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Lawyers lie all the time, and shamelessly take advantage of the shareholders' lack of expertise in the law. In our case, in this year annual meeting, we demanded a ballot election (we never had ballot elections before, only "acclamations"), the lawyer told the board to forbid us to post our campaign material, (bio & platform), none of the perennial directors released any biographical material, refused even to disclose where they live or their email addresses. One shareholder asked how many times can they be re-elected (they have been there for 25 years, originally selected by the Sponsor), and Coop lawyer answered that "there is nothing in the Proprietary Lease forbidding their re-elections, therefore, they would be there forever". This lawyer also sent me a letter threatening termination & eviction for "objectionable conduct", for having tried to organize the tenant-shareholders, educate them, sign petitions, etc...(Tina, of the coopblog, lives in a phantasy world if she thnks this can be done with impunity, it has never happened and never will, because the Sponsors dominates the Coop).
In another case that I have personal experience, the Coop lawyer confiscated my apartment without going to court and sold it in public auction...4 TIMES! Everytime we had to go to his office to pay him money to get our apt back. The 5th time he did it, I refused to pay, and he proceeded with eviction. This time I sued him back, the judge ruled in my favor, told him he cannot do extra-judicial terminations, ordered to restore ownership, return all the money I had paid in lawyers fees to the Coop lawyer ($14,000) and to also pay my lawyer's fees.
This perpetrator of extra-judicial confiscations is a prominent lawyer whose , his firm at the time was a well-known 5th ave firm doing 60 of these extra judicial confiscations per year. The lawyer still answer Q&A questions for the NY Times Real Estate section...And perhaps continues with his criminal confiscations to this very day, with hapless shareholders who have no access to lawyers to defend them. Coops are enclaves of lawlessness and criminality, they are like a mafia.
In my experience, all coop lawyers are crooks, and involved in a criminal conspiracy with Coop boards,Sponsors & Managing Agents, to deprive shareholders of all of their rights, and exploit them mercilessly The whole coop system is a vast conspiracy, that has to be prosecuted under the R.I.C.O. act. Or in a class action by shareholders, which is what we are working on now. Join us! Carmen Bejarano. Concerned Citizens for Coop Reform. P.O. Box 568 - Bronx NY 10463
i saw an article i think in the ny times about 6 years ago concerning people with criminal intent buying a co/op condo. they would then run for the board, the bldg had been checked to be a non owner involved bldg before they bought. they may have had a confederate also buy a couple of months klatter.this person would also get on the board.
They would then have a conspirator do an inspection of the balconies, probably 100 plus per building, and maybe 2 or 3 buildings in the condo/coop.the inspector would point out the rust at the balcony attachment point and dig out some material, so it looked to the non informed owners that th balconies were in danger of collapsing. The criminals on the board now used their power to back up their confederate inspector and would hire a company, that was involved in this fraud for $$$$$ to fix the balconies,that in reality had nothing but visual rust, and were not structural compromised. The coop would pay huge amounts to get the balconies fixed, and the workers would just do a rustoleum and spackle type job, meanwhile billing for whole attachment of balcony.
this would happen in building after building, these people would see and work their con/kickback game on the next carefully selected building.
It fell apart when one of the owners of the condo, was a retired bldg inspector or had performed this work his whole life, and saw that it was a pure scam, He knew that the problems being pointed out as structural were purely cosmetic and unlike NY, the state got involved, maybe feds with rico act too. .
this is has been happening in this coop, the management company is a co-conspirator.
Since this corruption is so prevalent all over the state, kudos to Rosa and others who are trying to make a difference. Why not plan a massive protest at the AG’s office in early Spring?
The only way to win and get laws pass to protect our home is if we stay and fight together. They try to tell us that it is an isolated incident; it is not. Politicians are publicc servants and need to hear and do something for us. The first step is not to let them intimidate you. Register in COOPABUSE.COM or send me and email at ROSA.NAZAR@MAIL.COM and keep talking and writing about the problems. They need to stop telling us it is an isolated incident. Send me an email and I will keep you up on what we are doing. Yes we are planning a demostration and we need help from all of you. This is America we can't let them treat us the coop home owner as second class citizens. YES WE CAN.
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a gopro video camera on a chest mount is a grat way to document the lies/fraud that you board members,managing agent say at annual meeting.
meeting is usually on your property, and if it is common area, you can video taped. last meeting the board called the cops on me, cops came said i had to leave, i told the cops ,no, i will not leave, this is my property, this is a common area and this is my annual meeting, the cops backed down,
still trying to find a lawyer for all the fraud,embezzlement,mortgage fraud, all of which the AG and DA in Westchester will not take on.
lawyers i have talked too were board type lawyers, evn though they advertise as shareholder here.
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