Corruption Basics: Devon-Aire Villas HOA #3

Imagine taking your clothes to a dry cleaner who charges twice what a competitor down the street charges while making you wonder if your clothes are cleaned with embalming fluid instead of a decent, appropriate solvent. Then picture yourself trying to take your clothes out so that you can find someone professional who knows how to do the job and who appreciates your business, but that clothing-embalmer won't let you have your suits unless you leave more of your wardrobe to be embalmed. Yeah, you'd think that it would be easy to change cleaners, but the overpriced clothing-embalmer tells you that he's a professional because he has all the right equipment in the back, and he's a member of the International Fabric Institute. So what; he still can't clean your clothes.

This is the equivalent of what happens to people who want to change their board of directors in an HOA when they find that something is definitely amiss with management of community assets and money. This is analogous to what concerned members of Devon-Aire Villas HOA #3 are being put through presently.

When word got out that a recall of several unelected board directors was underway during the last quarter of 2015, both the management company, FPMG, and the long-term board president began to interfere. A reliable source reports that Javier Lopez, the self-esteemed CAM-licensed property manager at FPMG was active in resisting the recall. Why exactly that “contracted” manager would be so concerned with who is on the board of directors, or who is not, remains to be explained. It is exceedingly unusual.

Perhaps a look at fundamentals will help.

Corruption is defined in Wikipedia as:

a form of dishonest or unethical conduct by a person entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire personal benefit. Corruption may include many activities including bribery and embezzlement, though it may also involve practices that are legal in many countries.

That is rather basic.

In the circumstance reported earlier by Patrick Anonymous regarding HOA president Jose Hoyos taking a kickback of $75 per installed light, it is easy to see that this was embezzlement of HOA funds. It follows logically that Hoyos is corrupt.

Because FPMG managers also took part in those transactions by accepting inflated invoices for each light and paying those at face value, apparently part to Patrick Anonymous and the second part to Hoyos, it is clear that FPMG is also corrupt.

There is another basic definition of corruption that applies: Merriam-Webster offers:

impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle

We are taking the position that corruption is bad. This is to say, we have no interest in being politically correct. Being politically correct is accepting a student's answer on a test that says, “2 + 2 = 5.” It happens. In today's world a teacher who tells a student with that test answer that the answer is wrong can be disciplined by the school board. Everyone knows that telling a student that he or she has given a wrong answer on a math question might hurt the student's feelings, and to hurt the student's feelings is politically incorrect. Teachers these days should consult an insurance actuary before taking the job; it's important to know the odds of actually teaching in the volatile environment in which protecting a student's feelings is more important than discerning truth from falsehood.

Actually, this writer doesn't give a rat's ass about being politically correct regarding hurt feelings of those identified here as being corrupt. Truth hurts? Live with it. Consequences follow.

By the time a student reaches Eighth Grade, chances are that given the above information a large majority of students will understand and agree that those named are corrupt. However, because those students and many others who grow up to buy houses “managed” by HOAs are schooled in being “politically correct” such corruption is often met with an apathetic, “So What?”

This indifferent view seems not to be shared by HOA president Hoyos and CAM Jay Lopez. Obviously, because they were motivated to stop a pending recall by desperate measures.

A recall process is defined by Florida Statutes. Most Eighth Graders would also be able to discern that interference with processes defined by law would in most cases become obstruction of due process.

Because this tendency to interfere with the vested interests of so many people in Florida far beyond the population of Devon-Aire Villas HOA #3, I'm including the following quote regarding Florida Statutes:

Until recently, the first part of section 1503 targeted obstructive efforts aimed at witnesses, parties, jurors, or court officers and officials. The Victim and Witness Protection Act of 1982, however, removed the references to witnesses and parties; created new provisions to protect such individuals, and left the initial parts of section 1503 to focus only on jurors and court officers and officials. The 1982 act, however, did not eliminate section 1503's broad "omnibus clause," which focuses on no particular victim and reaches "[w]hoever . . . endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice." The "due administration of justice" is defined to include grand jury proceedings, criminal prosecutions, and civil proceedings.

Emphasis added. A recall is a civil proceeding, and it is vitally important to interrupt corruption as soon as possible when that is detected, especially in an HOA. Overwhelming odds are that someone is stealing money from member homeowners.

Of course, everyone with a CAM license knows this, including Jay Lopez of FPMG.

It would seem that Hoyos and Lopez are overreacting excessively to a simple recall of board members at the Devon-Aire Villas HOA #3. After all, it is a position that is voluntary by law, and offers no monetary or in-kind compensation. So, what's the big deal if members of the HOA want one or more people off the board, to be replaced by other volunteers? You would think that Hoyos especially would be relieved not to have to commute from Georgia, where he now lives, to conduct affairs as the HOA resident. Newer board members assert that it was news to them that they are on the board; it isn't a position that was sought. Suddenly and indirectly, the story goes, Joseph learned after the fact that he was a board member. So, a large number of membership wants to nominate and elect a board of directors? Let them.

Instead, Hoyos, Lopez, and others at FPMG, are adamantly resisting a recall or any change in leadership. They are acting like that clothing-embalmer pretending to be a professional dry-cleaner in the above analogy. They won't let go. Instead, in addition to interference with civil procedure, they have resorted to slander as well.

In visiting a pair of members on Christmas Eve 2015, Jay Lopez resorted to slandering another property management company to turn two well-intentioned members against a competitive company. Lopez asserted that the other company would “go down hard” and that it is in everyone's best interest to distance themselves from a debacle that is coming upon his competitor. It just so happens that the other management company provides five times the service that FPMG does for little more than half the cost confiscated by FPMG. And that slandered competitor keeps records, has regular meetings and follows laws pertinent to governing documents.

In turn, a team of persons from FPMG, including but not limited to FPMG owner David Briel, property manager Lillium and assistant Nery took to slandering members who initiated a recall to get rid of Hoyos. On Saturday, December 26, 2015 they went to confiscate recall petitions at members' homes, asserting that those initiating the recall were “bad people” who would inevitably raise HOA fees and resort to special assessments of an ambiguous nature as soon as they seized power in the HOA. At a minimum, everyone should anticipate an assessment for resurfacing streets within their community. Threatening special assessments to a member of an HOA is like guaranteeing that the IRS is targeting a taxpayer with an audit. You just don't want to be there.

Of course, neither alarm was sounded for good reason, except that these were desperate measures of desperate people.

If you're thinking it makes no sense to interfere with civil procedures, the recall effort, in order to continue to serve a distant community of homeowners who have absolutely no appreciation of the sacrifice you make on their behalf … you are right of course.

And if you're thinking that these desperate measures have a hidden motive …

One thing that resisting a recall does is postpone “outsider” member access to financial records of the HOA. Already we know that both the president and newly appointed board members, and the management company, FPMG, have flagrantly violated Florida Statutes regarding access to financial and other records of Devon-Aire Villas HOA #3. What could be in those hidden records?

Could it be that Hoyos and Lopez, and others, are hiding evidence of financial crimes?

Even an Eighth-Grader who isn't particularly good at math would likely say that it looks like a murky canal that those fish are swimming in.

How bad could it be?

Considering that tens of thousands of dollars of Devon-Aire HOA money is, well, mysteriously unaccounted for because FPMG and Hoyos have refused to produce audit reports or statements if income and expenditures, we could be looking at major felonies in that murky canal. If so, and this writer in inclined to believe it is so, then interference with a simple recall could well be a desperate attempt to avoid a serious felony investigation by state or federal agencies.

It has happened before in other jurisdictions. It will happen again.

To be continued ...