Category Archives: States

More Rats Flee the Sinking Las Vegas HOA Ship

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The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that 14 more people have taken plea bargains in the FBI’s HOA corruption investigation. That brings the total to 24. This four year investigation has taken way too long, far longer than most. But after its bumpy start, federal agents really started homing in on the fraudsters who’ve cheated so many Las Vegas homeowners and stolen their home equity, costing them their life savings and their homes.

The real tragedy of winding this investigation up early is that hundreds of homeowners who lost their homes will sit and wonder, “what to do?” They’ve been cheated of their entire life savings. But they don’t know who to contact to try to get it back.

Four of the suspects have actually met justice of some sort, committing suicide before they could actually face the music in court. That continues to be a very weird part of this investigation, how four prominent public figures could suddenly “off” themselves. One of them, attorney David Amesbury, was beaten, both of his knees crushed before he “decided” to commit suicide in his brother’s barn. Another was Nancy Quon, who funneled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction defect litigation to just two Nevada legal firms. Nancy Quon also showed up dead…in her bathtub. Again….real suspicious.

At any rate, the Review-Journal reports on the 14 new indictments of people who arranged to seat phony boards in Las Vegas Homeowner Associations and then take part in a series of fraudulent actions against homeowners.

Again, most of the latest round of criminal charges seem minor. For participating in this 100 million dollar scam, most of these folks will get probation, or at most a few months in jail. Just think of that: for murdering the financial future of thousands of homeowners, they get just a few months in jail at the most.

The fourteen new indictments are interesting.They include at least one attorney. At least the federal suit possibly opens a way for abused homeowners to file their own lawsuits against the bad guys. For homeowners who’ve lost every dime they have, though, it’s cost prohibitive to file such a lawsuit. Lawyers on both sides realize that they’ll be the only ones to profit, if anyone. There’s an arrogance among criminal and defense lawyers who are already talking about how to lower or eliminate potential prison time for these slime bags.

But where are the Judges, the politicians, the major Las Vegas figures who the feds promised to indict? I just hope they’re not ending this investigation too soon.

Mr. Big still hasn’t been indicted. He’s pretty slick with lots of high powered legal help. We’ll see, we’ll see.

(NOTE TO THE FEDS: Absolutely every city in the country has a nearly identical scandal going on. We love what you’re doing in Las Vegas, but if you quit there, many homeowners will pray that you’ll rot in your graves.)

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

The Las Vegas HOA Corruption Investigation Gets More Complicated

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Federal investigators trying to squeeze the corruption out of Las Vegas Homeowners Associations are just dying (or at least their clients are). How can you run an investigation when your chief witnesses keep ending up drowning in bathtubs, hanging from barn rafters.

Suddenly, swindlers who agreed to rat out fellow conspirators are getting nervous. They’re telling their own attorneys to walk back previous confessions.

But a wilder thing happens when civil lawyers try to bully their way into the feds’ investigation. They start filing civil lawsuits against the chief witnesses in the federal investigation. Those witnesses realize for the first time they’ll be tied up in the courts for years. Offers from the feds to “protect” their witnesses start ringing hollow. And witnesses start acting like rats on the Titanic.

So much corruption. And any ability for the feds to prosecute Organized Crime in the HOA system, begins to fade. It just fades away.

All that work, and entire investigations can just turn to…dust.

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

Trayvon and Zimmerman: Some Reporters “Get It”

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Not many reporters understand how dangerous Homeowner Associations are. It took the death of Trayvon Martin, but Mary Shanklin of the Orlando Sentinel showed she “gets it.”

Her story of March 29, 2012 is about the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida. That’s where Trayvon Martin died, allegedly at the hands of HOA crime-watch captain George Zimmerman.

Understand that this blogger has absolutely no opinion about who’s guilty or innocent in Trayvon’s death. But I do have some observations based on forty years of experience covering the courts.

Lawyers are schooling around this case like sharks on a whale carcass. Lawsuits are going to be filed by both Trayvon Martin’s family and by George Zimmerman. Whichever lawyer gets involved in the case will become a millionaire whether he wins or loses. And who are the ones who’ll have to come up with all those millions? The 200 townhome owners at The Retreat at Twin Lakes.

They all bought homes at The Retreat, thinking they were buying their way into a bit of financial safety. Many of them are elderly and they figured this Homeowner’s Association would protect their retirement savings forever. Well, welcome to the American System of Civil Justice.

Each and every one of these homeowners signed documents that essentially pooled all of their equity, all of their retirement savings into a common pot. They may even have bought insurance to indemnify their HOA against frivolous lawsuits. But all those insurance policies have limits, and this is one limit that’s going to be exceeded by millions of dollars.

It doesn’t matter who wins or loses the various lawsuits. The finances of these HOA members are going to be shredded. By joining an HOA, each of these homeowners created a “deep pocket,” and deep pockets are like rotting meat. They attract flies.

No homeowner can move out of this nightmare. These HOA members have handcuffed themselves together forever. It’ll take two or three years. But check back with me to see if my prediction comes true.

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

Nevada HOA Corruption War Opens A New Front

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Nevada continues to be Ground Zero in the federal fight against official HOA corruption. Across the country, residents and officials of Homeowner Associations have complained about financial irregularities and outright organized criminal activity involving the HOA Movement. But for years, they were ridiculed, mocked, threatened, fined and essentially separated from their Constitutional rights.

Now, such complainants are gaining serious credibility.

Federal prosecutors, of course, continue their current criminal investigation into Las Vegas HOA corruption, where hundreds of millions of dollars were bled away from homeowners and into the coffers of certain attorneys, judges, law enforcement officials and night club owners.  Strange statistics, but out of ten officially indicted officials, four have suddenly and inexplicably “committed suicide.” One of those four had his knees broken a few days before his body was strung up from a barn rafter and hanged. No conspiracy theory there. They’re just dead.  Forty percent of the Federal Grand Jury’s list of witnesses have just died. Forty percent seems an impossibly high percentage, but facts are sometimes pretty ugly. Dying Grand Jury witnesses really should be of great concern to every citizen who thinks Justice in the American system can actually be achieved.

I’m trying to think of any federal investigation in history where forty percent of the Grand Jury witnesses just suddenly “committed suicide.” Maybe it’s just my wild reporter’s conspiratorial thinking, but after four decades in the news business, I have never seen that happen.  Why Las Vegas citizens aren’t pounding the streets and demanding honesty and justice baffles me. But then I’m old school. I believe the Constitution was written to say exactly what it says it says.

Anyway, there’s a new front apparently opening involving allegations of a corrupt HOA system that’s cheating Nevada homeowners.

I’m not a very popular person in Las Vegas right now because of my book which comes out in two months..

But you can check out the new criminal front in a current news article by the Las Vegas Sun.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/mar/29/dont-question-your-hoa-or-you-might-get-arrested/

The writer is J. Patrick Coolican. If you know him you might warn him of barn rafters, and bathtub drowings and kneecapping and the kinds of things that seem to be happening to truth tellers with some regularity these days.

I keep hoping that Federal Prosecutors are getting some practice in Las Vegas on how to investigate white collar corruption in the HOA Movement, and then institute such investigations in every city in the country. That’s just a pipedream, though. From a grizzled old-school reporter. All I can say is an old cliche.   ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire’.

 

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

Some “Inside Dope” on the Las Vegas FBI Investigation

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With four decades as an investigative reporter, I can tell you a few things about what’s going on inside the FBI investigation into HOA corruption in Las Vegas.  First, I happen to know that about half the readers of this blog are federal investigators. That’s not ego, it’s just past experience. So, some of this is written for them.

Second, federal agents are extremely worried about the number of indicted suspects who are getting “whacked.” With ten people under indictment, and four of them suddenly dying, the feds know that a large part of their case is going down the tube. For the time being, those are all being called “suicides” for obvious reasons. But no case in FBI history has had forty percent of its indicted suspects die before trial.

It doesn’t take a CSI-head to know why suspects are indicted early. It’s to make them talk. It’s to force them to rat out co-conspirators. Give ‘em a lesser sentence to testify about the scope and breadth of the conspiracy. And for about a month, the feds were on a roll. But then, top figures in the case ended up being beaten, drowned, hanged. By the way, how does a 57 year old attorney (David Amesbury), who’s beaten to a pulp and both his knees shattered by a baseball bat just two ot three months earlier, climb up onto a rafter in the barn and hang himself? Anybody who believes that one desperately needs some psychiatric help.

Anyway, the feds had two dozen other people right on the cusp of agreeing to work out plea deals by testifying against up to a hundred others involved in the Las Vegas HOA scam. Suddenly those swindlers are clamming up. The feds are promising protection, which absolutely cannot be guaranteed.

Reporters have acronyms for contemptible organizations: NASA (Never A Straight Answer), FBI (Famous But Incompetent). And there’s not a doubt some of those organizations have the same contempt for the news media.

But for the feds to salvage this thing they’re going to have to work faster and harder and forget about offering plea deals to get some lesser player to testify against a major figure two years in the future. It’s not going to happen. This spaceship is going to crash.

The very next thing we’re going to see is the Feebies refusing to release any information at all to the public. Remember, this is an embittered public, many of whom have lost their homes and their entire life savings to these HOA scammers. Shutting down all communication about progress of the investigation is a horrible idea. Homeowners are desperate to get some relief.

The best solution? Recognize that the entire Homeowner’s Association Movement is rotten to the core from Miami to Seattle and from San Diego to Maine. Announce to the world that it’s all organized crime. The entire HOA system was designed to allow racketeering. These RICO organizations have to be attacked everywhere. National legislation has to be enacted to take away most HOA powers. Enact a reasonable Homeowners’ Bill of Rights. Take away the ability for any HOA to foreclose. Ensure that every dispute has an entirely independent “judiciary” which will arbitrate away the small disagreements that turn into huge lawsuits. But most of all get the lawyers out of the HOA business. The current structure is just too profitable for them. That’s why so many lawyers are facing indictment in Las Vegas. But this stench is rising not just out of Las Vegas, but from neighborhoods across America. 

End it!

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