Category Archives: Uncategorized
ILLINOIS – Condo Law Co-Author Arrested for 1973 Murder
LOOP NORTH NEWS: CONDO LAW CO-AUTHOR ARRESTED FOR 1973 MURDER
By Steven Dahlman
December 21, 2015
Chicago – He helped craft laws on which hundreds of condominium associations in Illinois are based but he is also a suspect in two murders. On Monday afternoon, Dr. Donnie Rudd, age 75, will be in a courtroom in Rolling Meadows, northwest of the Loop, for his first hearing since being extradited from Texas.
Rudd is accused of killing his wife of 28 days on September 14, 1973. It was originally thought Noreen Rudd died in a single-vehicle accident in Barrington Hills, Illinois, near Arlington Heights, just 12 days short of her 20th birthday. Her body was exhumed two years ago, an autopsy was performed, and police now suspect Rudd beat her to death and faked the accident to collect on a $100,000 life insurance policy.
He was arrested last Thursday morning by Arlington Heights police who traveled to Rudd’s home in Sugar Land, Texas, southwest of Houston. His bond was set at $1 million but Rudd remains in custody. Read more:
FLORIDA – Thousands of Poinciana residents face ballooning debt after HOA fees sent to collection agencies
CCFJ.NET: Thousands of Poinciana residents face ballooning debt after HOA fees sent to collection agencies
Article Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel
By Steve Lemongello
Published December 23, 2015
Poinciana Villages, with nearly 70,000 residents and 23,000 homes, would be one of the largest cities in Central Florida if it were a municipality. Instead, it’s one of the largest private homeowners association (HOA) in the United States.
But now the HOA is under fire for what residents say is a persistent and ongoing effort by outsourced debt-collection agencies to inflate back dues with thousands of additional dollars in legal fees and late charges.
Some of the estimated 4,000-plus homeowners whose debt was sold — more than 1 of every 6 homes in the association — say they’ve never received a line-by-line breakdown of what those fees actually are. And by the time they’re able reach someone at the agency, their late fees and legal fees have doubled, tripled, quadrupled and more.
At issue, residents say, is the possibility of thousands of owners losing their homes because of ballooning debts that were originally only in the hundreds of dollars.
Steve Sepulveres, an attorney hired by Friends of Poinciana Villages, said he and others are concerned about how “the goal posts have been moved” for residents who have fallen behind on their dues. Read more:
NEVADA – Mass of evidence in huge HOA scheme remains under wraps
Las Vegas Review-Journal: Mass of evidence in huge HOA scheme remains under wraps
One of the orders withholds information from the public about a secretive Justice Department investigation into alleged government leaks in the HOA case.
By Jeff German
December 17, 2015
A federal judge has refused to make public the mass of evidence in the long-running investigation into the scheme to take over and defraud homeowner associations.
In a 12-page order, U.S. Magistrate Judge George Foley Jr. denied a June request by the Las Vegas Review-Journal to dissolve two protective orders keeping secret 6 million pages of documents, including 10,000 pages of FBI and other law enforcement reports.
One of the orders withholds information from the public about a secretive Justice Department investigation into alleged government leaks in the HOA case.
Former construction company boss Leon Benzer ran the HOA takeover scheme from 2003 to 2009, rigging HOA board elections in a bid to gain control of a dozen associations. The late construction defect lawyer Nancy Quon sued contractors on behalf of the boards, which in at least one case used settlement proceeds to pay Benzer’s company millions of dollars for repair work. Read more:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/mass-evidence-huge-hoa-scheme-remains-under-wraps
COLORADO – Homeowners Left With Sinking Houses Finally Allowed To Tell Story
CBSDENVER: Homeowners Left With Sinking Houses Finally Allowed To Tell Story
The homes were built on evaporite, a soil that has been linked to sinkholes and subsidence in parts of Western Colorado.
By Matt Kroschel
December 10, 2015
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4)– This is a story about sinking homes, a seven year legal battle with developers, and disappointment.
Homeowners at a golf course subdivision near Glenwood Springs recently won the lengthy legal battle with the builders who constructed homes on top of sinking soils, leaving many homes literally cracking in half and some condemned.
The recently awarded nearly $9 million settlement to 20 homeowners at the Ironbridge subdivision determined that the developer of the homes, a Lehman Brothers subsidiary, was responsible for damage. But that settlement is far from fair, according to those people left stuck in broken homes. Read more:
FLORIDA – Cay Club’s founder convicted of fraud, other counts, faces decades in prison
CCFJ.NET: Cay Club’s founder convicted of fraud, other counts, faces decades in prison
Article Courtesy of The Miami Herald
By Larry Kahn
Published December 16, 2015
Fred “Dave” Clark, founder of the defunct Cay Clubs Resorts and Marinas that the feds say was a $300 million Ponzi scheme, was convicted by a federal jury Friday of three counts each of bank fraud and making a false statement to a financial institution and one of obstructing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by lying to the regulatory agency.
Clark, 57, was accused of using the Tavernier-based Cay Clubs as his own bank account, extracting $22 million from it from 2005 to 2007 and using the money on waterfront homes, cars and planes. He founded Cay Clubs and was its chief executive officer.
At its height, Cay Clubs had interest in dozens of businesses and employed scores of people, who all lost their jobs as the company went down hill.
Some 1,400 investors and financial institutions lost money on Cay Clubs, which sold condos as condo-hotel vacation units in the Keys, Clearwater and Las Vegas and promised renovations and big payouts to the investors through lease buy-backs. Clark’s wife, Cristal, was acquitted earlier this year. This was Dave Clark’s second trial; the first ended in a mistrial when jurors deadlocked. Read more:
COLORADO – Owner of Aurora HOA management company allegedly diverted funds, state officials say
DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL: Owner of Aurora HOA management company allegedly diverted funds, state officials say
By Monica Mendoza
December 18, 2015
The owner of an Aurora-based community association management company voluntarily surrendered his license after there were complaints he was diverting homeowner association funds for his personal benefit, the Colorado Division of Real Estate announced Friday.
David W. Martin is the owner and designated manager of PMG Enterprises Inc., a community association management company. The company’s license was also surrendered to Marcia Waters, director of the Division of Real Estate, which is part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies.
The division said in an announcement that it had received numerous complaints from consumers serving as board members of their homeowners association alleging Martin used HOA funds for his personal benefit.
The complainants alleged Martin attempted to cover up the theft by providing board members with bank and financial statements that had been altered to conceal the missing money, the division said.
PMG Enterprises Inc. and Martin managed up to 13 HOAs. The division said an investigation found that after Martin executed a management agreement with an HOA, he would allegedly add his name as a signor on the signature card of the HOA’s operating account without the knowledge of the HOA. Then, he allegedly wrote unauthorized checks payable to PMG Enterprises or other payees, the division said.
In the case of one HOA, Martin allegedly wrote 62 unauthorized checks, of which 33 checks were payable to PMG Enterprises in the amount of $55,500 dollars, the division said. Read more:
MISSOURI – Northland HOA sues family over backyard swimming pool
41 KSHB: Northland HOA sues family over backyard swimming pool
By Josh Helmuth
December 18, 2015
LIBERTY, Mo. – A northland family who installed a swimming pool in their backyard last summer may soon be drowning in court fees and repair costs following a lawsuit from their own HOA.
Emilie Gaudin has lived in Auburndale Estates in KCMO with her family since 2008. At first they were happy using the community pool they help pay for with their Home Owners Association dues.
But several times, Gaudin says she witnessed inappropriate conversations in front of her kids.
“We’ve had a group of men who’ve been up at our pool that are vulgar, obscene, they talk about sexual things they want to do to small children that are there,” she said.
Gaudin says her requests to have the men removed weren’t addressed. Therefore she and her husband decided to build their own backyard pool so their children could swim in private.
Although their HOA covenant doesn’t allow above ground swimming pools, Gaudin says they got verbal approval from an HOA board member and didn’t think twice about it.
Gaudin also said another neighbor already had a pool installed in their backyard years ago while dozens of other HOA covenant violations had been persistent for several years without consequence.
However Gaudin says the day her pool was finished, HOA members were at her doorstep demanding for it to be taken down. Read more:
TEXAS – In Huntington Village, the Community Association Has All the Power
Houston Press: TIPPING POINT: IN HUNTINGTON VILLAGE, THE COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION HAS ALL THE POWER
By Dianna Wray
December 15, 2015
Most of the time Ebony Washington is able to pretend everything is fine. She even waves when Huntington Village Community Association deed restriction inspectors pause near her house to record another infraction. Washington puts up a good front throughout the day. She’s in the middle of a divorce, struggling to pay her bills and keep things on an even keel for her three daughters — Aisa, three, Asia, eight, and Angelica, 13 — so she gets up at 5:30 a.m. on weekdays and does her hair and makeup, checks to see that her daughters have everything they need and then rushes to her job as a dropout prevention counselor at George H. Bush High School in Fort Bend Independent School District. After school she gets the girls to band practices and theater rehearsals.
There’s no time to notice the gutter that was damaged in the Memorial Day Flood, or to consider the faded black address numbers that she needs to replace. She never lets herself think about the money she owes the Huntington Village Community Association — $791 in delinquent association dues plus more than $3,000 in legal fees — or the possibility that any day now, she could find a foreclosure notice on her door. Read more:
BRITISH COLUMBIA – Change to Strata Property Act paving the way for old condo buyouts
Global News: Change to Strata Property Act paving the way for old condo buyouts
By Justin McElroy
December 13, 2015
Michelle Renaud had no intention of leaving her 570 square foot apartment in Vancouver’s West End.
Then she – and everyone else in her building – was offered double the value of the property.
“Absolutely felt like I hit the jackpot. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I don’t think you’re going to find another property where someone is going to come along and give you double what it’s worth,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning on [moving], but how do you turn that down? When somebody’s going to offer you double, it’s a pretty significant offer.”
The building on 1060 Barclay Street, Barclay Manor, will be purchased by Bosa Properties, who plan on tearing down the seven-storey apartment and replacing it with a highrise.
Bosa made the offer shortly after a change to British Columbia’s Strata Property Act was passed by the government this fall. Whereas stratas used to require unanimous agreement of owners for a building to be sold, it now requires 80 per cent approval. Read more:
Change to Strata Property Act paving the way for old condo buyouts
FLORIDA – Lawsuit alleges faulty fire sprinklers in Miami high-rise condo buildings
CCFJ.NET: Lawsuit alleges faulty fire sprinklers in Miami high-rise condo buildings
Article Courtesy of The Miami Herald
By David Ovalle
Published December 6, 2015
At least two high-rise Miami condos are among many that used faulty and potentially dangerous plastic pipes in fire sprinkler systems — a problem that was covered up for years — according to a newly filed federal lawsuit.
Lawyers for condo associations at the Wind Condominium and Latitude on the River buildings are suing a dozen manufacturers, suppliers and distributors behind the sprinkler systems.
According to the complaint, pipes made of “chlorinated polyvinyl chloride ” or CPVC, were popular in fire sprinkler systems during a nationwide building boom that started around 2005. But the pipes contain a resin that breaks down easily when combined with other common building materials, the suit contends, leading to leaks, cracks and a loss of pressure. Read more:
HOA Reform Coalition 