HOA conspiracy pleas set for this week - News - ReviewJournal.com
Ten people have already entered guilty pleas. This week, an additional sixteen defendants are expected to plead guilty. They include three retired police officers. All these sixteen are cooperating with the US Attorney as they prepare to indict up to twelve alleged higher-ups in the massive, multi-million dollar scam that involved taking over HOAs and condo associations through rigged elections and using control of the associations to award service contracts to fellow conspirators. Lawyers and property managers were, of course, up to their eyeballs in the entire scheme.
This tip-of-the-iceberg case highlights the extreme vulnerability of community associations to financial scams. They are run by untrained, unsupervised, and largely unregulated volunteers who are elected out of an internal political culture of non-participation and apathy. What would you expect, if not fraud, self-dealing, and incompetence?
2 comments:
"...elected out of an internal political culture of non-participation and apathy."
Part and parcel of the rejection of the private local government scheme.
Of course there are also the trade groups that have lobbied to prevent homeowners from having any right to vote, run for office, access records, etc.. You would think the trade organization's objective is to create and perpetuate an environment where fraud, embezzlement, and many other societal ills can prosper. There really isn't any other purpose behind these lobbying efforts.
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