Author Archives: Beanie
CALIFORNIA – San Francisco Files Lawsuit Against Sinking Millennium Tower
SAN FRANCISCO — Five years ago, when Frank Jernigan, a retired Google software engineer, and his husband bought a 50th-floor apartment in downtown San Francisco for $4 million, they felt on top of the world. And judging by the commanding view of San Francisco Bay from the plate glass windows of their living room, they were.
“We were feeling pretty good about our investment here,” Mr. Jernigan said, looking out at the view from his home on Thursday afternoon.
But their 58-story luxury condominium building, the Millennium Tower, which has sunk 16 inches into the soft soils of reclaimed land and is tilting, is now derided as the leaning tower of San Francisco. A dispute over the building’s construction is fast shaping into a huge legal battle involving the developer, the city and owners, and one with stakes befitting Silicon Valley.
San Francisco’s city attorney, Dennis Herrera, announced on Thursday that he was filing a lawsuit against the developer of the building for failing to inform buyers that it was sinking “much faster than expected.” The developer, Mission Street Development, reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in sales from the more than 400 units in the building, which was completed in 2008.
WASHINGTON – Homeowners call HOA fines and penalties excessive
Massachusetts – Property management company to pay restitution
SALEM, Mass. — Four condominium associations in New Hampshire and Massachusetts will be receiving restitution from Andrew Raynor, Matthew Dykeman, and their Haverhill-based management company, Shawmut Properties, LLC.
In Salem Superior Court Wednesday, Raynor and Dykeman pleaded no contest to charges of stealing over $100,000 from several condo associations over a two-year period. With their pleas, each received two years probation.
The pair — and the corporation itself — will also pay $20,000 each to be distributed between the condo developments, which were billed for repairs and services never performed from January 2012 through February 2014.
The bilked clients included Pine Hill and Oliver’s Pond in Lawrence and Marblehead, as well as River’s Glen and Springfield Estates in Bedford, N.H., and Rochester, N.H. Read more:
ALABAMA – Woman pleads guilty to stealing more than $350,000 from 11 Birmingham condo associations
A woman who reportedly stole more than $350,000 from Birmingham condominium homeowner associations pleaded guilty this week to one count of wire fraud.
Jill Rouse, also known as Jill Rouse Boothby, 43, entered her plea agreement to U.S. District Judge Madeline H. Haikala. Her sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 17.
The maximum punishment for wire fraud is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. As part of Rouse’s plea agreement, she will have pay $375,750 in restitution.
Rouse was employed as a property manager at Boothby Realty from 2008 through January, 2015. She also owned and operated an interior design business named Jill Boothby Designs. Read more:
CALIFORNIA – Q&A When management hanky-panky is suspected, should a board hire a forensic auditor?
Still, if a board believes that it needs a thorough review of an association’s books, Hank Kahrs, a partner at RGL Forensics, a worldwide forensic accounting firm with offices in Los Angeles and Orange County, says, “It is better to meet with a forensic accountant when you first suspect a problem rather than wait until it’s too late. The forensic accountant can assist in implementing controls to help curtail illicit opportunity.” Read more:
GEORGIA – HOA Horrors: Few checks and balances put residents at mercy of boards, covenants
While that money may buy you the walls, it doesn’t always buy you control over what you do with them. At least not if your house is part of a homeowner’s association – or HOA.
For years, 11Alive received a steady stream of tips from viewers, frustrated by the action of their HOA board. When our 11Alive Investigator Rebecca Lindstrom started digging, she found cases of favoritism, bullying, embezzlement – and very few checks and balances to make sure decisions came coupled with common sense.
More than two million people live in a neighborhood with an HOA and the numbers, with every new construction project around metro Atlanta, are growing. Read more:
ARIZONA – Letter to Andy Tobin at the Arizona Corporations Commission re HOAs
arizonahoa.blogspot.com: Letter to Andy Tobin at the Arizona Corporations Commission re HOAs
‘Round tripping’ HOA deposits
By John Sellers
October 31, 2016
Dear AHF
As we move with Arizona State Senator Farnsworth’s Group on new HOA legislation, we also have elections coming up.
One of the institutions Arizona voters get to decide on statewide is the Corporations Commission.
It was only via the ACC web site in 2008, emanating from a minor dispute over the Crossings HOA in Prescott, that we discovered the “round tripping” one HOA Management Company was doing. In this case HOAMCO, a small local company in Prescott. Round tripping in that they were aggregating HOA deposits under their management into a bank, in this case Desert Hills Bank, which then somehow lent those moneys back to Justin Scott, HOAMCO President, for “other” purposes. A bank which subsequently was bailed out by the FDIC costing taxpayers a “mere” $106million
Having once picked that up, we now see the pattern repeated, not just in Arizona, but nationwide. Another Arizona “HOA bank”, First National Bank of Arizona, similarly cost the FDIC in 2008, but in this case – $862million. Read more:
FLORIDA – Judge rules that D.R. Horton engaged in deceptive practices, must pay $16.3M
Article Courtesy of The Real Deal
By Ina Cordle
Published October 28, 2016
The nation’s largest homebuilder, D.R. Horton, engaged in deceptive practices that forced the bankruptcy of the homeowners association for Majorca Isles in Miami Gardens, a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Miami ruled.
Following a three-day trial, Judge A. Jay Cristol of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida entered a judgment against D.R. Horton and its employees for $16.3 million in damages, including $12.5 million in punitive damages, and said the company violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The court found that Fort Worth, Texas-based D.R. Horton and its employees engaged in “immoral, unethical, oppressive, and unscrupulous” trade practices its financial benefit, conspiracy, and breaches of fiduciary duty. “These actions by D.R. Horton can only be classified somewhere between not nice and evil,” the judge said, referring to the actions as “a modern day story of David and Goliath.” He said he awarded the punitive damages of $12.5 million to punish and deter future “unlawful, malicious” conduct. Read more:
FLORIDA – ‘Condo crime family’ pleads guilty to felonies
Married couple Robert and Rachel Dugger, and daughter Rachel Badilla, pleaded guilty Tuesday morning in Miami-Dade court to conspiracy to commit grand theft, with Badilla also pleading guilty to grand theft from the Kennedy House condo in North Bay Village.Badilla had been charged with forging checks to herself from the association and stealing the money, along with using association keys to enter a vacant unit and strip it of its kitchen and other goods.
Former state Rep. Julio Robaina, who conducted a state investigation into condo corruption, said the Dugger family was one of the most complained-about condo-management teams in Florida. It was Robaina, an attorney, who dubbed the Duggers the “condo crime family,” a name he said “they’ve earned.” Read more:
ARIZONA – Where’s the HOA’s money First Service?
Arizona Homeowners Forum: Where’s the HOA’s money First Service?
By John Sellers
October 23, 2016
To: Jeremy Ruskin, Chief Financial Officer, FirstService Corporation Toronto
Dear Jeremy
I’m writing to you in response to the failure of FirstService in Scottsdale to provide timely evidence that the information I’m supplying them below is making its way up your compliance chain. If you have one. I believe these financial issues are way beyond their paygrade so you get to hear about it as CFO direct. A lot of bankers don’t seem to understand them either.
I’m an ex banker currently working with a group of likeminded people and Arizona State Senator Farnsworth to make legislative changes for Arizona Homeowners Associations. One of the things we’re doing is following the money. It’s extremely disturbing already but even more so as we broadly collect basic banking information as to how HOA Management Companies, including yourselves, are running the cash. Here’s the issues which concern me, and I have intimate experience of all of them.
Four aspects manifest themselves, the first historical, plus three current risks.
- The losses in Arizona in 2008 alone of almost $1 Billion by the FDIC in respect of First National Bank of Arizona (“FNBA”) and Desert Hills Bank (“DHB”). The successor to FNBA is Mutual of Omaha who you currently use for Vintage. FNBA, prior to the 2008 crisis, wholesale harvested, via Management Companies, such as yourselves, over $1bn in deposits over an extremely short period, of which only $75 million went back into HOA’s. This wholesale harvesting continues as evidenced by the broad documentation we’ve collected. Read more:
HOA Reform Coalition 