Category Archives: States

Think Las Vegas HOA Crime is Bad? Try Hawaii!

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“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small, though with patience He stands waiting with exactness grinds He all.” -Friedrich Von Logau (“Retribution”)

Many of us have dreamed of having that condo on the beach in Hawaii. You know, the one you get to visit a few times a year, the ones where the kids go when they want a break from work.

Now imagine what life is going to be like for folks who live at Ne Nani Kai. Jim and Nancy Bevill, as it’s reported in the Molokai News, have just been awarded 3.87 million dollars. The jury found that the HOA board of directors and its employees have been engaged in a course of racketeering, civil conspiracy, gross negligence, intentional infliction of emotional stress along with a host of other crimes.

Guess who pays that four million bucks? The Bevill’s neighbors. Guess what happens now? Other HOA members are going to start coming forward and claiming they were victimized by the same kind of HOA thuggery.

Folks, you’ve got to believe that the HOA industry is right on a verge of a moral, emotional and financial collapse. Crimes committed by HOA thugs have been going on for far too long and the civil and legal establishment is starting to recognize it. (Actually, to put it more bluntly, a whole bunch of lawyers have suddenly decided to switch sides, stop defending the national Homeowner Association Movement and search for new profits defending the victims of these crimes.)

As an HOA homeowner you’re a sitting duck, not just for abuse, but for the financial ramifications of HOA abuse handed out to others.

I’ve been right in all my other predictions. I was one of the first to warn people to avoid buying into the Las Vegas market. I warned of Florida, and Texas, and the Carolinas. Now I’m warning about the HOA/condo market in Hawaii.

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

Las Vegas HOA Scandal Now Making International Headlines

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The Las Vegas HOA corruption scandal rumbles onward, and now it has jumped the Atlantic. The Mail Online is reporting on the body count (suicides), although the Mail Online occasionally adds some additional punctuation FOUR ‘commit suicide.’

I wonder why those skeptical writers seem to think this scandal has that kind of breathing room. Two of the dead are high profile attorneys, one of them was beaten to a pulp and his knees smashed a couple of weeks before his body was found hanging in a barn.

Las Vegas media are speculating on at least twenty more indictments and up to a hundred unindicted co-conspirators. Now THAT’s organized crime folks! Anyway, here’s the link:

One of the Heroes in the Fight

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CalHomeLaw.org is one of the heroes in the heroes in fight against abuse by Homeowners Associations. It costs a few bucks to join, but the average member will be paid back many times in advice and information. It’s designed for California residents but every homeowner in the country can profit from their wisdom and research.

Anyway, in their 2/25/12 email, CalHomeLaw notes how debt collectors cut their own throats in a meeting of the California Legislature. The Radcliffs were an elderly disabled couple in Calaveras County. For some reason, the couple overlooked a $120 annual assessment. The debt collector, Coast Assessment Collection, claimed the couple had been legally served with papers. During questioning, the company admitted that it had stapled the notice of foreclosure to a tree on the far side of the Radcliff’s property.

Angry senators then introduced SB137, a bill to clean up predatory collection practices. The new law demands that notices of foreclosure be physically put into the hands of those targeted for foreclosure. You can’t mail it, you can’t toss it on the porch, it has to be in the homeowner’s hands.

Also, the HOA initiating the foreclosure has to follow a number of other new procedures to make sure that homes aren’t whipped away from the owners. Dispute resolution is mandated.

Still, CalHomeLaw notes that many HOA debt collectors continue the old practices and haven’t improved their behavior.

Ah. Almost forgot to tell you. (dang my fading memory!) Most of the HOA debt collectors are law firms or subdivisions of law firms. (How could I forget that?)

CalHomeLaw.org has the whole sordid story posted.

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

Prominent Las Vegas HOA Figure Found Dead

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Nancy Quon, the attorney at the center of a Homeowner Association scandal in Las Vegas, has been found dead in her bathtub. Quon had been accused in an HOA construction defect litigation scandal that took in more than a hundred million dollars from insurance companies that represented Homeowner Associations in Nevada.

The FBI has been investigating up to a hundred Homeowner Associations in the Las Vegas area, and has staged several raids on the offices of HOAs and HOA management companies. The scandal has been in the hands of at least three federal grand juries over the past three years. At least ten prominent figures in the investigation have pleaded guilty to a variety of charges over the past five months.

Quon and her associates have been accused of arranging for ‘straw men’ to be elected to the boards of Nevada Homeowner Associations. Those newly elected board officers would then vote to file construction defect lawsuits against insurance companies. Those lawsuits were then funneled to construction companies affiliated with Quon’s law firm. The head of one of those construction companies is a prominent night club owner in Las Vegas who also runs a number of Nevada construction companies.

Police in Las Vegas say that foul play was not suspected in Quon’s death, and that she may have been drinking in her bathtub when she passed out.

A complicating factor, though, is that Quon and a Las Vegas police officer were accused of plotting to arrange her “suicide” more than a year ago, supposedly to collect insurance money for her children. The police officer allegedly arranged for the Las Vegas Police Department laboratory to manufacture a quantity of GHB, a drug frequently used at rave parties, to be used in her death. That officer’s conversation was recorded by a police informant and the officer is currently under indictment in connection with her attempted suicide last year.

During the alleged suicide attempt last year, Quon’s home caught fire and she was pulled from her burning home and revived by paramedics. She claimed at the time that she was not attempting suicide. Quon’s death will complicate the FBI’s investigation of the Homeowner Association scandal, since she was apparently the key target of the federal investigation.

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

Midwest Residents Latest to be Hit by Embezzlers

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People in Kansas and Missouri Homeowner Associations must have wondered why they weren’t being hit by embezzlers.  Were they just more honest, maybe luckier?  Maybe people in the Midwest just respect each other a little more?

But then, maybe not.  The feds in Las Vegas have learned how the corrupt HOA system is bleeding dollars away from homeowners across the nation. Now U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips theft has released info that should shock a lot more homeowners.

She has arrested the owner of a Kansas City business for stealing more than 750,000 dollars of money from his neighbors.  And he has pleaded guilty. Dozens of homeowners associations were hit while 53 year old Dale Palmar of Kansas City, Missouri just raked it in.

I’ve argued at length that wherever you look in this country, you’ll see the signs; homeowners being excessively fined for minor infractions, insurance money that’s supposedly paid, but just doesn’t quite lead to the expected repairs.

The message is crystal clear: the HOA movement is one of the most corrupt institutions this country has ever witnessed.  The loss of money through the HOA system is massive and almost unprecedented. When you sign those CC&Rs just remember you’re putting your retirement savings, your equity into the hands of all your neighbors.

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