Category Archives: racketeering

The Baby Is Sick!!!

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I’m late getting this one up on the blog, since most of those-in-the-know already read this in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But for the record, another of the Las Vegas HOA crooks has pleaded guilty. That makes thirty down with at least eight more to go. Ah, and four suspicious ‘suicides.’ And there’s absolutely no word about the judge or the other police officials who were supposedly implicated.

The latest HOA crook to bite the dust is Las Vegas lawyer Barry Levinson. The Feds got him for stealing a million bucks from his clients, failing to report 28,000 in income taxes, wire fraud, mail fraud, and….oh yes, conspiring to fraudulently pack the boards of Las Vegas homeowners associations with phony members so his organized crime ring could completely take over those associations. Thousands of homeowners got hurt. Many lost their homes. The Las Vegas housing industry went right into the sewer.

Look for Levinson to get an extremely light sentence, though. That’s because he agreed to testify against his racketeering buddies.

PERSONAL NOTE: As a decades-long investigative reporter with CBS, ABC and NBC affiliates in two states, I am personally embarrassed and disgusted at how the national media have almost completely ignored the HOA mob story in Las Vegas. This investigation into the organized corruption of Homeowners Associations, the legal system, the judicial system, the police system is one of the largest organized crime and racketeering investigations in the history of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office. How could the networks overlook it?

This investigation cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and it’ll cost tens of millions more before it’s over. Hold your breath: only 11 Homeowners Associations are named in this investigation.

Folks, there are 335,000 HOAs in the country. Organized crime is rampant throughout HOA Amerika. Don’t believe it? Just google “embezzle homeowner association.” You’ll get 54,000 hits. The search term “homeowner association fraud” will get you almost a million hits. I understand the limitations of Google searches but still it’s mind-boggling. And those terms don’t count a myriad of other types of HOA crimes like extortion, death threats, fraudulent liens and foreclosures and funneling money off to your brother-in-law to cut the grass at the front entrance.

The FBI probe into these 11 HOAs is what’s often called a “show investigation” or a “show trial.” Because of the expense of this eight-year-long investigation the Feds have absolutely no intention of carrying out similar research in other cities. No, this investigation was just for ‘show.’ It’s meant to demonstrate to other police departments that this kind of investigation and trial can produce results anywhere.

Remember that first FBI sting operation in Washington DC back in 1975? Undercover FBI agents set up a phony fencing operation, bought stolen goods from the underworld, then busted dozens of crooks on camera. It was widely publicized and police departments all over the country began doing their own stings. In a subsequent sting in Denver, police even arrested an Army officer, Capt. Gregory Alberico, for trying to sell nerve gas from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal!

But that’s overly dramatic and straying off topic.

The one news agency in America which has been doing an adequate job reporting on the Las Vegas racketeering scandal is the Las Vegas Review-Journal. And in this week’s story, reporter Jeff German actually brought up suspicions about connections between HOA crooks and the mob. It takes guts for a reporter to include details like that. And I’m linking his latest stories below.

German will get accused of hyping this story when it supposedly has no relationship to what’s going on in HOAs across the country. In fact, German is being hammered with comments from readers that go something like: “If you don’t like living in an HOA, then don’t move into one.” You’ll read similar comments on HOA blogs all over. Please forgive people who say things like that because they’re just pathologically stupid.

Again I’m straying.

But permit me just one more bad metaphor. If your baby is running a sky-high fever don’t fool yourself into thinking that the baby is sick only where the thermometer is touching. No, folks, the whole baby is sick!

Yes, the Feds have only gone after 11 Homeowners Associations out of 335,000.

But I promise you, folks: The whole baby is sick.

(link to latest Las Vegas guilty plea)

(link to mention about possible mob ties)

 

How Bizarre Are Transfer Fees?

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Activists in Colorado are gearing up to fight one of the most bizarre expenses on your closing papers when you sell your HOA home.

Most people have no idea what that mysterious charge is that appears on your real estate documents. Transfer? From who to whom? It’s a transfer of money from your pocket to the checking account of a ‘mysterious stranger’. The fee can range anywhere from fifty bucks to several thousand. Question the fee and your closing agent will just pack up her briefcase and leave.

Some transfer fees are set up by the neighborhood developer. The fee is mandated as a permanent kickback to him whenever a neighborhood property is bought or sold. Some argue that a perpetual fee paid to the developer effectively lowers the price he charges for developed lots or built-out homes. But it’s simpler than that. It’s a slush fund set up by the developer to benefit the developer. It’s welfare payments to millionaires.

Some activists in Colorado are trying to get the State Legislature to ban transfer fees. There actually was a law passed to ban such fees a few years ago, on all residential real estate… except Homeowners Associations.

Huh?

Yep, Homeowners Associations.  This one’s a little hard to explain. In Colorado the transfer fee goes to the HOA management company. It doesn’t go into the coffers of the HOA to benefit the neighborhood, it just slides into the pockets of the community association manager. Theoretically it pays for research into the status of the homeowner who’s selling his property, such as whether his HOA dues are up to date. But that means the homeowner is paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for the thirty second act of photocopying a piece of paper.

Why would any Legislature ban transfer fees on all properties except Homeowners Associations?

The answer may have to do with the CAI (Community Associations Institute). CAI pretends to be a benign organization set up to protect homeowners. But its actually a 55 billion dollar a year referral organization which lobbies against any legislation meant to protect the property rights of individual homeowners. And CAI is currently staging a massive lobbying effort to defeat any change in Colorado law. Now why would they do that?

Follow the money.

(link to opinion column in Denver Post)

(link to Colorado HOA Forum)

 

 

A Call To Action

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I rarely object to re-posting calls to action from our network around the country, especially if I know the person or group asking for the post.
 
Our friends in North Carolina are doing excellent work in dealing with legislators and trying to get new laws passed. Thus, I refer to you their latest request.
 
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info@nchoa​laws.org (info@nchoalaws.org)
Please pass this info along to everyone you know who lives in an HOA community. Ask them to contact the North Carolina Legislature through Thom Tillis, Speaker of the House, and ask for changes to HOA laws that seem to allow and even encourage abuse of Homeowners and our Property Rights, not to mention our abilities to live and contribute positively to our Communities.
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Actually, I would go one step further than the above call to action. The vast majority of our legislators are clueless about what’s going on in HOA Amerika. The campaign donations they get is almost exclusively from the ‘industry’, and by ‘industry’ I mean those law firms, management companies and organizations which make fifty billion dollars by maintaining, nurturing and sucking at the teat of homeowners who are chained to ‘planned communities’. These are the people who are being bled dry from lawsuits, special assessments, fines, liens and foreclosures. As long as they have retirement savings and equity in their homes they have targets on their backs.
 
Your Legislators don’t know any of this! Get a copy of my book, Neighbors At War! And demand that your lawmaker read it!
 
 
 
 
 

Massachusetts Condo Boards Out Of Control

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I’m always happy to pass along a link to a blog where HOA members are discovering the tyrannies that are coming to dominate the controlled neighborhood scene.

Some folks in Massachusetts are beginning to realize the horrors of living in a community where hidden personal agendas are par-for-the-course among board members and property managers.

Home ownership is an incredibly personal and private thing, just as a marriage relationship is private and relationships with children are personal and private.

Yes, government can intervene when laws are broken. But to have your neighbors pry into your private affairs is universally disgusting and revolting. Official retaliation against a homeowner in an effort to force him or her out of the neighborhood is as nauseating as the racism and sexism that dominated housing trends over the past century.

With that in mind, here comes another blogger who deserves to be followed as Massachusetts HOA boards are put under the microscope:

(link to Massachusetts blog)

 

http://20140125.commentary-by-ms-condo-board-reform.condoboardreform.tel/

Say It Ain’t So, Joe!

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The biggest corruption investigation in the history of Nevada, and one of the largest criminal investigations in the history of the U.S. Attorney’s Office is in danger of collapsing, with four years and millions of dollars of investigative efforts going down the tubes. The ultimate result will be the U.S. Government totally turning its eyes away from one of the biggest and most vicious frauds in American history.

A massive number of homeowners in the Las Vegas Valley have discovered the assets they thought they’d accumulated in their retirement homes were stolen…by lawyers, politicians, public officials, corrupt Homeowner Association officials.

The feds have known about this scam for years. Nevada law enforcement officials have known about it for at least a decade. 29 HOA officials have already pleaded guilty in exchange for their testimony against the bigwigs who rigged HOA elections with phony board members and funneled millions of dollars into private pockets.

A dozen Nevada bigwigs have been indicted. But their defense attorneys are now claiming they need at least another year to prepare a defense for their clients. They claim they still have millions of pages of testimony to examine.

This is the way Organized Crime works, folks. Stall, stall, stall, let a witness die here and there, some by suicide, some by car accident. Let a few more come down with faulty memories, get a few more federal investigators transferred to cushy assignments in foreign embassies, get some different people elected… and your investigation goes right down the toilet.

Did the feds finally get Al Capone for murder, assault, robbery, kidnapping, smuggling, murder for hire? Naw, they got him for a few income tax violations.

Yep, folks. That’s the way it works. Pray this Nevada judge doesn’t grant defense attorneys a year-long stay.

(link to latest Las Vegas Review Journal story)