I suggest we all call Stringers office and have them audit HPD.

Again I suggest a protest downtown at AG's office, it was done in Florida - will gain much publicity.

We must demand an ombudsman be appointed to deal with our issues. We no longer have the ear of the ag as shareholders and we should. This needs to be a united effort put forth by shareholders in all boroughs and voiced loud and clear in a protest as well as letters to our elected officials who would need to vote on it.

Agree we need to fight together. COOPABUSE.COM was created to allow us to have a common place. We meet with politicians and we bring one or two reprensetative from each borough; we are getting people from out nyc borough such as Westchester and Long Island. This is a crises and politicians can't ignore us anymore. Register at COOPABUSE.COM and or send me an Email ROSA.NAZAR@GMAIL.COM. We only win if we demand changes to the laws together.

thank you rosa. i very much appreciate the important work you're doing to give shareholders the strength many voices have. i no longer feel helpless. i was putting all my hope in the wonderful liz krueger. my council person, ms. mendez, said she totally supported sen. krueger's efforts.
in my co-op a clueless board has been bamboozled by a lawyer and managing agent working together to make a legal mountain out of basically nothing, and then blaming me for making them sue me!

It is true that because the Lawyer, Manager and the Bad Board want to stay in power they will work together for their common gold. Their has nothing at all to do with the other shareholders. There has to be some way to weed them out.

This has nothing at all to do with the other shareholders. There has to be some way to weed them out.

Had to correct spelling.

Often, shareholders are fearful of stepping forward with corruption allegations, as they have concerns about retribution, intimidation...

Harry

Harry you are right but remember one thing they are bullies but we can't just keep quiet. We are not slaves. We are Americans. We need to stay together to win. Register in COOPABUSE.COM or and email me at ROSA.NAZAR@GMAIL.COM

i sent a complaint letter to the BOD concerning the self dealing by the president and vice pres, the vice pres made homophobic hate statements about a 15 year board member that had resigned, due to them.I also had also listed the lack of the required parking waiting list enabled the BOD to continue with their self dealing among a load of other violations of proprietary lease and by-laws. a couple of months later i received an unpaid ticket doubled the fine , from a car that i had turned in the plates and junked the car over 2 years prior, pretty impossible to get a ticket on a car and plates that didnt exist in a town i never parked in.
The orig ticket was dated about 2 weeks after the complaint, letter, the coop was the only place that had my old car info. My insurance bills were also mailed to another part of the city, and all kinds of things like that started happening This was all the work of the pres of the coop. I am sure there other things going on that i don't know about,

Who is your managing agent?

I can publicly say I was dealing with brozman archer and they are beyond corrupt. There should be a list of the worst managing agents. These people would be #1

Curious as to the lawyers and managers who you have had problems with.

please provide your personal email

All area management could be #1 on the list.

We all know that some boards are corrupted, but proving it is another thing.

Proving it is not difficult – management firms hire the shoddiest contractors so they can get a kickback and let the board share in the wealth so they will keep them – This seems to be where they make their money and not by management fees.

In my coop, board has finally taken control of projects after 25 years of self-serving board members. Now we have a group of board members not in bed with management and actively looking out for the shareholders pocket. We receive bids from management then solicit bids on our own. We have found in all cases that bids are less than 40% of what we receive from management. Therefore, boards need to be diligent. It goes without saying that management is not very happy with projects board initiates and put obstacles in every way possible up to including double payment, tardy payments and informing board that there are no funds available for payment. By the way, funds were never an issue when their bids were accepted.

I strongly believe that in order to reduce the amount of corruption in cooperatives, the AG office needs to perform an annual audit of all cooperatives in the state, including a review of the corporation's financial statements, board and committee minutes, as well as operational structure. Just like the government holds big banks and corporate conglomerates liable for not acting in the best interests of shareholders, the same approach can be taken with coops. Advise your senators to push for regulation!!

Let's not forget construction defects by sponsors who are the largest donor to our Governor and our newly elected Mayor. HPD goes thru a new commissioner ever 2 years and it's a political patronage mill. Oversight has to be addressed by our elected officials.

Yes this is a problem but a bigger problem is when the sponsor turns over the property and a group of corrupt owners take over the building for their comfort and profit – they keep themselves in power by bribes and threats

Joan is absolutely right! In my building, the current "sponsor" is denominated the H.U.S. (Holder of Unsold Shares), and prior to becoming the HUS, he was the Sales Agent of the original sponsor, which means that every person who ever lived, bought, or rented here, is an asset of him, having been planted here through his employee, a real estate broker who sits in the board representing the Sponsor. This person, not even a shareholder, casts 2 votes for the "Sponsor", and brags about having "power with the board". Of the 120 units in our building, I only got to know about 2 dozens bona fide owners. The rest are either vacant apartments which have been vacant for years, or sponsor's units rented out to transients, or belonging to absentee owners who had either moved out, or died long ago, but their names continue appearing in the list or owners. Many of them them have the same name but different faces from the ones we met 5 or 7 years ago. So, there is identity theft here, in addition to all the other thefts, grafting, illegal surcharges, excessive assessments, unnessary renovations by insaciable "vendors", harassment, accidents and "suicides", etc etc etc. Replacement of elevators is a favorite one. We have 2 elevators which were installed only 25 years ago, which were renovated only 5 years ago, and now have bee replaced again to the tune of $260K. (The price for this in the market should have been onlly $80K total ). Our Managing Agent, an instrumentality of the "Sponsor", have increased our debt from $1,7 million to almost $3 million ($2.810 million) in 8 years, and still, in spite of all these extra borrowing, he still runs the coop at a deficit: $1.9 million accumulated deficit in the past 8 years, which will have to be added to the debt, of course, when the chips are down. Of the original "refinance", $2.3 million, in spite of having paid 1 million and a half of "interest" in 10 years, we still owe a $2.25 million balloon payment 4 years down the road. These are the "secrets" of predatory banking, of which people like Carl and Steve don't seem to know nothing about. They are naive fools.
The US Attorney is now suing and fining billions of dollars to the big banks who engaged in predatory practices that caused the big crisis of 2008: Bank of America, Well Fargo, Morgan-Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, etc... The turn will surely come for NCB (National Cooperative Bank), now functioning almost as a monopoly bank for Coops...but, by that time, they probably will have taken the money and run, emigrated to Israel....May the gods have pity on us, the gods who presided upon the creation of our great nation, the marvel of the ages! Kyrie, eleison...Miserere nobis.
Gerard Grosof - Concerned Citizens for Coop Reform.- g5grosof@outlook.com. Join me in the study "the Magic of Compount Interest, and other financial matters affecting the Coops.

have you looked into forensic accountants as a way of providing proof of shareholders being cheated, robbed, etc etc?

Yes, I have tried to contact several of them, none of them willing. They are very cage. "Send me $5000 to start work", they say. Just give me the money and then I may look at your financials and tell you if I see anything...This sounds to me like just another con game, and that they are all part of a cabal, or conspiracy. Do you know of any accountant, forencic or not, what you can recommend for honesty and sharpness? If so, I would appreciate the referral. I live in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. Gerard Grosof - Concerned Citizens for Coop Reform - Give me your personal email address if you want to participate in my financial and legal studies about Coops.