It was so romantic when we first moved into the Denver area searching for what we thought might be our Shangri La. In leaving our home in Seattle, Washington, we were leaving behind a city where nearly every home looked out over a view of lakes, rivers or the ocean. We had lived all our lives in the Pacific Northwest, where the annual rainfall and humidity are so high that seemingly every drainage ditch was flushed daily and grew an abundance of blackberries, strawberries and raspberries.
The latest one was in the Osprey Homeowners Association in Sarasota County, Florida.
Charles Nichols allegedly wrote himself at least 33 checks for thousands of dollars. HOA officials said his actions left the association deeply in debt.
Nichols is 69 years old. This blogger highly doubts the HOA will ever get restitution. That means a special assessment to all homeowners to make up for the losses.
Thanks for the Herald Tribune for bringing this to light.
Ward Lucas, author of Neighbors At War! The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association
Homeowners usually get the raw end of the deal when they try to fight the “Bigs” in the HOA industry. Some Homeowners in California are trying to turn that trend around. An HOA in Riverside County has sued three former property managers for “fraud, conspiracy to defraud, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty.” They had employed the management companies for eight years.
Canyon Lake Association then sued its own law firm, Fiore, Racobs & Powers, accusing them of “fraud and malpractice.” They say a lengthy investigation found “no cash management, no separation of accounting duties, credit card abuse by employees, employee salary increases that were not approved by the board.”
After all sorts of hiccups and more layers of editing than I ever dreamed possible, my book, Neigbors at War! goes to the printer this week. That means sooner or later I’m going to be moving this blog to a new site. I think you’ll like it. It has a lot more flexibility, more features, and more chance to interact with others in the HOA business. I’ve also included the Table of Contents and a couple of sample chapters. Most authors won’t do this, but I’m putting my index on line as well. This way, researchers don’t have to type in every chit and chad in a hyperlink, they just be able to click on the link and have immediate access to the resource. Any and all suggestions will be considered. It’s a sales website, of course, but I’d like to keep it a community resource as well.
I don’t want to creep my friends out too much before our new week begins. But controversial news items keep piling up in my in-box, and they have to be cleared out sooner or later.
ITEM: 30,000 military drones are on their way to law enforcement outfits in America. It won’t be too long before extremely inexpensive drones are available to other government agencies to do aerial inspections of zoning violations. Now the Air Force is developing drones the size of a hummingbird, or even a mosquito. It’s not hard to imagine a mosquito flying through an open door or window and grabbing a microscopic piece of your DNA from bedsheets or clothing.
