and his family decided to move away from the petty viciousness of The Eagles. They now live on acreage away from the nightmare of Homeowners Associations.

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