The former manager of San Mateo’s Woodlake condominium homeowners’ association accused of stealing $2.8 million could serve more than three years in prison after pleading no contest to embezzlement charges.

Nearly three years after residents were first tipped off that their HOA leader was stealing from them, Susan Marie Lambert pleaded no contest Tuesday to felony embezzlement and felony forgery charges, as well as an enhancement charge that she stole more than $500,000, according to prosecutors.

Lambert and her alleged co-conspirator Michael Anthony Medeiros have been accused of taking an estimated $2.8 million from homeowners at the 990-unit Woodlake condominium complex near Peninsula Avenue and Delaware Street.

On Monday, the cases were separated and, on Tuesday, Lambert, a 65-year-old Fremont resident, pleaded no contest on the condition she receive no more than three years and four months in state prison, said District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

Medeiros is slated to face a jury in February and has been out on $1 million bail. Read more:

The District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Second District, recently reversed a summary judgment in favor of a mortgagee in two consolidated actions for declaratory and injunctive relief regarding the extent of the mortgagee’s liability for unpaid homeowners association assessments, holding that the trial court erred because the homeowners association was not joined as a party, and therefore its liens remained unaffected by foreclosure of the mortgages.

The Court pointed out that the only remedies available to a purchaser such as the mortgagee was to move “to compel redemption or filing a de novo action to re-foreclose.”

A copy of opinion is available at:  Link to Opinion.

The servicers of mortgage loans on two properties subject to a recorded homeowners association’s declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions sued to foreclose. The HOA, which had recorded liens for unpaid assessments against the subject properties, was not named as a party in either action.

Final judgments of foreclosure were entered and the first-lien mortgagee was the highest bidder at the foreclosure sales. It then requested an “estoppel letter” from the HOA setting forth the amount owed for unpaid assessments.  Read more:

Miami-Dade police launched their first blow in the fight to end local condominium fraud with the arrest Tuesday of a former accounting assistant accused of stealing thousands of dollars from the condo community.

Leslie Navarro, accused of stealing $148,000 from the Hammocks proprietors’ association, a popular residential area in Kendall, was arrested early on Tuesday by a newly created special police unit. She was charged with first-degree grand theft and organized crime to defraud more than $50,000.  Read more:

Article Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post
By Alexandra Clough

Published September 19, 2016

CityPlace South Tower’s roof tiles are loose and falling off, only eight years after the luxury West Palm Beach condominium was built.

Residents of the 420-unit condo are scrambling to replace the tiles before they fall and hit someone or something around the Okeechobee Boulevard tower near a major retail and entertainment complex — or become dangerous projectiles in a wind storm. Read more:

http://www.ccfj.net/condoRoofFix.html

Article Courtesy of The TC Palm

By Laurence Reisman

Published September 23, 2016

Steve Glaser HAD the nicest yard in his neighborhood. His Realtor even said so.

This letter to the editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper by a CAI member is terrifying. He doesn’t use the words ‘fascist’ or ‘communist’ but it’s a pretty wild look at what homeowners have done to themselves by buying into the concept of Homeowners Associations. This country has essentially sold its soul to the devil. We have created a parallel system of government which has no controls, no ethics, no honesty. It’s a system of trial lawyers, by trial lawyers, and for trial lawyers. Homeowners have no access to traditional Constitutional rights. And the concept of true home ownership is a thing of the past.

(read it and weep) 

PRESCOTT – The president of the Liberty Management Group was arrested Wednesday, Sept. 21, and charged with embezzling more than $250,000 over 10 years from The Mountain Club, which, until Sept. 1 had been a long-time client of Liberty.

Joshua S. Lethbridge, 49, was taken into custody and charged with multiple felonies including fraudulent schemes and artifices, nine counts of falsely making a written instrument, and six counts of theft with intent to deprive of property.

According to a memorandum from The Mountain Club’s board of directors, obtained by The Daily Courier, “The Board met with the principal of Liberty Management Group on Sept. 2, 2016, and were told that over $250,000 had been embezzled from The Mountain Club … over the course of a decade,” the memo said.  Read more:

Thomas Fuller, the San Francisco bureau chief for The New York Times, provides today’s introduction with news in the case of the sinking Millennium Tower.

For years, San Francisco was a famously low-rise city. Then came the tech boom and the race was on to build the glass and steel edifices that populate the world’s great cities. But in earthquake-prone San Francisco there’s a catch: many of the city’s new skyscrapers are concentrated in a neighborhood of squishy land reclaimed from the bay.

Read more: